News of the day
TODAY: Passport Mark for Sex Offenders Law Challenged in Court
A judge in Northern California is set to hear arguments over whether to block a new federal law that requires sex offenders to have “unique identifiers” in their passports. read the full story
Still Pushing for Residency Restrictions
ST. PAUL, MN (MNN) – Local communities could restrict where high-risk sex offenders can live after they’re released from prison, under a controversial bill moving forward in the Minnesota House. continue
State violated Fifth Amendment rights of sex offender
Steven Powell, father-in-law of missing mom Susan Cox Powell, has taken on the state of Washington – and won. read the full story
I want to comment on that last story. The violation of 5th amendment rights pretrial for accused sex offenders happen all of the time. I myself was put into a pretrial therapy group where we we’re expected to speak. We we’re told that our level of disclosure would factor into the presentencing report which could influence how severe our sentences would be. I asked my lawyer if this was a violation of my 5th amendment rights before trial. He said it was but there was nothing he could do about it. It had been court ordered. Besides, did we really want to appeal this while working on a plea agreement and antagonize the very people whose help we were seeking? Also, anyone who is evaluated by an expert for purposes of a plea agreement, whether they know it or not, is having their 5th amendment rights violated before trial. But this has become so commonplace that it’s almost taken for granted.
Has anyone else experience this? Please comment.
Correct and I believe a lot of times the pre-trial and pre-sentencing teams are likely private or non -profit organizations who conduct the interviews without much constraint or limits. These very same procedures are done without a lawyer present during the infancy stages of arraignments and omnibus hearings. Often the words used are transcribed on to court documents and not spoken in the exact same form that the defendant wrote out or given with a verbal response. My own words were twisted and not typed the very same way as I have written on college-ruled paper while in county jail.
In my experience, and here in CT for all offenders of every type, pre