New Blogs Part 5 Updated November 24 2016

Sex Offender FAQ


http://sexoffenderfaq.blogspot.com/2014/01/sex-offender-faq.html

If you think the Sex Offender Registry is not unconstitutional; than please leave this webpage, now; by official decree, of the author of this webpage.

If you believe it is ok to deny registered sex offenders human rights or U.S. Constitutional rights. If you do not believe registered sex offenders are denied their human and constitutional rights or if you are against free speech.
Please leave this web page now. Thank you.

By remaining on this web page you here by acknowledge that you support human rights and United States constitutional rights for registered sex offenders and that you support freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is understood to be fundamental in a democracy. The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights.

This blog is not for people to be critical of what is posted here and if the reader is critical of anything here than that means they did not read the disclaimer on the top of each of the pages here and are not welcome here and should stop reading and leave this blog upon my request and in the name of freedom of speech, and my rights as a American citizen.


No sexual abuse is ever acceptable. Sex offense laws and policies should be based on sound research and common sense, not fear, panic or paranoia. Current laws and policies that paint all sex offenders with one broad brush are counter- productive, wasteful, and cause needless harm. Each offense must be judged on its own merits with a punishment that fits the crime and does not waste taxpayer dollars. The public sex offender registry and residency restriction laws do not protect children but instead ostracize and dehumanize individuals and their families. Money spent on purely punitive measures would be better used for prevention, healing, and rehabilitation. 

The author of SO FAQ does not affiliate with any other organization or people on the internet or the world for that matter. I have been saying this since I first logged on to the internet. Just because I like organizations like the ACLU; does not mean I believe in everything they believe in or stand for. Just like in our great country when we vote; we will never believe in everything the candidate we vote for; believes in or stands for. That doe not mean we are should not vote.






Alton Sterling: When a Sex Offender Gets a Candlelight Vigil
It takes the shock of an unjust death to remind us that sex
offenders can be people who are good men.
Lenore Skenazy|Jul. 8, 2016 4:56 pm

Only in death, it seems, can a person on the sex offender
registry be considered a human worthy of love and sympathy.
Alton Sterling, the 37-year-old Baton Rouge man who was
peddling CDs when he was shot by two police officers on
Tuesday, was described by his friends quoted in this Reuters
report as "a fun-loving guy" who was also a hardworking dad
"who scraped together a living selling music recorded on
compact discs."
"He was a very nice guy, always smiling and laughing," said
Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the store Sterling worked in
front of.

"I'd never seen him get out of hand with anyone," said a woman
who had just bought a CD from Sterling.
A woman at a vigil for Sterling called him a "good man," who
"never bothered anyone."
Eleven paragraphs into what is truly an affecting portrait of a
well-loved man gunned down in his prime, we learn that:

According to the Louisiana Department of Corrections, Sterling
was convicted in 2000 for a crime against a minor that led him
to spend about four years in prison and be registered as a sex
offender.
A court document reviewed by Reuters showed that he was accused
of having sex with a 14-year-old girl and impregnating her when
he was 20.
What's amazing to me is that usually when we hear of sex
offenders who had sex with someone underage, we see them as a
incorrigible monsters. They can't live near a park. They can't
hand out Halloween candy. They are sometimes not even allowed
to walk their own children to school. Their humanity is
completely obliterated, even if they have served their time and
are now loving dads getting up and going to work. We attempt to
welcome back most citizens returning home from prison. But sex
offenders we treat as permanently toxic.
Just today I read about a mom so incensed that her daughter's
school bus lets her off in front of a sex offender's home that
she is transferring her daughter out of the school. This, even
though of the nearly one million people on the sex offender
registry, the vast majority will never commit a sex offense
again.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that sex offenders
have the lowest recidivism rate of any criminals other than
murderers.
It seems to take the shock of an unjust death to remind us that
sex offenders can be people who are good men, kind neighbors,
guys who make us laugh.
People worthy of a second chance.
It would be nice if we remembered that all the time.

4:50 p.m. MST July 2, 2016
/01/jury-verdict-against-sex-offender-websites-owner/86583120/

Jury delivers $325,000 verdict against sex-offender websites owner

Federal laws protecting the internet did not give the owner of several sex-offender websites license to post false and harassing information, a jury in U.S. District Court in Phoenix decided Friday.

The eight-member federal court jury rejected claims by Charles "Chuck" Rodrick that internet operators have immunity from lawsuits so long as they publish information from another source.

The jury awarded the president of a Phoenix-based aerospace company $325,000, saying Rodrick put him in a false light and intentionally inflicted emotional harm in web postings that accused him of infidelity, having sex with young boys and defrauding the U.S. government, among other statements.

"Justice was served today," California lawyer Janice Bellucci said shortly after the verdict was read. "Chuck Rodrick has been made to account for his reckless deeds."

Rodrick, 55, was sued by three people who say they were profiled on his websites even though they were not convicted of sex crimes. Their lawsuit accused him of extortion and of using his websites to put victims in a false light, to invade their privacy and to inflict emotional damage.

Patrick Harnden, Rodrick's lawyer, said Friday that the jury misinterpreted the Communications Decency Act, maintaining that Rodrick's posts came from publicly available third-party sources. He said the ruling flies in the face of laws protecting internet operators.

"I believe we were fighting for the First Amendment," Harnden said. "We were fighting for the internet."

The jury sided with Rodrick against two of the plaintiffs: the mother of a sex offender in Washington state who launched his own website to challenge Rodrick in 2012 and a man who was arrested on a sex-related charge years ago but was not classified as a sex offender.

The jury dismissed extortion and invasion of privacy claims against Rodrick. But the three-woman, five-man panel found Rodrick's posts against David Ellis, an aerospace company owner and retired Marine Corps major, were false and damaging.
"This is a win for anybody who is getting bullied on the internet," Ellis said Friday. "This is encouraging for a lot of victims ... There a lot of people out there who no longer need to suffer from the words and actions of (Rodrick)."
Ellis said he planned to start working with attorneys to obtain a permanent injunction against Rodrick and force him to take down false and damaging posts.
This is Ellis' second legal victory against Rodrick. In 2014, Rodrick sued Ellis and several other people for defamation in Maricopa County Superior Court. A judge in the case then declared Rodrick the defendant in his own lawsuits and allowed counterclaims against him to go forward.



Updated July 15 2016

I was into blogging about this and sending emails to my senators back around 2008 with Amnesty International. I even got a Amnesty International magazine on the subject back then. There were rock bands and a whole bunch of people trying to help these women. Knowing this was just on the other side of our border really made a big impression on me. It was so long ago I cannot remember specifically what was going on. There was a documentary on television I saw on it back around that time. I have never heard about, anything like this in my life. Some of the most beautiful women I have had the pleaser of meeting since I moved to California and now in Texas have been Mexican women. There is know doubt in my mind these uniquely beautiful women believe they can use this to get into America. If that does not tug at your heart strings I do not know what will.
from: Force Change .com (click to sign petition!)
Stop the Rape and Torture of Women by Police

Target: Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Secretary of Interior in Mexico
Goal: Implement harsher penalties for police and military personnel who torture and rape women.
The Mexican military and police forces have been accused of raping and torturing women in an attempt to gain a confession. Amnesty International released the testimonies of 100 women who claim to have been physically and sexually abused by military personnel while in legal custody. Demand the harshest penalties for this human rights violation.
Suffocation, electrocution of the genitals, and rape are just some of the torture inflicted upon women, reports claim. The torture is allegedly used to get the women to confess to crimes. Disadvantaged women, such as sex workers and single mothers, are often the targets of this torture.
Not one soldier has been suspended for rape or abuse since 2010, yet the abuse reportedly continues. A task force has been established to combat the sexual torture of women, but it has not been utilized. Sign below and take a stand against this abuse of power.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Secretary Osorio Chong,
One hundred women claim that they have been physically and sexually tortured at the hands of military and police personnel. We demand harsher penalties and an immediate crackdown on this abuse of power.
The torture mechanism appears to be selected based on gender. Women reportedly endure electroshock to the genitals, threats of rape against their families, and rape with firearms.
The Ministry of Interior has been tasked with investigating the sexual torture of women. However, little has been done to seek justice. We demand an immediate crackdown on this misconduct and the harshest penalty for all personnel who perpetrate this abuse.

from: Force Change .com (click to sign petition!)




When I heard this it made me so angry! Can't think of no one better to tell you about it than my fellow southerner Jim Hightower:
What does it Mean to "Gig" American Workers?
By Jim Hightower
Pouty, whiney, spoiled-bratism is not nice coming from a four-year-old — but it's grotesque when it comes from billion-dollar corporate elites like Uber and Lyft.
The two internet-based ride-hiring brats call themselves "ridesharing" companies, but that's a deceit, for they don't share anything — their business model relies on folks needing a ride to hire a driver through the corporations' apps. With the bulk of the fare going to out-of-town corporate hedge funders.
The tow outfits have swaggered into cities all across our country, insisting that they're innovative, tech-driven geniuses. As such, they consider themselves above the fusty old laws that other transportation companies, like taxis, follow. So Uber and Lyft have made it a corporate policy to throw hissy fits when cities — from Los Angeles to Atlanta, Houston to Portland — have dared even to propose that they obey rules to protect customers and drivers.
The latest tantrum from the California giants happened in Austin, when the city council there adopted a few modest, perfectly-reasonable rules, despite the screams of PR flacks from both outfits. The petulant duo then used fibs and high-pressure tactics to get enough signatures on petitions to force a special election to overturn the council's action. Naturally, being brats, they gave the city an ultimatum — "Vote our way or we will leave town" — and assumed that Austin's tech-savvy voters would flock to do whatever the popular ride-sharing service wanted.
But they picked the wrong city. First, they ran a campaign of blatant lies, as though Austinites wouldn't question them. Then, they shoved a sickening level of corporate cash into their campaign, apparently thinking that the sheer tonnage of ads would win the day for them. However, the slicks from California turned out to be uber-goobers. Despite spending $9 million (more than the combined spending of all city council candidates in the past decade), they went down, 56-to-44 percent.
Since they didn't win their campaign, Uber and Lyft have now left town in a huff leaving their 10,000 Austin workers/drivers behind to fend for themselves. Since their workers are considered contract employees, there will be no severance package or unemployment benefits for them.
This is part of the new "gig economy — the latest corporate buzz-phrase from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. CEOs are hailing a Brave New Workplace in which we lucky worker bees no longer have to be suck in traditional jobs with traditional hours, traditional middle-class pay scales, traditional benefits, traditional job security, and all those other fusty "traditionals" of the old workplace, In fact, in the gig economy, you're not even bothered with having a workplace. Rather, you'll be "liberated" to work in a series of short-term jobs in many places, always being on-call through a mobile app on your smart phone or through a temp agency. How exciting is that?
Well, they use "exciting" in the sense of distressing and nerve-wracking. The gig economy means you're on your own — you're not an employee, but an "independent contractor," with no rights and no union. You might have lots of calls to work this week, but there'll be many weeks with no calls. Don't get sick, injured or wreck your car, for no health care or workers' comp are provided. A pension? Your retirement plan is called "adios chump."
This "alternative work arrangement" is not a futuristic concept — it's already here and spreading fast. And it's not just ride-hiring gigs either. Some 16 percent of U.S. workers are now in this on-call, temporary, part-time, low-pay, you're-on-your-own economy, up from only 10 percent a decade ago. Corporate chieftains (backed by the economists and politicians they purchase) are creating what they call a workforce of non-employees for one reason: Greed. It directly transfers more money and power from workaday families into the coffers of moneyed elites.
Their gig economy is aptly named, for "gigs" are crude four-hook fishing devices that are dragged by commercial fleets through schools of fish to impale them, haul them in, and cash in on the pain. And if you don't think the gig economy is painful, why don't you ask the 10,000 Uber and Lyft workers in Austin how they feel about it?
To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.



I got 3 emails this morning this was one of them:

Another Masterpiece From Grits For Breakfast!:

Saturday, July 16, 2016
"We are programmed to receive": Entry to Texas sex-offender registry a one-way gate
To read Eric Dexheimer's latest Austin Statesman story, Texas' sex-offender registry is a lot like the Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Grits thinks of Dexheimer as a reporter's reporter. He just keeps churning out good stuff over at the  Statesman's investigative division on important topics at which nobody else is looking closely.
Forgiving the headline writer's mixed metaphor, for which Dexheimer cannot be blamed, his latest contribution, "Program to corral ballooning sex offender registry failing" (July 14), focuses on the state's failure to cull the sex-offender registry of low-risk offenders. Doing so lets them focus supervision resources on more dangerous offenders and provides incentives for rehabilitation to offenders being supervised. Despite those incentives, though:
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, more than 90 percent of the state’s registered sex offenders are not considered to be at high risk of re-offending.
Yet the registry is like a cemetery: Because many offenders are placed on it for a lifetime, or at least decades, it only expands in size. Over the past five years, Texas has added new names to the list at a rate of nearly a dozen every day.
In 2011, Texas began a so-called deregistration process. The intent was to remove those who were unlikely to re-offend from the list and, in so doing, save taxpayers money. By focusing police attention on truly dangerous offenders, it would also improve public safety.
By that measure, however, the program has been a bust. In the 5 1/2 years it has been in existence, only 58 sex offenders have been permitted to deregister from the Texas list — less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the current registry.

He also gave a good account of the resource expended equally supervising high and low-risk offenders:
Maintaining the growing lists is increasingly expensive. In 2006, the Texas Department of Public Safety assigned 10 staffers and spent $343,000 to manage the registry. By last year, it required 21 employees and nearly four times the money.
Local law enforcement agencies, where offenders must periodically check in, bear the bulk of the costs. The Houston Police Department, which monitors more than 5,000 registered sex offenders, employs 14 people — 10 of them officers — who do nothing else.
In an office behind the Austin Police Department’s reception area, officer Adrian Valdovino processes a steady stream of registering offenders. “You still have the same vehicle? Same plates?” he asks one. “Any other vehicle you have access to?” Each appointment takes anywhere from five to 45 minutes.
In recent years, the unit — seven officers and two civilians — moved to a larger office to accommodate the city’s approximately 1,800 registrants who must check in anywhere from monthly to annually. Occasionally, officers also stop by their listed addresses to make sure they really live there.

He even quoted former Texas House Corrections Committee Chairman Ray Allen, one of the original authors of our sex-offender registry statutes (and, conflict alert, one of your correspondent's former campaign clients back in the day), saying he was:
convinced the growing registry was actually threatening public safety.
“When we first started writing sex offender notification bills in 1995 and 1997, we cast the net too wide,” he said. “There was a lot of concern there were a lot of sex offenders out there preying on children. We now have more than 85,000 people on the registry. And the reality is we have probably only four- to five-thousand dangerous sex offenders and a whole lot of other folks who were drunk or stupid or misguided who are very unlikely to commit future sex crimes.”
With a huge registry, “you’re creating a very large legal forest for the 5,000 (high-risk offenders) to hide in,” Allen said. “A list where 90 percent won’t commit another crime is not very useful to the public.”
Eric's not wrong that policymakers zeal for fixing the situation has not matched the magnitude of the problem:
Despite the high costs and marginal returns, there has been little appetite from politicians or even criminal justice reformers to fix the system. In recent years, politically conservative advocacy organizations such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Effective Justice have successfully pushed states to use evidence-based research to limit costly practices that do little to preserve public safety. But a spokesman for the influential Austin think tank said it had no plans to tackle sex offender registry reform.

OTOH, he failed to mention our friends at Texas Voices, made up primarily of family members of registrants, who have built up a credible presence at the capitol and are increasingly the central group there pushing for reform. They're not a powerhouse like TPPF, but they're excellent messengers for confronting an unforgiving media narrative. And their addition to the conversation has been the brightest ray of hope on a topic which heretofore enjoyed only few and temporary champions. Texas Voices is beginning to get more serious and, in the long haul, I wouldn't bet against them and their indefatigable leader, Mary Sue Molnar.



Program to corral ballooning sex offender registry failing
Mark Lay had been a registered sex offender for more than five years before he heard there might be a way to erase his name from the public Texas list.
Convicted in 2008 of a single count of possessing child pornography, he was released early from a two-year sentence, classified by the state as a low-risk re-offender. But he’d been told the rest of his sentence — lifetime inclusion on the Texas sex offender registry — was permanent.
A data analyst in Houston, Lay said being on the public list has prevented him from getting hired and finding places to live. “It has been the only reason I can’t assimilate back into society,” he said. So two years ago, when he happened upon a mention of what Texas law calls “deregistration,” he started making calls.
Texas started its sex offender registry 20 years ago as a way for the public and police to monitor a group of criminals believed to be virtually incapable of rehabilitation and thus likely to commit additional sex crimes. Since then, however, many studies have concluded that it is uncommon for sex offenders — particularly those who, like Lay, are designated as low-risk — to commit new offenses.


Parents love to point their finger at everyone except themselves, for ignoring their children; until they become drug addicts, commit suicide, become criminals, or are burned alive in their cars. Yet no charges are normally charged on parents that abuse children like this:
 Girl, 4, Dies In Hot Car In Pennsylvania, Bringing 2016 Total To 20
A hot car death has been reported in Pennsylvania as the region is in the midst of a heat wave.
Authorities say a 4-year-old girl in Lycoming County died after being left in a hot car for several hours Friday, as temperatures soared to the upper 90s.
The girl, identified in an NBC10 report as Samaria Motyka, was supposed to be dropped off at a Williamsport day care center by her caretaker but was left in the car during the day as the woman went to work.

Temperatures reached 97 degrees that day.
The incident is one of many across the country already reported in 2016.
According to noheatstroke.org, a site containing research compiled by San Jose State University Professor Jan Null, 20 hot car deaths have been reported in the United States so far this year, including Friday's death in Williamsport. From 1998 to 2015, there have been 10 hot car deaths in Pennsylvania.





New Blogs Part 5 Updated July 28 2016
I am repulsed, disgusted and ashamed of this data. The website I pasted this from is a must see! Every death is listed; just hold your mouse over the human image. Sad, very sad. Can you imagine how many were not reported; before it was a law, that it must be reported?

More than 6900 people died in custody in Texas in 2005-2015

Each time a person in Texas dies in police, jail or prison custody, or as the result of a police officer’s use of force, the death must be reported to the Texas Attorney General. Since 2005, the Attorney General’s office has been collecting the information contained in those reports into a single database.  That database was obtained using the Texas Public Information Act and provides the basis for this website’s content. Explore the data to learn more about who is dying in Texas state custody.


Judge keeps sex offender’s voting suit alive
July 28, 2016
A registered sex offender’s lawsuit against the Indiana Secretary of State and other parties will proceed, a federal judge ruled Thursday, denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss.
Blackford County resident Brian Valenti filed the federal suit alleging his First and 14th Amendment rights were violated because he cannot vote at the local polling place located in the Blackford County High School auxiliary gym. Valenti’s suit challenges I.C. 35-42-4-14 that prohibits “serious sex offenders” from entering school property. The law took effect in 2015, and Valenti meets the definition of serious sex offender under the statute.
District Judge William T. Lawrence in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Indiana wrote that Valenti may still vote either at another polling place that isn’t a school nine miles from his home or by voting absentee. It’s unclear, however, whether barring him from voting at the precinct closest to his home unjustifiably burdens his right to vote.
“While it remains to be seen whether this restriction rises to the level of a constitutional violation, the Plaintiff has met the low threshold for pleading injury required to demonstrate that he has standing,” Lawrence wrote in denying the motion to dismiss in Brian Valenti v. Indiana Secretary of State, et al., 1:15-cv-1304.
The Associated Press reported last year Valenti was convicted in 1993 of engaging in lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 in 1988 in California, but he has not been convicted of any other sex offenses against children. He moved to the area where he has family in 2014. Valenti is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.


NY: Low-level sex offender monitoring by state coming to an end
August 3, 2016 7:28 PM ALBANY
By the end of this year, 1,359 of the state’s lowest-risk sex
offenders will be removed from the state’s public registry and
no longer monitored by the state after a bill to extend
supervision for another decade failed to gain approval in one
house of the legislature.
The Senate’s Republican majority and the Assembly’s Democratic
majority said this week that they agree on the need for a bill
that would extend 20-year monitoring. Another round of
negotiations could resume when they return to Albany for the
2017 session in January, after the legislative elections.
Level 1 offenders are deemed by the court to be the least
likely to commit a repeat offense. Such offenders this year
started to pass the 20-year period during which they were
monitored after their convictions and sentencing. The
monitoring period was set in the 1996 Sex Offender Registration
A judge uses many factors to determine risk, but Level 1
offenders can include offenders convicted of felony sex crimes.
“We actually made adjustments we felt would be more of a compromise and certainly I’d be willing to talk about further input from Assembly members,” said Sen. Michael Venditto (R-Oyster Bay), who sponsored the bill that passed with strong bipartisan support in the Senate.
“They should not be removed from the registry,” said Assemb.
Dean Murray (R-East Patchogue), sponsor of the Assembly bill,
which was passed with strong bipartisan support in the Senate.
He said Level 1 offenders are being released from supervision
because the Assembly failed to act on his bill.
“The important thing is to get the bill passed ... N> ,” Venditto said. “Residents have a right to know.”
The state Department of Criminal Justice Services has notified police and district attorney’s offices in the jurisdictions where such offenders were arrested and where they last reported their address, and the information is accessible to the public. Once the offenders leave supervision, the public will not have access to information about their whereabouts.
Assembly majority spokesman Michael Whyland said the chamber recognizes “the danger to our communities posed by sex offenders, especially sexually violent offenders who commit predatory acts.
“The protection of the public from these offenders is a major concern to the Assembly majority,” Whyland said.
As of this month, New York has 39,126 registered sex offenders, including 14,564 in Level 1.



2016-08-05
CARROLLTON, Ga. — A father was charged with manslaughter today in the deaths of his 15-month-old twin girls, who were left in a hot car in their west Georgia town, police said.
Witnesses heard screams and saw Asa North running from the parking lot in front of his home, carrying the toddlers to an inflatable kiddie pool out back. He and his neighbors tried to revive them with water and ice packs, but they were too far gone.
Outside temperatures were in the 90s shortly before police were called at about 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
North, 24, is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless conduct, Carroll County jail records show.
“I think possibly alcohol was a factor in some of his decisions that day, and maybe played a factor in this,” said Carrollton police Capt. Chris Dobbs, who identified the girls as Ariel North and Alaynah North.
A man with North had been drinking heavily, and “we believe the father had been drinking that day also,” Dobbs said. Police tested North’s blood-alcohol level and were awaiting results from a lab, he said.
The girl’s mother was at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta at the time, visiting her sister, who had been in a serious car crash Wednesday, Dobbs said.
“I guess he forgot about about the kids and left them in the car,” said Donnie Holland, the twins’ uncle. “He should have took care of them kids better than that, what he did. He should have never been in the house asleep. He should have got the kids out of the car the time he got out of the car, you know.”
It wasn’t immediately clear who discovered that the twins were unresponsive in their child seats in the back of the SUV.
“The neighbors heard some screaming — I guess coming from the father — and saw him running around back with the two children,” Dobbs said.
Arriving officers performed CPR after finding people trying to cool the girls off in the baby pool.
“One of the neighbors got some ice packs out of the freezer and carried it out there,” Dobbs said.
The twins were pronounced dead at a hospital. Autopsies were being done at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab, GBI spokesman Scott Dutton said today.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether North has an attorney who could be contacted for comment.
The girls are the 25th and 26th children to die this year in hot vehicles, more than double the number by this point last summer, said Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsAndCars.org, a group that tracks such deaths each year. By this date in 2015, 12 children had died in hot cars, Fennell said in an email Thursday night.
Temperatures inside a car can reach a deadly 125 degrees very quickly, with 80 percent of the increase happening in the first 10 minutes, her group warns on its website.
Neighbors said it’s normally quiet in twins’ six-unit brick building, on a dead-end street in a modest middle-class area 45 miles west of Atlanta. Today, however, police tape was still up, with satellite TV trucks parked out front.
The twins died as prosecutors in another metro Atlanta county prepare for the murder trial of Justin RH, 35, who is accused of intentionally leaving his toddler son to die in a hot SUV for about seven hours in 2014.
H’ trial was moved to the coastal Georgia city of Brunswick after a judge agreed with defense lawyers that an impartial jury could not be found in the Atlanta area. The trial is expected to begin in September.




Last year an Austin police department (APD) officer body-slammed 26 year-old schoolteacher Breaion King during a traffic stop, after which another officer told her that Black people have "violent tendencies." It took over a year for footage of the physical and verbal abuse to reach the public.
Support statewide police reform in Texas.
APD chief Art Acevedo responded responsibly to the incident. But Austin officials had at least four opportunities to address the issue before journalists broke the story a full year after it happened. If the video had not been released or had never been recorded in the first place, we might never have known about it at all.
Police departments need body cams and proper oversight to earn the trust of the communities they serve. It's time for departments throughout the state to adopt reforms that demonstrate they're worthy of that trust.
Support transparency and accountability in Texas law enforcement.
Police Reform in Texas
Law enforcement is a calling of public service, not of oppression. But far too many Texans—especially Texans of color—are profiled, disrespected, harassed, brutalized, and even killed by officers who have sworn an oath to protect and serve them.
Healing and change take time. But by implementing these achievable, common-sense reforms statewide, law enforcement agencies in Texas have a real opportunity to show the rest of the nation what transparent, accountable, professional community policing should look like:

Demilitarize local law enforcement. Police departments don't need tanks or grenade launchers, and SWAT teams should only be used for emergencies, not to serve drug possession warrants.

Revise use-of-force policies to prioritize the preservation of human life.

Adopt zero-tolerance policies for racial profiling.

Implement robust, independent civilian review boards to investigate use-of-force incidents.

Collect data, and make it publicly available.

Develop training programs that emphasize professionalism, restraint, and de-escalation over gunplay.
Establish clear chains of accountability in the event of wrongdoing.

Engage in substantive dialogue with served communities.
Pledge to support police reform in Texas.

I am a Texan and I believe it is high time to bring achievable, common-sense reforms to law enforcement agencies throughout the Lone Star State.
Law enforcement must change its warrior culture if it hopes to gain the trust of the communities it serves. This begins with demilitarization, zero tolerance for racial profiling, revision of use of force policies, renewed training, the creation of independent civilian oversight, and the establishment of transparency and clear chains of accountability.
I pledge to support police reform in Texas




FAC Members Sue Florida Over Internet Identifier Law
Moments ago, The Florida Justice Institute, Inc. and the law firm of Weitzner & Jonas, P.A. filed a lawsuit in Federal Court to strike down the State of Florida’s requirement that registered citizen’s “Internet Identifiers” be reported.
In connection therewith, our attorneys plan to seek a temporary restraining order to enjoin the implementation of revisions to the law, scheduled to take effect on October 1, 2016, that would require sex offenders to register every URL used for communication.
If the new provisions of the law were to go into effect, each time the Internet is used for a communicative purpose, a registrant must first disclose the Internet Identifier and website, including every URL, to the government. For someone whose work requires internet access, this could easily amount to hundreds of reporting requirements per day. In all cases, an innocent omission could land the registrant in prison for five years.
The law applies to both those on probation and off indiscriminately and expressly includes anonymous speech. As it stands, the law already chills registered citizens’ First Amendment rights. If it’s allowed to continue it will undoubtedly cost individuals their careers and effectively ban Internet use for registered citizens in Florida.
This is the lawsuit that FAC has been pushing for and working on for over a year. Similar lawsuits have been successful in other states, including; California, Nebraska, Georgia, Utah and Michigan. We are hoping for a similar result.
A copy of the filed complaint can be viewed by clicking this link.




End private prisons everywhere

click here to sign:

https://action.aclu.org/secure/ICE-private-prisons?ms=web_160822_massincarceration_immigrantrights_ICEprisons


Did you see the incredible news? The Justice Department ordered the Bureau of Prisons to begin phasing out the use of private prisons – inhumane profit machines where the bottom line is often more important than people’s lives. Our justice system must be rid of them – and this is an amazing first step!
With momentum on our side from this victory, let’s turn to the next challenge: the Department of Homeland Security’s even more lucrative system of for-profit immigration detention centers. Add your name and demand that DHS follow the Justice Department’s example and phase out private prisons.
DHS is the private prison industry’s single biggest client. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency oversees dozens of immigration detention facilities operated by the same companies that will soon lose their Bureau of Prisons contracts. On average, these private prisons hold more than 24,000 people per day – more than 62% of ICE’s total detainees. And while the federal prison population has decreased in recent years, ICE has actually increased the number of people in its detention centers.
Take action to end the abuses of private prisons – tell DHS to phase them out NOW.
We already know that private prisons are a recipe for abuse and unsafe conditions – and these prison profiteers’ first priority is to pay dividends to their shareholders. As long as costs are low and profit is high, the private prison industry is happy. But the Justice Department’s announcement caused their stock prices to plummet, so they’ll do anything they can to hang on to their current contracts – including the billion-dollar contract to detain Central American mothers and children in a modern-day internment camp.
 The Justice Department made it clear that there is nothing just or fair about private prisons. A standard has been set – and DHS must adhere to it. We will no longer tolerate our tax dollars propping up the abusive and inhumane private prison industry.
That’s why we need to strike while the iron is hot. Add your name to tell DHS to immediately start phasing out all contracts with private prison companies.
I still can’t believe the incredible news: the Department of Justice ordered the Bureau of Prisons to begin phasing out the use of private prisons – inhumane profit machines where the bottom line is often more important than people’s lives.
With momentum on our side from this victory, let’s turn to the next challenge: the Department of Homeland Security’s even more lucrative system of for-profit immigration detention centers. DHS is the private prison industry’s single biggest client.
A standard has been set – and DHS must adhere to it. We will no longer tolerate our tax dollars propping up the abusive and inhumane private prison industry.  Will you join me in calling on DHS to immediately start phasing out contracts with private prison companies?



A ruling issued by a sharply-divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court could greatly alter the registration requirements imposed on some types of convicted sex offenders.
The decision by the court's majority states that offenders who commit some kinds of sex crimes, such as possessing child pornography, cannot be made to register with state police for life unless they commit at least one more sex crime after their initial convictions. In other words, they have to become recidivists to qualify for the lifetime registration.
State police have been requiring such first-time offenders to register for life if they have multiple sex crime convictions stemming from just one criminal incident.
Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said Tuesday that the high court's decision likely will have an impact on plea negotiations in certain sex-crime cases. The difference in registration requirements - some offenses carry registration terms as low as 15 years - can prompt a defendant to plead guilty to a lesser sex crime to avoid the lifetime registration.
"The biggest impact will be with plea negotiations," Marsico said. "These registration requirements are often at issue."
The dispute before the Supreme Court hinged on the interpretation of the wording of a state law that requires lifetime registration for some sex offenders who receive "two or more convictions."
A Supreme Court majority consisting of Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor and Justices Kevin M. Dougherty, Max Baer and Christine Donohue concluded the wording means sex offenders in some cases must be convicted of such crimes for two separate incidents to trigger the lifetime registration mandate.
Justices Debra McClosky Todd and David N. Wecht dissented.
The majority decision means sex offenders convicted of "Tier 1" crimes including kidnapping of minors, child luring, institutional sexual assault, indecent assault, prostitution involving minors, possessing child porn and unlawful contact with a minor won't be required to register for life on their first offense, no matter how many charges their first convictions entail. They will still have to register with police for 15 years.
The Supreme Court majority opinion written by Dougherty dealt with the case of a 21-year-old Montgomery County man who was convicted of persuading his 16-year-old girlfriend to take and send sexually explicit photos of herself. He was arrested in 2000 when her father found the pics. After pleading guilty to seven child porn counts, he was sentenced to 5 to 23 months in county prison, plus 5 years of probation.
At the time of his plea and sentencing, the man, who is identified in the court opinion as A.S., along with the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney believed he would be subject to a 10-year registration, Dougherty noted. State police told him he had to register for life because of his multiple convictions in that single case.
The state's highest court took on the A.S. case when state police appealed a Commonwealth Court ruling that ordered his removal from the lifetime registrant list. The Supreme Court immediately applied the majority decision to another case involving Thomas Lutz-Morrison, a Lancaster County man who was told by state police to register for life for his multiple convictions in a single child porn case. The justices ruled that Lutz-Morrison is subject only to a 15-year sex offender registration.
Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed agreed with Marsico that the Supreme Court ruling could affect some plea talks. Still, he said it won't greatly alter the course of sex crime prosecutions.
"As prosecutors, we'll be able to handle this," Freed said. The question is whether there will be moves in the Legislature to alter the law in light of the high court's decision.
Defense attorney Brian Perry praised the Supreme Court ruling for giving some offenders a chance to reform.
"The court's decision allows individuals to rehabilitate themselves and not have to deal with (registration) for the rest of their lives," Perry said. "From the first-time defendant's perspective, it certainly makes sense."

Aug 30 at 4:34 PM
People should be safe in their own homes
Too many women are unsafe in their homes. Our government must do its part to protect domestic violence survivors from even more harm. And with only a few months left in the Obama
administration, the time to act is NOW.
Vulnerable women trying to rebuild their lives face a barrage of obstacles and potential harms. From eviction to housing denials to sexual harassment by landlords and building managers, the odds of staying safe are steep.
“Nuisance ordinances” around the country even punish crime victims in need of emergency services with the threat of eviction. It doesn’t matter if you’re a victim of domestic abuse – too many 911 calls can put you on the street.
Make your voice heard: Call on Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro to take action to keep victims of gender-based violence safe in their homes.
To the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
Too many women are unsafe in their own homes. Do your part to protect women from harm. You must: issue guidance on nuisance ordinances to ensure crime victims can access emergency services without fear of retaliation, implement the housing protections in the Violence Against Women Act, and ensure protection from sexual harassment under the Fair Housing Act.



August 29, 2016 Senate Appropriations Committee Stops AB 2569
The Senate Appropriations Committee stopped Assembly Bill (AB) 2569 which would have reduced the number of registrants who are not listed on the Megan’s Law website. The bill, which was authored by Assembly Member Melissa Melendez, was previously passed by the full Assembly.
“AB 2569 was stopped by the efforts of registrants, family members and supporters who wrote letters, made phone calls and testified,” stated ACSOL President Janice Bellucci. “The halting of this bill before it could be considered on the Senate floor is a significant victory.”
The initial bill was introduced in the Assembly on February 19 and its scope was so broad that it would have added thousands of registrants to the Megan’s Law website. The bill was modified slightly and passed by the full Assembly on June 1. The bill was then sent to the Senate where it was modified again and passed by the Senate Public Safety Committee by a narrow margin after Committee Chairwoman Loni Hancock expressed significant reservations about the bill. After passage by the Public Safety Committee, AB 2569 was considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee which stopped further consideration of the bill in the Senate by sending it to the committee’s suspense file.



Judges Are Starting to Question Overzealous Sex-Offender Laws
August 30, 2016
There’s a stark divide between lawmakers and experts when it comes to laws which restrict where registered sex offenders can live. Cities and states all around the country have enthusiastically banned offenders from living too close to schools — and introduced other, similarly oriented restrictions — on the grounds that such legislation is a common-sense way to help keep kids safe. Experts, on the other hand, have insisted that these laws at the very least don’t reduce recidivism, and could have the opposite of the intended effect, increasing the odds of sex offenders victimizing more children.
The expert consensus is pretty firm. The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, for example, has come out strongly against residency restrictions for two reasons: One, these restrictions wrongly assume that sex offenders target strangers rather than acquaintances, when the latter is far more common (despite the established trope of the creepy dude in the trenchcoat standing at the edge of the playground, waiting to spirit a kid off to his windowless van). Two, as the ATSA put it in a 2014 policy paper, “these laws often create more problems than they solve, including homelessness, transience, and clustering of disproportionate numbers of offenders in areas outside of restricted zones. Housing instability can exacerbate risk factors for reoffending.” Overall, there’s literally zero empirical evidence that housing restrictions reduce the rates of sex-offender recidivism.
These claims have mostly fallen on deaf ears: Who wants to be seen as arguing “for” sex offenders? But a decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit last week suggests that at least some judges are starting to operate from a more evidence-based approach.
As Reason’s Jacob Sullum notes, the question before the court was whether it was kosher for the state of Michigan to have amended its Sex Offender Registration Act, or SORA, in 2006 and 2011 to introduce new restrictions that applied to previously convicted sex offenders. Six plaintiffs on the state’s sex-offender registry — five of them men — argued that in doing so, the state violated the Constitution’s ban on so-called ex post facto laws, or laws that are applied retroactively.
The court agreed, but also went further, offering what Sullum describes as a “scathing” assessment of Michigan’s tangle of restrictions on sex offenders:
“What began in 1994 as a non-public registry maintained solely for law enforcement use … has grown into a byzantine code governing in minute detail the lives of the state’s sex offenders,” the court notes. Among other things, the Michigan legislature in 2006 barred registrants from living, working, or “loitering” within 1,000 feet of a school, a rule that effectively banishes sex offenders from large swaths of densely populated cities such as Grand Rapids (see map). “Sex Offenders are
forced to tailor much of their lives around these school zones, and, as the record demonstrates, they
often have great difficulty in finding a place where they may legally live or work,” the court says.
“Some jobs that require traveling from jobsite to jobsite are rendered basically unavailable since work will surely take place within a school zone at some point … These restrictions have also kept those Plaintiffs who have children (or grandchildren) from watching them participate in school plays or on school sports teams, and they have kept Plaintiffs from visiting public playgrounds with their children for fear of ‘loitering.’”
It’s important to keep in mind that because the category of “sex offender” has become so bloated — because courts can easily apply the label for many different reasons — that a good deal of the people subjected to these restrictions aren’t, by any reasonable definition of the term, dangerous sex predators. The details vary from state to state, of course, but Reason notes that Michigan introduced a tiered system in 2011 designed to correspond to a given offender’s threat level to the public. And while all of the plaintiffs in the current case were assigned to the most “dangerous” tier, some of them didn’t commit crimes which would seem to warrant the designation: “one of them was convicted at age 18 of having consensual sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend,” writes Sullum, “while another was convicted of ‘a non-sexual kidnapping offense arising out of a 1990 robbery of a McDonald’s.’”
But even for offenders who did commit more serious crimes, there just isn’t evidence these restrictions do more good than harm, and the court’s cost-benefit language is notably similar to the ATSA’s: “The punitive effects of these blanket restrictions … far exceed even a generous assessment of their salutary effects.” In other words, the court is acknowledging that sex offenders in Michigan were likely hindered, in important ways, from getting their lives back on track, for no good reason. And if you buy the ATSA’s logic, there’s at least a solid circumstantial case to be made that this could have increased the rate of recidivism.
One way to test this theory, albeit not in a dispositive manner, would be to look at how frequently sex offenders in Michigan recidivate, and how that percentage has changed alongside changes to the relevant laws. Unfortunately, the 6th Circuit notes that “Michigan has never analyzed recidivism rates despite having the data to do so.” It’s easier — politically at least — to just layer restriction atop restriction without stopping to ask whether doing so is making anyone safer.


If there is a human being in Texas that deservers the help of these people; it is me. I am sending this email to them, as I write this:
I got your letter in the snail mail. Thanks. My wife the veteran said; you just want money. I don't believe her. Prove me wrong. I am adding a link to you all to my blog right now here:
I am going to ad them to my links now.



I do not normally post story's like this but since I saw this on my favorite news show on television Gay USA, I will post it. Like I always say LGBTQ folks are a very close second to people denied their very basic human rights to registered sex offenders. This seems a very classic example to me that the large majority of people in our country that stand on a high horse get's knocked down. :
Conservative Pastor Ken Adkins of St. Simons Island, Georgia, who has led a public campaign against the rights of LGBTQ Americans, is now an inmate at the jail of Glynn County, charged with two counts of child molestation.
Adkins, who also goes by the title, Bishop, has been busy of late tweeting about the massacre in Orlando, Fla. His two accounts are protected from public viewing now but the Florida Times-Union reported this is what he tweeted Monday:
“Dear Gays, Go sit down somewhere. I know y’all want some special attention; yall are sinners who need Jesus. This was an attack on America.”
That was followed three hours later by another tweet, which refers in part to a controversial effort in nearby Jacksonville, Fla. to add protections for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people to an existing anti-discrimination ordinance. Adkins served as a panelist on one of the community forums convened last December to consider the expansion, which ultimately did not happen.
Pastor who said Pulse victims got ‘what they deserved’ accused of molesting boy at church
“I don’t see none of them as victims,” Adkins tweeted. “I see them as getting what they deserve!!”



I would love to send this out to all the people that enjoy tormenting other human beings even if they are all the people labeled as predatory sex offenders; even though about five present of them are. This is one of my favorite bands that I loved, growing up in the nineteen seventy's

Three Dog Night "Easy to be Hard" OnTV - YouTube
Video for social injustice lyrics 3:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrD14jqTtAE
Lyrics:
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about being proud
How about I need a friend, I need a friend
How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about being proud
How about I need a friend, I need a friend
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be proud, easy to say no
Easy to be gone, easy to say no
Come on, easy to get read
Easy to say no
But too easy to be cold
Easy to say no
But too easy to say no


Down Michigan’s Punitive Sex Offender Law
September 09, 2016
Free Expression
Privacy & Data
Last week, the Sixth Circuit issued its decision in Doe v. Snyder, a case challenging state sex offender registry requirements in which CDT participated as amici. We argued that Michigan’s strict requirements for registrants to disclose their online identifiers to the authorities violated their First Amendment rights to speak without permission and self-identification. We won, in a sense: the federal court of appeals struck down Michigan’s registry law as an unconstitutional retroactive punishment, in violation of the Ex Post Facto clause.
The court didn’t decide the case on First Amendment grounds — which we argued in our briefs was violated by the law’s requirement that former sex offenders disclose all of their social media accounts to the authorities. But we have reason to take heart in this decision as a turning point in the way groups are singled out and denied their expressive rights, including their right to connect with others online without seeking the government’s permission first.
As Slate noted, the appellate court’s departure from a long line of case law upholding harsh sex offender restrictions was significant, indicating that parts of the judiciary have “finally begun to view draconian sex offender laws as the unconstitutional monstrosities they obviously are.”

With the enormous growth of IT, taxi drivers, medical professionals, administrative support staff, and mechanics will need digital networking and communication skills in the future. Enforced technical disabilities undermines former offenders’ efforts to expand their skillset, find employment, and reenter society after a period of incarceration.
Our co-amici, Internet law expert David Post, writes that by concluding that Michigan’s sex offender registry was a retroactive punishment, the court implicitly acknowledged that the restrictions on registrants’ residence, line of work, educational opportunities, and Internet access were a form of punishment, inflicted on individuals who had already served their sentences.
It’s clear that the punishing restrictions imposed by many state registry laws are intentionally so. But requiring former offenders to register all of their online accounts and identifiers is as misguided as it is punitive. A computer science major who can’t create an account without permission from her registering authority cannot hope to work as a professional technologist today. With the enormous growth of IT, taxi drivers, medical professionals, administrative support staff, and mechanics will need digital networking and communication skills in the future. Enforced technical disabilities undermines former offenders’ efforts to expand their skillset, find employment, and re-enter society after a period of incarceration.
Social media bans and burdens, including compulsory disclosure of individuals’ usernames and accounts, place too high a threshold on the exercise of First Amendment freedoms in the digital age. We’re pleased the Sixth Circuit implicitly recognized the punitive nature of compulsory disclosure of Internet identifiers in rendering its decision.






https://www.FreeChelsea.com

Urgent: Chelsea Manning has gone on hunger strike to protest years abuse in prison. Sign the petition calling for her to receive basic humane treatment now!

Transparency advocate Chelsea Manning has been in prison for more than 6 years.
During that time, she’s been systematically abused at the hands of the U.S. government. She was held for more than 7 months in an extreme form of solitary confinement where she was forced to sit, naked, staring straight ahead 23 hours per day, and was not allowed to lean back or lie down.
Now, she’s serving a 35 year sentence in an all-male military facility, where she has been cruelly denied basic access to healthcare that she needs. All because she blew the whistle on some of the U.S. government’s worst misdeeds.
Finally, after years of mistreatment, Chelsea tragically attempted to take her own life last month. She survived, and now the U.S. government is threatening her with even more solitary confinement as a punishment for her own suicide attempt.
With no other choice, Chelsea has gone on hunger strike to draw attention to her situation and demand basic humane treatment and access to healthcare. In her statement, she said clearly, “I need help. Please help me.”
We cannot let Chelsea’s call for help go unanswered. Please sign the petition to stand with her on hunger strike and demand that she receive humane treatment and healthcare.
Now that Chelsea is on hunger strike, every day, every second, counts. She’s counting on us.
Please sign and share the petition right now. Chelsea is standing up for all of our rights. Let’s stand up for her.
Click here to sign, and send this link to everyone you know: https://www.FreeChelsea.com




Updated September 25 2016

When I first posted about Chelsea Manning on September 13 2016;  I posted it because of the prison abuse it talked about and is common place in Texas prisons. I have heard exact stories like this; first hand about these exact torture techniques used in Texas prisons. Of course Chelsea Manning being transgender this torture must be one hundred times worse. The next day after I originally posted this I got a email from Gay USA that said:

Chelsea Manning Ends Hunger Strike; Army Agrees To Gender -Sep 14, 2016 Chelsea Manning, a transgender soldier imprisoned for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, says she is ending a hunger strike after the ... read more here:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/14/493877895/chelsea-manning-ends-hunger-strike-army-agrees-to-gender-affirming-surgery

After spending a large portion of my life moving around just to be close to my wife while she was in the army; I have to tell you the military is one of the most progressive peoples you will ever meet. I just assumed that solders would be warriors who consider woman to be objects and gays to be beheaded like a Conan the barbarian movie. I was shocked to find out from talking to many solders that the exact opposite is true. I would say most solders in the military today are more progressive than not and are very pro women's rights and LGBTQ rights.



FL: The Dobbs Wire – A win in the 11th Circuit today!

A win in the 11th Circuit today!  Miami-Dade is infamous for encampments of homeless registrants, permanent housing very scarce because of residency restrictions.  Despite national media attention to bad laws that had people living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway–courts haven’t been much help.  Now there’s an interesting development.  A lawsuit in federal court challenging those residency restrictions had been dismissed.  However, today a federal appeals court *reversed* that dismissal and sent it back to the original court for further proceedings.  Congrats to John Doe #1, John Doe #2, John Doe #3 and Florida Action Committee.  In addition to the ACLU’s Florida affiliate, this lawsuit is getting help from the ACLU’s national criminal justice project based in NYC.  –Bill Dobbs




Sex offenders sue Idaho over its registry laws

A lawsuit challenging Idaho’s laws governing registration and community notification of sex offenders seeks a permanent injunction to stop the state and counties from enforcing portions of the law.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Boise federal court on behalf of 104 unnamed sexual offenders, identified as Does 1-104, argues that Idaho’s sex offender registry laws violate the U.S. and Idaho constitutions.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article103701212.html




IA: Sex offenders sue over Iowa’s civil commitment program

Nine men who were convicted of sex crimes, served their prison sentences and are now indefinitely confined to an Iowa mental health unit have filed a federal lawsuit against the state, claiming its civil commitment program is unconstitutional.

Read more here: http://kwqc.com/2016/09/22/sex-offenders-sue-over-iowas-civil-commitment-program/



The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday for the first time reversed a life prison sentence for an unstoppable public masturbator -- saying Oregon's three-strikes-you're-out law for repeat sex offenders isn't always constitutional.

The high court said locking away 39-year-old Dennis James Davidson with no possibility of getting out is a disproportionate sentence for his crimes.

Davidson masturbated in front of women on a neighbor's porch, in a park, next to a strip mall and at a school playground where children were present in Marion County over five years -- from 2006 until he was arrested in 2011 and ultimately sent to prison for life.

Although the court described Davidson as an "incorrigible" offender, it noted that Davidson has never been convicted of raping, sodomizing or sexually touching any victims -- like other sex offenders sentenced to life terms.

Davidson's behavior, the Supreme Court wrote, doesn't call for "the most severe penalty available under Oregon law, other than the death penalty."

The ruling represents a hit to the three-strikes law as a deterrent to public masturbators. The Oregon Supreme Court had as recently as this summer upheld the 2001 law as constitutional for another serial public masturbator, albeit one with a criminal history that included convictions for molesting children.

Ernest Lannet, who represented Davidson on appeal for the Office of Public Defense Services, said the ruling acknowledges that not all repeat felony sex offenders should be treated the same because they are not all the same. The wide range runs from child rapists on one end to public masturbators on the other, he said.

An individual defendant's circumstances should be considered, Lannet said.  Davidson, for instance, suffers from a traumatic brain injury and has never been convicted of molesting anyone, he said.
Davidson was 16 or 17 when a friend struck him in the head with a baseball bat, causing brain damage, court records indicate. He eventually lost his left eye due to complications.

Davidson also appears to have a distorted view of reality, according to court records. In one case, he told police he was masturbating in front of a stranger in a parking lot under the belief that would increase the chances she would want to date him.

Read Thursday's opinion about Davidson here.

In the earlier case this year, the court ruled in June that it wasn't cruel and unusual punishment to sentence William Michael Althouse to life in prison after he was found guilty of exposing his himself to a woman on a Salem jogging path.

The so-called "true life" sentence for Althouse was constitutionally sound because of his long and deeply disturbing record of sexually assaulting children and exposing himself in public over three decades, the high court ruled. The cases included following a 9-year-old boy to his family's motor home in Seaside, winning his trust by asking to play a board game, then putting a shirt over the boy's mouth and sexually assaulting him in the motor home's bathroom.

The Supreme Court also Thursday upheld the life sentence of repeat child molester Douglas Wayne Sokell, a 73-year-old Forest Grove man who was caught in 2011 stroking an 8-year-old girl's buttocks and hips over her clothes in a Hillsboro library.

Sokell had previously been convicted of squeezing a 12-year-old girl's breasts in a store after asking her to try on a backpack he was thinking about buying his niece and reaching his hand up a 7-year-old girl's dress at a Newport library and rubbing her crotch area. Sokell had admitted to his therapist that he'd once raped a 10-year-old girl and that he has more than 120 child victims, according to court records.

"Despite the considerable sex offender treatment (Sokell) has received over the course of several decades, he has continued to re-offend," the court wrote.

"The passage of time and (Sokell's) advancing age have failed to diminish the danger that he poses to children," the court wrote.

Read Thursday's opinion about Sokell here.




I have sent so many emails to DOJ; they must know me by name. This is a good one and deserves our caring  attention:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/submit-your-comment-to-the-bureau-of-justice-statistics-at-the-doj?clear_id=true&referrer=&source=
Right now you can make your voice officially  heard regarding police accountability.
Because of the Arrest Related Death Act the DOJ has the responsibility to require police officers to collect data on any and all deaths of people while in custody. Right now, the DOJ is accepting public comment on the importance of this data collection.
We need this information. We need you to help make sure the DOJ has the support of the public to require police to comply.
Sign and send the petition: Tell the DOJ to require accurate data on deaths in police custody.
This opportunity allows the public to let the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice know data regarding deaths during arrest is extremely important to the public and media. The DOJ has a responsibility to uphold this Congressional Act to the full extent of the law--and holding police accountable is long over due in this country.
The public must weigh in on the importance of this data--OR the DOJ will only hear from law enforcement agencies, who will likely say this reporting is a burden.
The public needs to comment and make it known that data regarding the loss of life during an arrest is not a burden, but an opportunity to protect citizens in the future.
Sign and send our petition to the DOJ: Law Enforcement Agenices must report deaths in custody.
The data collected via the ARD Act will be instrumental in drafting and passing legislation that protects citizens and transforms the role of law enforcement agencies and the way they interact with citizens when they are in crisis. This data is just one of many steps in our fight to ensure that the police are working for communities of color and not against them.
The moments you take to clearly express your opinion will bring the Law Enforcement Agencies in this country one step closer to accountability.

Submit your comment to the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the DOJ*
Right now you can make your voice officially heard regarding police accountability. The Arrest Related Death Act, which is a part of The Death in Custody Reporting Act, and how it is carried out, the role of the DOJ in holding police accountable and the data collected by this Act are the subject of an official Department of Justice open comment period.
The open comment period is the American people's chance to let the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Justice know data regarding deaths during arrest is extremely important, the DOJ has a responsibility to carry this Act out to the full extent of the law and holding police accountable is long over due in this country.
All open comment periods lay out points to touch on and this one is no exception. The Bureau of Justice Statistics is looking for input on the changes they have made to the report form, opinions on the burden this places on Law Enforcement Agencies and Medical Examiners, suggestions regarding means of collection via outside sources such as news articles and twitter feeds and the role that DOJ has to carry the ARD Act out. But it is important to ensure that your voice comes through as well. Below are comments that fall well within the parameters for comment topics.
Please take time to expand on, add to, or completely revise the sample comment that comes up for you. The moments you take to clearly express your opinion will bring the Law Enforcement Agencies in this country one step closer to accountability.
The ARD data collection process is important to protect citizens lives. The reporting program has already dramatically reduced deaths that occur while in police custody.
These reports are not a burden and should not be seen as such. Now that the main report form has been changed from 23 to 18 questions it seems that it is time to get down to the business of requiring LEA's and ME's to submit the forms. 18 questions is not to much to ask when a person has lost their life.
The financial penalties outlined in the ARD should be enforced by the DOJ if LEA's and ME's do not fulfill the reporting requirements. Without penalties the Act has already reduced the number of arrest related deaths. Imagine the lives that the Department of Justice could save if they enforced the ARD Act as stipulated and withheld 10% of federal grant money from all agencies that did not comply with the reporting.
The questionnaire should address… (examples: mental health issues, veteran status)
Data should / should not be collected via… (electronic form submittal, third party sources such as news outlets and twitter, the deceased families, witnesses etc.)
The plan to collect information using third party sources such as news reporting and social media is...
Personal experiences or situations from your life that ie into the Arrest Related Death act and the data it collects.
Thank you for taking the time to speak up regarding police accountability and the Department of Justices role in ensuring that the American people have a clear picture of how the law is enforced in this country. The data collected from the ARD Act is just the first of many steps to passing legislation that protects American citizens and transforms the role of law enforcement in this country.


PA: A deal is a deal – Supreme Court blocks retroactive registration boosts for sex offenders

Sex offender registration requirements can’t be increased for people who reached deals to plead guilty to sex crimes before Pennsylvania’s latest registration law took effect, the state Supreme Court has decided.

The high court reached that conclusion in an opinion Justice Max Baer issued this week on three consolidated cases involving York County sex offenders. Full Article:
Sex offender registration requirements can't be increased for people who reached deals to plead guilty to sex crimes before Pennsylvania's latest registration law took effect, the state Supreme Court has decided.
The high court reached that conclusion in an opinion Justice Max Baer issued this week on three consolidated cases involving York County sex offenders.
Wayne Shower, Gabriel Martinez and Adam Grace all pleaded guilty to sex crimes before Megan's Law was superseded by the more stringent Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act in December 2012. Shower was sentenced in 2006, Martinez in 2010 and Grace in 2011.
All three men pleaded to crimes that, under Megan's law, required them to register with state police as sex offenders for 10 years. Under SORNA, however, the crimes to which Shower and Martinez pleaded carry lifetime registration requirements, while a 25-year registration would apply in Grace's case.
The registration dispute came to the Supreme Court after the county district attorney's office appealed rulings by a York County judge and a state Superior Court panel that sided with Shower, Martinez and Grace.
Like the lower courts, Baer's court essentially agreed that a deal is a deal and that the plea agreements constituted enforceable contracts.
When Showers, Martinez and Grace reached their plea agreements with county prosecutors, the government was bound by the terms that then limited their registration periods to a decade, Baer concluded.
"In this commonwealth, when trial courts accept plea agreements, the convicted criminals...are entitled to the benefits of their bargains," he wrote.




FRIDAY, OCTOBER 07, 2016

Quarter of Texas police shooting deaths unreported to AG despite mandate

About a quarter of Texas police shooting deaths over the last decade - more than 200 - went unreported to the state Attorney General despite criminal penalties on the books for noncompliance, our own Amanda Woog observed in a Houston Chronicle editorial.

Woog reported that, "Scott Bowman, Howard Williams and Jordan Taylor Jung, of Texas State University, have documented more than 200 police shootings that were not reported to the AG's office, but should have been. This is around 15 percent of the total deaths in police custody that were missing, and when looking at the subset of deaths by police shooting, more than 25 percent were unreported." See their analysis.

The academics discovered these undisclosed police shootings by using the media-analysis methodology pioneered by the Guardian and Washington Post in their national compilations of police shootings. They found more than 200 which had not been reported to the Attorney General in which it would have been required under state law.

The crux of Woog's op ed suggested a change to incentivize reporting of heretofore covert police shootings where criminal penalties have failed. Here's how the article concluded:
Right now, compliance with the custodial death reporting statute is tied to a criminal penalty for failing to report, a Class B misdemeanor. But actual enforcement of the law requires that local law enforcement investigate, and local prosecutors prosecute, local law enforcement violations.

Unsurprisingly, I could not find a single prosecution under this law in its 30-plus year history.
Instead of relying on an apparently never-been-used criminal penalty that depends on police policing the police, compliance should be tied to funding and enforced by state authorities.

Withholding funding for failing to report custodial deaths is currently being discussed on the federal level. In recent years, the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. Department of Justice has been under fire for state and local law enforcement agencies' underreporting in the federal custodial-death reporting program. In response to recent proposed rule changes by the BJS, a coalition of organizations led by the ACLU and NAACP wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch calling on the DOJ to "condition federal criminal justice grants on data collection and reporting on police-civilian encounters."

Texas should do the same. In fact, there's precedent in our state for withholding grant funding from local authorities that fail to comply with criminal justice data-reporting requirements. In 2012, when counties were not adequately updating criminal history records as required by state law, the Criminal Justice Division under Gov. Rick Perry conditioned eligibility for CJD grants on counties' 90 percent or above compliance with the reporting law. Within eight months of the CJD's announcement, 172 counties became compliant with the minimum reporting standard.

Strengthening Texas' custodial death statute by withholding funding from counties not complying with the law could be accomplished by executive action through the governor's office, or by the Legislature amending the law to explicitly condition certain grants upon reporting compliance. Texas needs new incentives that encourage law enforcement to report in-custody deaths and deter agencies from concealing them.
One wonders whether these weren't reported because there were problems at the shoots agencies didn't want to reveal, or if the culture of noncompliance and disrespect for the statute has simply reached the point where law enforcement knows their colleagues will never hold them accountable and so just do what they please.

from: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2016/10/quarter-of-texas-police-shooting-deaths.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=79553&utm_campaign=0





I was watching Gay USA yesterday morning on FSTV. and they spoke out against the sex offender registry and it was very encouraging to me. Gay USA is proof that sex offenders that should not be on the registry (in my opinion at least 90%) have many common ground persecutions on being denied our human rights and especially our constitutional rights.

Go here: 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EInHoMEugGE&index=1&list=PL9EBA7858C2905DC2

 Then go to the 37:27 marker; That means 37 minute, 27 second of the video.

That is why  fight for civil rights, LGBTIQ rights and sex offender rights because we are all in the same boat of persecution, cruel and unusual punishment, hatred and on and on.


From: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/LGBTIQ:
LGBTIQ
Also found in: Dictionary, Medical, Wikipedia.
Related to LGBTIQ: queer, LGBTQIA, LGBTQQ
Acronym Definition
LGBTIQ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning

Here are some great links to Gay USA:

http://gayusatv.org/

http://gayusatv.org/watchlisten/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9EBA7858C2905DC2



Updated October 14 2016

Private, for-profit prisons are morally wrong, cost more, and less effective when it comes to recidivism. We must put an end to the private prison industry that is giving enormous amounts of money to convince politicians otherwise and create meaningful change when it comes to reforming our criminal justice system.

Please join Senate candidate and progressive hero Kamala Harris in fighting back to end private prisons. Add your name: End Private Prisons >>

Go here to sign: http://go.kamalaharris.org/page/s/acq-leftaction-privateprisons-oct16

Private prisons are morally wrong — and they're a rotten deal for American taxpayers. We should not incentivize large corporations to profit off the incarceration of millions of people in this country.

That’s why I was encouraged to see the Department of Justice's decision to phase out the use of private prisons over the next five years after concluding that they “...are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.”

This is an important step forward. But it’s also not enough.

We can’t rest until we have ended the use of private prisons that profit from mass incarceration and deportation nationwide, which is why I’m asking:

Can you sign your name to our petition in support of stopping private prisons run by corporations from profiting off of mass incarceration and deportation?

A study from 2015 found that inmates assigned to private prisons were more likely to remain in prison longer and that they were more likely to end up back in prison. These facts are in direct opposition to claims made by the prison industry.
So why waste taxpayer dollars on a system that is both morally wrong and clearly not working? The answer is simple: money.
The private prison industry spends obscene amounts of money on campaign contributions and lobbying to convince politicians that it’s in the best interest of our communities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on private prison contracts. In reality, these prison contracts only benefit the corporations that run them.

The only way we’re going to implement meaningful, “smart on crime” criminal justice reform that actually addresses mass incarceration is by coming together to challenge these corporations directly, just as I’ve done by taking on other powerful special interests in California.

That’s why I’m hoping you’ll join me today in taking action:

Add your name to mine if you believe we must end the use of private prisons in the United States.

As a career prosecutor, I’ve seen firsthand the devastating effects of mass incarceration, and the last thing we should be doing is profiting from it. We have a responsibility to the taxpayers, and an even greater one to our sense of justice, to end the practice of using private prisons.

Go here to sign: http://go.kamalaharris.org/page/s/acq-leftaction-privateprisons-oct16



From: http://www.fontanaheraldnews.com/news/update-lawsuit-is-filed-against-fusd-because-of-sex-offender/article_e78731e4-90d4-11e6-8c3b-23a7214bf307.html

UPDATE: Lawsuit is filed against FUSD because of sex offender policy

Posted: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 4:37 pm | Updated: 7:11 pm, Wed Oct 12, 2016.

The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring civil rights for those accused and/or convicted of a sex crime, filed a lawsuit against the Fontana Unified School District on Oct. 11 in response to the sex offender policy that was adopted last month.

The FUSD Board of Education approved during the Sept. 14 meeting a policy to prohibit access of registered sex offenders to its 45 campuses as both volunteers and visitors, which is a clear violation of several California laws, according to Attorney Janice Bellucci, who represents ACSOL.

“We believe the policy violates several state laws and we are requesting a writ of mandate from the judge that would require the district to remove this policy,” said Bellucci, who also acts as president of ACSOL.
According to the lawsuit filed with the Superior Court of California in San Bernardino County, the FUSD’s policy violates laws that govern the right of access to school grounds by registered offenders, including but not limited to California Education Code Section 51101, California Penal Code section 626.81 and Article XI, Section 7 of the California Constitution.

“California law prohibits respondents as well as the governing boards of all school districts in the State of California from adopting any policy that is 'in conflict with or inconsistent with, or preempted by, any law,'" sates the lawsuit.

During the meeting, which was attended by a large group of concerned community residents, the School Board initially raised the possibility of adopting a California law that states that a registered sex offender could gain access to school campuses only if the school administrator allows it. If the administrator grants permission, he or she would have to notify parents 14 days before such a visit.

However, the School Board went further and instead approved two motions to not have registered sex offenders -- no matter the nature of their crime -- on campuses, either as volunteers nor as visitors.

“By categorically excluding all registrants from all school grounds for all reasons -- including the parents and guardians of pupils at schools in the Fontana Unified School District -- the Board’s policy violates numerous provisions of state law as more fully set forth herein,” indicated the lawsuit.

School Board President Lorena Corona said in response to the lawsuit that the "safety of our students and employees" is the FUSD's top priority.

"However, if the law mandates that we have to allow access to sex offenders, we would follow the law. We are flexible," said Corona. "But be advised, our kids' safety is first."



I strongly suggest if you have the money to donate to http://all4consolaws.org/ they are thee best. They makes me want to move back to California and help them out. 




Updated October 14 2016

I just saw a article on identifying children as sex offenders. This is imposable. Children have no concept of sex at all! They have no idea what sex is at all. Any similarity to children desiring anything sexual is completely innocent. 
The best example of how ridiculous this idea is, is my favorite reference to how our politics are so very wrong is; South Park:
The South Park episode: Sexual Healing (South Park) is a perfect example of this paranoid delusional idea; that children are sex offenders.

Meanwhile, scientists at the Center for Disease Control determine that sex addiction is a disease reaching epidemic proportions.
They decide to screen schoolchildren for the disease, and Kenny, Kyle, and Butters are diagnosed as sex addicts. Meanwhile, schools are screened for the condition and Kyle, Kenny and Butters are diagnosed with sexual addiction.
They submit their findings to President Barack Obama, who believes that a virus for sex addiction had previously been brought to Earth by extraterrestrials. He accompanies a SWAT team on their raid on Independence Hall in search of the "wizard alien" that is responsible for the sex addiction epidemic. When one member of the team suggests that the mission is irrational and that sex addiction is simply an inherent part of the male ego, he is ordered by Obama to be hauled away.
You can watch a good part of this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfUTC6_6OXM




When you become a registered sex offender your life is completely taken away from you. You are no longer you. It is completely immoral, unjust, inhuman, unconstitutional, and all the non progressive things you can think of. Just remember this; it is not the way of the future and all these overweight middle age closed minded people will be rebuked. Until then if you want to watch a movie that is you; as a registered sex offender it is the movie: Cast Away with Tom Hanks. You are Cast away; for now. Own it you cast away's and come forth until we break the lines of prejudice and hate. It is inevitable and as sure as Tom getting rescued. Just like the LGBT community and minority's; every time one stands up; thousands are saved.



Updated October 18 2016 From my email list I have been on for about 5 years now;
from: http://www.towleroad.com/2016/10/sex-offenders/

Class Action Suit Filed Against Mississippi Over Sodomy Convictions Requiring Sex Offender Status

October 13, 2016 

A lawsuit filed recently on behalf of five Mississippi residents challenges a state statute requiring people convicted of having anal sex to register as sex offenders.

The five plaintiffs say they were convicted under various sodomy prohibitions, including the “unnatural intercourse” law, and Louisiana’s “crime against nature by solicitation” law. All five plaintiffs have been convicted of a “crime against nature committed with mankind.” They argue that the law is discriminatory and unenforceable in light of the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas invalidating all state laws against gay sex as unconstitutional.

One of the plaintiffs – all of whom are remaining anonymous – says that when he was released from prison in 2008 after serving a 30-month sentence, his probation officer advised him that a 1979 conviction for unnatural-intercourse triggered the sex offender registration requirement.

The 29-page complaint states:

“Despite this clear proclamation made more than a decade ago, Mississippi continues to enforce its criminal statute prohibiting sodomy, title unnatural intercourse, by requiring people convicted of unnatural intercourse to register as sex offenders and follow myriad, onerous prescriptions on their everyday life.”

According to CourthouseNews.com, the plaintiffs are asking that the law is deemed unconstitutional and that their names are removed from the sex offender registry.






Updated October 18 2016

Sex offenders say they were held after being ordered set free

OCTOBER 17, 2016 from: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/17/sex-offenders-suing-state-doc-alleging-they-were-unlawfully-detained-after-being-ordered-set-free/EQgptBW8fWndhPc4ShIKkM/story.html

Lawyers for a group of sex offenders filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Correction Monday, alleging that prison officials unlawfully detained their clients after they were ordered to be released from custody.

The civil complaint was filed in US District Court in Boston on behalf of dozens of convicted sexual offenders, according to court records and a statement from the plaintiffs’ law firm, Hedges & Tumposky.

The suit involves the state’s civil commitment process, when offenders deemed “sexually dangerous” are held indefinitely at the Massachusetts Treatment Center, a Bridgewater facility run by the DOC, after they complete their prison terms.

Under state law, treatment center detainees can seek release on an annual basis and are entitled to trials in Superior Court, where a judge or jury decides whether they pose a continued risk to the public, according to the lawsuit.




Milwaukee police officer who fatally shot Sylville Smith arrested, charged with sexual assault

From: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/milwaukee-killed-sylville-smith-accused-sex-assault-article-1.2838201

Milwaukee cop killed Sylville Smith in August — then raped a drunk victim two days later, authorities say

A Milwaukee police officer who shot and killed a man in August — setting off protests in the city — allegedly sexually assaulted incapacitated victims, tried to pay for sex and snapped nude photos of unsuspecting acquaintances, according to authorities.

Dominique Heaggan-Brown, 24, a two-year department veteran who once performed as an amateur rapper, shot and killed Sylville Smith as he fled from a traffic stop on Aug. 13.

Authorities said Heaggan-Brown shot 23-year-old Smith after he refused orders to drop his gun, though the encounter sparked police brutality protests in the city that turned violent.

An unidentified man who said that he watched TV coverage of the protests with Heaggan-Brown at a bar the night after the shooting claims that the officer raped him, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office.

        



Go here to sign this pitition: from: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/dapl_assault?sp_ref=239172027.4.176086.o.1.2&referring_akid=.4914083.OCsd1u&source=clickcopy_sp

This story has made me very angry since I first read about it before it was ever even on the news. Someone had sent me a email from this blog through Google Plus with a photo of a Police owned German Shepard with a mouth full of human blood; after attacking the protesters. It left a image in my head I could not forget. I tried to find it latter but lost the link so I never posted about it.  

I just found the image on Google images:

web page https://www.popularresistance.org/nodapl-water-protectors-report-violent-encounter/


The First Amendment is under attack along the Dakota Access pipeline route in North Dakota. In recent weeks, police and private security forces outfitted in riot gear and armed with assault weapons have used dogs and pepper spray on peaceful Native Americans and their allies protesting at pipeline construction sites.

Now, overzealous law enforcement officials in North Dakota have jailed journalists and celebrities that were performing their constitutionally-protected right to free speech and the press by documenting police attacks on protesters.

These actions are a serious affront to the constitution and to sovereign tribal rights and are an egregious abuse of power by the police and the government in order to protect the fossil fuel industry. North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple and the U.S. Department of Justice must protect protesters’ right to assemble and the right of journalists to do their jobs.

Tell North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple and the U.S. Department of Justice: Stop police abuse and protect the constitution, not the fossil fuel industry.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and members of over 200 other tribes from across the Americas are leading the resistance to protect sovereign land and drinking water from destruction by the fossil fuel industry. It is the largest gathering of indigenous people in over a century.1 However, in an attempt to quell these historic nonviolent protests, Gov. Dalrymple ordered a state of emergency that has militarized the police force, set up a highway roadblock and mobilized the National Guard to intimidate protesters. The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota has called a “State of Emergency for Civil Rights.”2

In September, Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, and her crew filmed as armed security forces deployed pepper spray on nonviolent protesters and unleashed dogs that bit tribe members. Her reporting went viral, with over 14 million people on Facebook and millions more through the mainstream media viewing her reporting.

In response, a North Dakota state prosecutor issued charges and a warrant for Goodman’s arrest for participating in a “riot,” which is in direct violation of her constitutionally protected right to work as a reporter. The charges – which were dismissed by a judge recently in the wake of widespread condemnation – have been called “a transparent attempt to intimidate reporters from covering protests of significant public interest” by the Committee to Protect Journalists.3

Tell North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple and the U.S. Department of Justice: Stop police abuse and protect the Constitution, not the fossil fuel industry.

In addition to Goodman’s arrest, authorities in North Dakota are actively targeting journalists and others with a wide audience to prevent them from reporting on the protests. Acclaimed actress Shailene Woodley, who filmed the Dakota Access protests for 40,000 viewers on Facebook Live, was singled out by police for her celebrity and arrested on the scene.4 Police also arrested climate documentary filmmaker Deia Schlosberg, held her for 48 hours without access to her lawyer and charged her with three counts of conspiracy that could land her in prison for 45 years – all for simply filming the protests.5

Based on the reports, it appears that government officials are attempting to intimidate indigenous people resisting the pipeline and silence the press from spreading the word. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest is quoted as saying that, in response to the protests, the federal government is looking into “what potential steps could be taken to ensure the safety and security of our energy infrastructure.”6

The injustices perpetrated by the government and the fossil fuel industry against journalists, Native peoples, and their allies are an unacceptable assault on the First Amendment. We must stand with them now and ensure their constitutional rights to assemble and report are fully protected.

Tell North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple and the DoJ: Stop police abuse and protect the Constitution, not the fossil fuel industry.

Thanks for all you do.

References

“Life in the Native American oil protest camps,” BBC, Sept. 2, 2016.
Jennifer Cook, “North Dakota’s Governor Declared a State of Emergency to Deal With Peaceful Oil Pipeline Protesters. We Call It a State of Emergency for Civil Rights.,” American Civil Liberties Union, Sept. 13, 2016.
“MEDIA ADVISORY: Journalist Amy Goodman to Turn Herself in to North Dakota Authorities,” Democracy Now!, Oct. 13. 2016.
“Actress Shailene Woodley arrested during pipeline protest,” BBC, Oct. 11. 2016.
Josh Fox, “ The Arrest of Journalists and Filmmakers Covering the Dakota Pipeline Is a Threat to Democracy—and the Planet,” The Nation, Oct. 14, 2016.
Catherine Ngai and Nia Williams, “Canada-U.S. oil pipelines resume operations after activists halt flow,” Reuters, Oct. 12, 2016.


Subject: protect Native Americans and the 1st Amendment (sign this)

I just took action urging the state and federal government to end the police abuse against nonviolent Native American protesters along the Dakota Access pipeline and stop jailing journalists who film it. We must urge the government to stand up against this assault on the First Amendment.





Sex Offenders are not the only one denied there first amendment constitutional rights; like the above story.

 Is any of this the sex offenders fault? No way!

 I want to share my email I sent to my family this morning:

 We should never ever blame ourselves for what other people do! You can never blame yourself for what other people do; that is not reality. Every person on the earth is totally responsible for what they do and that is true and right.




This is worth sharing on these voting days; thanks to our veterans like my wife and most of the men in my family blood line and my wife's:

Top Scams Targeting Veterans


In the “how low can you go” category, scammers often target veterans – either in direct scams offering bogus services, or in charity scams that closely mimic the names of legitimate organizations helping veterans and military families. Warn your loved ones of these top tricks:

Bogus sales – A scammer claiming to be a deploying service member posts a large ticket item on a classified ad website that he needs to sell right away and at a steep discount. The scammer asks for upfront payment with a wire transfer or gift cards.

Real estate rip-off – A scammer posts a fake rental property on a classified ad website offering military discounts. You just need to wire transfer a security deposit to the landlord.
VA phishing – A caller claiming to be from the Department of Veterans Affairs calls to "update" your information.

Fake charities – Fake charities use names that are close to the names of legitimate charities, often referencing Armed Forces, veterans, or military families.

Benefits buyout scam – Scammers will target veterans in need of money by offering cash in exchange for their future disability or pension payments. These buyouts are typically a fraction of the value of the benefit.

Dubious investment advice – An “adviser” will tell the veteran she is missing out on benefits, and wants to review her investment portfolio. He’ll then want to put the veteran’s investments in a trust, to appear to have fewer assets and to therefore be eligible for an additional pension.
Here’s how to avoid falling for scams like these:

Be suspicious anytime you are asked to pay by wire transfer or gift cards.

Know that the VA will never call, text or e-mail you to update your information.

Check out the charity on www.give.org or www.charitynavigator.org before giving any money. Make donations directly to the veterans’ organizations you know.

Only work with VA-accredited representatives when dealing with VA benefits; you can search for them online at the VA Office of General Counsel website. 


Edmonton judge rules national sex offender registry is unconstitutional
An Edmonton judge has ruled that the national sex offender registry is unconstitutional as it is “over broad and grossly disproportionate” and violates people of their charter rights.
In a recently released decision involving the case of an Edmonton man convicted of two sexual assaults, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Andrea Moen found the Sex Offender Information Registration Act removed judicial discretion to refuse to place offenders who present no risk of reoffending on the registry.
“In my view, the mandatory registration for all sex offenders upon conviction of two or more offences, without regard to the seriousness of the offences or the offender’s propensity to reoffend is over broad,” said Moen, noting the goal of the legislation is to help police investigate past crimes and prevent new ones.
“In my view, including offenders on the registry who have little to no chance of reoffending bears no relation to protecting the public. Subjecting all offenders, regardless of their future risk, to onerous reporting requirements, random compliance checks by the police and internal stigma, goes further than what is necessary to accomplish the goal of protecting the public, and is therefore over broad,” said Moen.
The judge’s decision, which would not be binding on courts across the country, but could be persuasive, is not final yet. She has given the Crown, which opposed the sex offender’s application, until Nov. 30 to return to court with further charter arguments or a possible legal remedy in the case.
On June 26, 2015, Eugen Ndhlovu, 25, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and was sentenced to six months in jail followed by three-years probation. He would also have been placed on the national sex offender registry for life; however, he challenged the constitutionality of the mandatory lifetime registration.
Court heard that on March 12, 2011, Ndhlovu was invited by a woman, who can’t be identified under a court-ordered publication ban, to attend a party billed on Facebook as a highly sexualized Jersey Shore event that was to have a stripper pole available.
Ndhlovu, who was born and raised in Zimbabwe, had declined because he was working the next day, but the woman insisted on his attendance, arranged a ride for him, and told him he could stay overnight and get a ride to work the next morning.
The pair and a mutual friend, who also can’t be identified, began drinking at the home that evening and, as the night progressed, the two women each reported instances where Ndhlovu sexually touched them without their consent.
Court heard Ndhlovu touched each woman’s buttocks while the three were posing for a picture. He also placed his hands on the friend’s thighs and buttocks during a conversation in the kitchen.
In the early morning, the first woman woke up to find Ndhlovu’s fingers inside her and told him to stop. He tried again, telling her it would “feel good.” She pushed him away and he left the home.
Ndhlovu later told police he did not remember the whole night, but pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting both women.
At sentencing, Moen ruled Ndhlovu posed a “very low” risk to reoffend as he had taken responsibility for his actions, showed great remorse and had no prior criminal record.
When Ndhlovu returned to court to argue that a lifetime Sex Offender Information Registration Act order was “coercive” and “grossly disproportionate,” Moen agreed and ruled it would deprive him of his liberty for the rest of his life.
“The law as it stands will now place Mr. Ndhlovu on police radar for the rest of his life any time a sexual offence is committed by a black man of average height in his neighborhood,” said Moen, adding that requiring him to be on the registry “bears no connection to the object of assisting police officers in the investigation or prevention of future sex crimes.”





OMAHA, Neb.  Do all the people on Nebraska’s Sex Offender Registry really need to be there? Do you think we should know the whereabouts of every sex offender in the state? Some people don’t think so. 

Groundbreaking research at UNO found that most sex offenders do not reoffend. Research showed that putting every sex offender on a public website can lead to harassment and may contribute to conditions that make reoffending more likely.

Jeromy Wilson is a convicted sex offender; his picture was placed on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry for exposing himself when he was 17.

“It wasn’t something to harm nobody, it was me being young and dumb,” Wilson told WOWT 6 News. 

Five years ago Wilson says he was an adult dating website. The then 25-year-old thought he was hooking up with a 19-year-old female, but later found out she was a minor. 

“The last thing you really do when you go out on dates, you know, you talk to somebody ‘hey can you send me a copy of your id.’ You know that was where my mistake was,” Wilson said. 

For that mistake Wilson was charged with first degree sexual assault of a child. He plead no contest to third degree sexual assault and went to prison for a year.
“I wasn’t denying the fact that I made a mistake, but I was also trying to savor the fact that she had falsified her information to me,” Wilson explained, “And I’m still trying to maintain some of my dignity.”

Now Wilson has a lifetime spot in the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry. He says people are using the registry to harass him, to call his clients to prevent him from working. 

Wilson says it not fair that he continue to pay for the mistakes he made.

Because I’m trying to make my life better and prove not only to everyone else but to myself and my family that I’m better than this,” he said. “But you keep getting kicked while you’re down.”

For 15 years, UNO’S Dr. Lisa Sample has been researching why most sex offenders do reoffend and why Nebraska puts every sex offender on a registry. 

“Not all sex offenders are created equal -- not all need to be on that registry,” said Dr. Sample. “Just because you’re on the registry did not make you a predatory pedophile. There are the Romeo and Juliet out there where somebody was 19 somebody was 16 - not old enough to consent, indecent exposure cases, flashing cases.” 

But when most of us think about sex offenders we think of the worst: Roy Ellis did reoffend, kidnapping, assaulting and then killing 12 year old Amber Harris. Amber’s mom says the registry is necessary.

“I’m sorry for anybody who thinks they’ve been victimized or harassed, but it’s there for a reason because there’s people who go out there and reoffend,” said Harris. 

Dr. Sample agrees it is necessary, but she says not all sex offenders should be on the list. She would like to see the registry return to a risk based system.

“Where we administered a risk assessment instrument to people upon conviction and we categorize them as low, medium or high risk and we alerted the public to only those people who presented a high risk of reoffending,” said Dr. Sample. 

Wilson would also like to see that happen. Now 30 years old, his fiancé expecting a child and he says he’s changed his life but he wonders how long he will have to drag his past around.

“I should be able to live my life without having to deal with public ridicule,” Wilson said. “Not to mention, later on down the road when my child grows up, I’m going to have to explain ‘hey why is daddy on the registry.’”

Information on the sex offender registry should not be used to retaliate against the people of the list, their families or their employees; vandalism, verbal or written threats of harm are illegal.




Lawsuit challenges Tennessee sex offender registry
4:49 p.m. CST November 9, 2016
Retroactive enforcement of Tennessee's sex offender registry law is being challenged in a federal court lawsuit that mimics a separate, successful appeal that led to the nullification of retroactive laws in Michigan.
The case, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, argues that Tennessee's registration laws are illegally applied retroactively. It notes that the laws and restrictions on those offenders have become significantly more burdensome since the laws were first enacted in 1994.
The first registry law deemed the register of sex offenders confidential and only accessible by law enforcement. The General Assembly tweaked the law multiple times, and made registrants public, and then overhauled it a decade later. Legislators added restrictions including in-person reporting and limits on where offenders could live and work.
Offenders cannot live or work within 1,000 feet of parks or educational institutions and state laws say those who committed crimes against minors cannot live with minors.
And the lawsuit says that in nearly every year since the 2004 overhaul, restrictions on sex offenders have increased and are now unreasonably applied to offenders like a man the lawsuit names as John Doe.
"The State of Tennessee has burdened him, retroactively, with an increasingly onerous and punitive registration law whose vague and arbitrary provisions and crushing criminal penalties enable and encourage law enforcement to treat him like a pariah and disrupt his and his family members’ lives at any moment, without warning or reason," the lawsuit reads.
In early 1994, before the state's first sex offender registry law, Doe pleaded no contest to two counts of attempted aggravated sexual battery involving his daughter, the lawsuit states. He completed a five-year probation term in 1999 and has not been convicted of a crime since, the lawsuit states. The man went to work as a pilot and then in property management.
But the lawsuit alleges Metro Nashville Police and U.S. Marshals showed up at Doe's house, harassing him though he was compliant. It says in 2011, police and Nashville prosecutors threatened to arrest and prosecute the man because he lived in a duplex next door to his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
Doe was kicked out of his house, the lawsuit says, while fighting in a Nashville court for the right to live in the duplex and have his own children come visit. Nashville Criminal Court Judge Seth Norman ruled in 2013 that the law's ban on residing with a minor did not include the duplex living arrangement nor overnight visits, court records show.
The lawsuit challenges the retroactive application of the registry laws, including those restrictions on contact with minors, work and residency. It argues those restrictions violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and a constitutional provision known as the ex post facto clause, which says laws cannot retroactively enact punishment on previously legal conduct.
It asks a federal judge to stop the state from enforcing those provisions against Doe and remove him from the registry, noting that he pleaded no contest before the registry even existed, Doe's lawyer, Ed Yarbrough, told The Tennessean on Wednesday.
A ruling in Doe's favor could have wide-sweeping impact on hundreds of other offenders, who would be able to use it to challenge their own terms of supervision and restrictions. The case was initially assigned to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville.
The challenge in Michigan, decided earlier this year, could foreshadow a favorable ruling from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appeals district that includes Michigan and Tennessee. The lawsuit lists 10 cases in courts around the country that have recently declared retroactive enforcement of sex offender registries unconstitutional.
In the August appeals court ruling, the federal judges struck down a retroactive provision of Michigan's sex offender registry law, finding that it violated the ex post facto clause.
The Tennessee challenge names Gov. Bill Haslam and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn as defendants. TBI maintains the sex offender registry in Tennessee, but local law enforcement agencies handle registration and monitoring. TBI officials said they had not yet received the lawsuit and could not comment. A spokesman for the Tennessee Attorney General said the office just received the complaint and would not comment.
Though the number of people on the registry fluctuates, on Wednesday there were about 15,800 registered sex offenders in Tennessee, TBI officials said.




Update November 12 2016

Congratulations to the new President elect Donald Trump.

President Obama continually upset the very people that helped him get elected. The TPP controversy for example was beginning to become a huge protest movement. Then there was the sex offender identification on passports. Things like this caused the democratic party to take a dive taking the presidency with it. 

I am American through and through and my family. I accept that the voters have rose up and spoken loudly in epic moment for the common, working, proud, America. I love politics and do what I can to help our country through politics. To see people rise up the way they did and change the stasis quo in our political system with the vote: really impressed me. I am still in awe of it all like I saw a great rock concert or football game.

Let the record show of all my online posts since the last presidential race; I never fought for any candidate in politics. Politics are very complex and I prefer to stay out of it as much as I can. I love my country and have faith in the outcome of all political victory's in our country.




Associated Press - Tuesday, November 15, 2016
LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A U.S. Supreme Court justice on Tuesday denied Michigan’s request to halt a lower court decision that found the state unconstitutionally put new restrictions on registered sex offenders long after their convictions.
Justice Elena Kagan’s decision means law enforcement can no longer retroactively enforce 2006 and 2011 changes to the country’s fourth-largest sex offender list while the state pursues an underlying appeal in the high court, said Miriam Aukerman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August said Michigan’s revisions, which included restricting sex offenders’ movements near schools and listing many on the registry for life, retroactively penalized offenders as “moral lepers” and there is “scant” evidence that the law accomplishes goals such as reducing recidivism. Kagan rejected Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s emergency appeal to block the ruling. His office still plans to ask the high court to review the appellate court’s decision.

In a filing last week, Schuette warned that the 6th Circuit’s ruling would take effect early this week unless a stay was granted. He said the state should be able to appeal “without being forced to make costly, time-consuming, and complex changes to its sex-offender registry and enforcement protocols that may prove unnecessary should this Court decide to grant review.”
A Schuette spokeswoman said the office was reviewing the decision. The Michigan State Police, which maintains the list, issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies on Oct. 14 notifying them of the earlier appellate opinion.
“We have instructed law enforcement officers to consult with their prosecutor’s office prior to taking any enforcement action related to the 2006 and 2011 amendments to Michigan’s” Sex Offenders Registration Act, agency spokeswoman Shanon Banner said.

The registry has 42,900 registrants, including more than 39,000 whose names and photos are shown on a searchable public website. About 10,700 are incarcerated.
“Police should not be enforcing parts of the law that the court said are unconstitutional,” Aukerman said. “Our registry is broken, and Michigan families deserve public safety measures that actually work - not a failed, ineffectual system that stigmatizes people who are not a threat.”
The state began prohibiting registrants from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of school property in 2006. Five years later, lawmakers required that offenders be divided into three tiers based on the seriousness of their crimes, rather than on individualized assessments. Many offenders must be listed on the registry for life under the changes.
The lawsuit was brought by the ACLU and the University of Michigan Clinical Law Program on behalf of six people who are on the registry for life, including some who were older teenagers who had sex with underage teens. It is unclear how many thousands of offenders will be affected by the case.
Critics argue that the registry, initially created in 1994, lists so many people that it does not identify the truly dangerous offenders.




Updated November 22 2016:


The Supreme Court’s Crucial Mistake About Sex Crime Statistics

A COMMONLY-CITED STATISTIC ABOUT SEX OFFENDER RE-OFFENSE RATES IS WRONG.
Jul 28, 2015

Ira Ellman PROFESSOR AT SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR COLLEGE OF LAW, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
Proponents of criminal justice reform never talk about sex offenders. They’re political untouchables subject to lifelong restrictions that continue long past their confinement, restrictions justified as necessary to protect the public from their propensity to re-offend. Two Supreme Court decisions established that justification. But they rely on a scientific study that doesn’t exist. 


"Frightening and High"

McKune v. Lile, 536 U.S. 24, 33 (2002) rejected, 5-4, Robert Lile’s claim that Kansas violated his 5th Amendment rights by punishing him for refusing to complete a form detailing prior sexual activities that might constitute an uncharged  criminal offense for which he could then be prosecuted. The form was required for participants in a prison therapy program; refusing to join the program meant permanent transfer to a higher security unit where he would live among the most dangerous inmates and lose significant privileges, including the right to earn the minimum wage for his prison work and send his earnings to his family. Justice Kennedy explained the treatment program helped identify the traits that caused “such a frightening and high risk of recidivism” among sex offenders—a rate he said “has been estimated to be as high as 80%.”   The following year in Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003) the Court upheld Alaska’s application, to those convicted before its enactment, of a law identifying all sex offenders on a public registry. It reasoned that the ex post facto clause was not violated because registration is not punishment, but merely a civil measure justified because the “risk of recidivism posed by sex offenders” is “frightening and high”, 536 U. S. at 34.
The idea that sex offenders repeat their crimes at high rates has fed legislation imposing increasingly harsh post-release burdens on them, nearly all triggered by being on a sex offender registry. Registrants may face residency restrictions sometimes severe enough to exclude them from entire cities and prevent them from living with their families, “presence restrictions” barring them from using public libraries or parks with their families, formal exclusion from many jobs, and informal exclusion from many more. The registration requirement typically extends for decades, and in some states, such as California, for life, with no path off the registry for most registrants. Courts have usually turned back challenges to registration and the consequences that flow from it; a Lexis search finds that in 91 cases the court’s opinion quotes Justice Kennedy’s dramatic statement that the sex offender recidivism rate is “frightening and high”. But is it? Do those convicted of sex offenses really re-offend 80% of the time, or anything close to that?


A "Statistic" With No Support

McKune provides just one citation for its much-quoted statement: a 1988 Justice Department “Practitioner’s Manual”. That reference likely came from the amicus brief supporting Kansas filed by the Solicitor General, then Ted Olson, which also cites it. This Practitioner’s Guide itself provides but one source for the claim, but it’s no scientific study. It’s a 1986 article fromPsychology Today, a mass market magazine aimed at a lay audience, which had this sentence: “Most untreated sex offenders released from prison go on to commit more offenses–indeed, as many as 80% do.” Freeman-Longo, R., & Wall, R, Changing a lifetime of sexual crime, Psychology Today (1986). That sentence is a bare assertion with no supporting reference. Nor did its author have the scientific credentials needed to qualify at trial as an expert on recidivism.  He was a counselor, not a scholar, and the article containing the sentence isn’t about recidivism statistics. It’s about a counseling program for sex offenders he then ran in an Oregon prison. His unsupported assertion about the recidivism rate for untreated sex offenders was offered to contrast with his equally unsupported assertion about the lower recidivism rate for those who complete his program. 
So what is the re-offense rate for those convicted of a sex offense?  One cannot calculate it without first defining “re-offense,” without specifying the time period to employ, and without considering whether the categories of people these laws label “sex offender” all present the same risk level. Consider first what counts as a re-offense. If the purpose of the sex offender registry is to aid the police in investigating sex offenses, or warn the public about persons thought likely to commit them, then we want to know the rate at which those convicted of a sex offense commit another one. That’s different than the rate at which they commit any offense that returns them to prison. When the California Corrections Department recently examined cases of sex offender registrants returned to prison for a new offense, they found that in 88% of the cases, the new offense was a parole violation.  Parole violations are generally acts that aren’t crimes for anyone not on parole—things like going to a bar or visiting a friend who’s also an ex-felon. Only 1.8% of those re-incarcerated had committed a new sex offense. 
The time period also matters. The most cautious measure would ask whether an offender evercommits another sex offense, but there’s the disadvantage that a sample limited to deceased offenders would necessarily exclude most released in the past ten or twenty years. There are studies that track people for long periods, however, and a recent meta-analysis by leading scholar Karl Hanson combined the data from 21 studies which followed nearly 8,000 offenders for an average of 8.2 years, and as long as 31. Sixteen of the 21 studies tracked offenders in other western countries (most often, Canada), allowing us to measure the re-offense rate we get without the distinctly harsh American system of long sentences and post-release restrictions. The studies examined different populations of offenders; some might be expected to present a higher risk of re-offense than others. Hanson used a well-established risk measure, the Static 99-R, to sort the offenders into three risk categories. Nearly 20% of thehigh-risk offenders committed a new sex offense within five years of release, and an additional 12% did so during the next 10 years. But the 68% who hadn’t committed a new sex offense fifteen years after release rarely did later. Indeed, none of the high-risk offenders who were offense-free after 16 years committed a sex offense thereafter. 
This point is important because most people are typically put on registries for decades, and often for life; being offense-free for fifteen years or more won’t get them removed even though that history tells us they’re very unlikely to commit a new offense. Indeed, it’s mistaken to think of anyone offense-free for fifteen years as high-risk. At the time of their release we cannot tell which high-risk offenders will be among the two-thirds who won’t re-offend, but that is revealed over time. Those who haven’t re-offended after fifteen years are not high-risk for doing so.
And what about those who were not classified high-risk in the first place? About 97.5% % of the low-risk offenders were offense-free after five years; about 95% were still offense-free after 15 years. Some context can help here. About 3% of felons with no known history of sex offenses commit one within 4.5 years of their release. Of course, they’re not on the sex offender registry after release even though the chance of their committing a sex offense is the same or higher than the chance of a new sex offense by a either a low-risk offender, or a high-risk sex offender who has been offense free for fifteen years. What about the chance of a sex offender committing some other serious crime? Released sex offenders are actually less likely to commit a new felony of any kind, after release, than are other released felons.
Sex offender registries include a lot of people who are low-risk from the outset: a teenager who had consensual sex with another teenager, people who possessed erotic images of anyone under 18 but never even attempted to commit any contact offense, and even, depending on the state, someone convicted of public urination. A Justice Department study found that more than a quarter of all sex offenders were minors at the time of their offense. People may assume the registry’s purpose is to warn people about those who committed violent, coercive, or exploitative contact sex offenses, but they’re in fact filled up with people who never did any of those things.
Or, people who once did but are very unlikely to do so again because it’s been so long since they committed any crime. The Smith respondents who challenged the Alaska registry were classified as “aggravated” sex offenders, required under Alaska law to register four times a year for life, because they had been pled nolo contendere in 1984 to sexual contact with minors. Doe v. Otte, 259 F.3d 979 (9th Cir. 2001).  They were released in 1990. One had completed a two-year post-release treatment program. The other had remarried and been granted custody of his daughter after psychiatric evaluations found he had "a very low risk of re-offending" and was "not a pedophile". Neither had re-offended in the twelve years since release, a fact that alone predicts a re-offense rate below 5%. Alaska posts the address and place of employment of all registrants “for public viewing in print or electronic form, so that it can be used by “any person” and “for any purpose.” Alaska Admin. Code tit. 13, § 09.050(a) (2000) as described inDoe v. Otte, 259 F.3d 979 (9th Cir. 2001).


Why The Re-offense Statistic Matters to Courts

There’s a constitutional problem with rules that justify substantial burdens on large groups of low-risk offenders by mistakenly classifying them high-risk. In In the Interest of J.B., 107 A.3d 1 (Pa. 2014), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down state rules required by federal law that placed juveniles over 14 on the state registry for 25 years if they committed a rape or “aggravated indecent assault”. The rules’ rationale was the legislative finding that such offenders “pose ahigh risk of committing additional sexual offenses” but the court objected that this finding just wasn’t true of juveniles, and therefore unconstitutionally burdened their ability “to obtain housing, schooling, and employment, which in turn hinders their ability to rehabilitate.” The California Supreme Court used different labels but a similar logic when it held this year, in In re Taylor, 60 Cal. 4th 1019, that it was unconstitutionally irrational to automatically subject every sex offender parolee in San Diego County to residency restrictions that impeded their rehabilitation and left many of them with no place to live.  Once again, the problem with the statute was its application to every sex offender, without regard to their individual circumstances including an individualized assessment of each offender’s risk of re-offense. 
The logic of these decisions offers hope for a wider judicial rationalization of the rules on sex offender registries, but to realize that hope, one must apply the principle adopted by both the Pennsylvania and California supreme courts to a correct understanding of the facts. The principle is that public safety policies that restrict and burden individuals cannot be based on sweeping generalizations about the risk posed by anyone who commits an act that puts him on a sex offender registry, given the fact that the risk varies across individual registrants in ways we can easily assess, and also declines over time for any individual who remains offense-free. The burdens of registration must be targeted on those who are in fact high-risk. But while these recent decisions offer hope, the Pennsylvania opinion also illustrates the difficulty of getting courts to understand the facts well enough to apply them properly. It rejected the law’s application to juveniles because of their low re-offense rate of (“between 2-7%”), but it failed to understand that the re-offense rate for many if not most adults on the registry is within the same 2-7% range, especially if one includes adults who have been on the registry fifteen years without a new offense. 
Writing on a different subject entirely, Eula Biss recently observed:
Risk perception may not be about quantifiable risk so much as it is about immeasurable fear. Our fears are informed by history and economics, by social power and stigma, by myth and nightmares. And as with other strongly held beliefs, our fears are dear to us. When we encounter information that contradicts our beliefs, we tend to doubt the information, not ourselves.
The label “sex offender” triggers fear, and disgust as well. Both responses breed beliefs that do not yield easily to facts. That’s why even those politicians now urging criminal justice reforms conspicuously omit mentioning sex offenses when they argue for less punitive policies that would facilitate the offenders’ reintegration into civil society. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has fed the fear. It’s become the “go to” source that courts and politicians rely upon for “facts” about sex offender recidivism rates that aren’t true. Its endorsement has transformed random opinions by self-interested non-experts into definitive studies offered to justify law and policy, while real studies by real scientists go unnoticed. The Court’s casual approach to the facts of sex offender re-offense rates is far more frightening than the rates themselves, and it’s high time for correction. Perhaps there’s now hope it may soon happen. 
This is a condensation of an article that will appear in late 2015 in Constitutional Commentary. A more complete version with fuller documentation is available now at SSRN.

Ellman, Ira Mark and Ellman, Tara, 'Frightening and High': The Supreme Court’s Crucial Mistake About Sex Crime Statistics (September 16, 2015). Forthcoming, Constitutional Commentary, during Fall, 2015. 




Updated November 23 2016

I made this graphic because it is so very sad; this holiday season. I hope this will teach law enforcement everywhere to not hurt our citizens.






November 23, 2016 at 11:45am UTC

I have read about this story many times and am very, very happy these young ladies are out of prison. In Texas there is a high probability you may die in the prison system; so at least they are still alive, too. I hope they dedicate their lives to helping others under the same human rights violations. The absolutely horrifying way these young ladies have had to suffer; for something they never did is unconscionable. When will Texas ever learn not to do things like this to people? 

The sad thing is it probably took the movie to bring this to the attention of the public enough to embarrass Texas enough; to finally do the right thing. I always say to the registered sex offender; silence = death. That is the reason so many suffer because no one say's I will not "Go Gentle Into That Good Night" 

*


Finally Free! Four Wrongfully Convicted Latina Lesbians Cleared on All Charges by Texas Court

After two decades since they were accused of a crime they didn’t commit and languished in prison for more than a decade, four Latina lesbians from San Antonio are finally free. This morning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez were cleared on all charges and legally exonerated after being convicted of sexually assaulting two little girls in 1997.

“Those defendants have won the right to proclaim to the citizens of Texas that they did not commit a crime. That they are innocent. That they deserve to be exonerated. These women have carried that burden. They are innocent. And they are exonerated. This Court grants them the relief they seek,” wrote Judge David Newell in the court’s opinion.

Seven of the nine judges heard the case and they all agreed the women should get a new trial and five of them said they are innocent — a declaration that rarely happens in today’s criminal justice system and may lead to compensation for time spent in prison in the future. 
The women were accused of sexually assaulting Ramirez’s two young nieces in 1994. Since then, the San Antonio Four have denied the accusations and proclaimed their innocence — they turned down plea bargains and even had to face solitary confinement while in prison because they refused to take part in the sex offender program. The women were tried and convicted in 1997 and were sent to prison in 2000.

In 2012, one of the girls recanted her testimony. In addition to her recantation, the forensics used against the women is now debunked science and is no longer used to indicate sexual abuse in young girls. Vasquez was released on parole in 2012 and the others were released on bond in 2013 but they all were still labeled sex offenders and had a record.

Their exoneration has been a years-long process and has happened with the help of many people and organizations who believed in the women including the Innocence Project. On Friday, I published an interview with Austin-based filmmaker Deborah Esquenazi to talk about her documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, which follows their story and had a huge role in helping the women become exonerated.

I’m so elated to hear that these women are finally cleared and can continue to live their lives to the fullest with their families. The San Antonio Four’s exoneration serves as a ray of hope in these dark times and reminds us to continue to fight like hell for justice.

You can catch Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four on Investigation Discovery on Sunday, Nov. 27 at 9 a.m. EST. 

*:

Do not go gentle into that good night :  the most famous work of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914–1953). It has been suggested that it was written for Thomas' dying father, although he did not die until just before Christmas 1952 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go_gentle_into_that_good_night

What's the meaning of the poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night?
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953
Do not go gentle into that good night
23 Answers
Ryan Kelley
Ryan Kelley, Agile Software Consultant
Written 8 Jul 2015
The essence of this poem is struggling to survive; pressing on to live as long as you can in the face of death, even if it means suffering.

As many have written here, it appears that Thomas is writing this prototypical villanelle ode to his sickly, dying father. Thomas reveals this to the reader in the very last stanza when he writes:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray...

However, Thomas himself lived a life wrought with pain and struggle. He suffered from neuroticism and mental illness from an early age. He also barely made ends meat as a writer. He and his family were regularly on the cusp of poverty, and he would write letters to fellow writers like T.S. Elliot, soliciting money.

When he wrote this poem in 1947, he was struggling with severe alcoholism and was in the midst of an unhappy marriage. His talent and celebrity were at their peak, but he wasn't rewarded financially. He was toiling as a frequent guest reader on BBC Radio. While the amount of airtime helped him gain a healthy following in London, his managers never gave him a staff job, citing his alcoholism as the reason.

To summarize, the theme of this poem applies to Thomas and his father. Both were struggling to survive. 

Do not go gentle into that good night

Don't succumb to the peaceful release of death.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Struggle against death, referred to here as "the dying of the light."

Dylan connects all men together--wise men, good men, wild men--by writing that they all will face death. When they do, he urges them to fight--"rage"--for more life, rather than gracefully slipping into darkness. No matter what these men have done with their life, good or bad, they shouldn't give up the struggle for more. 

This poem was featured prominently in the sci-fi movie Interstellar, written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan. Appropriately, the movie is about mankind's struggle to overcome imminent extinction.



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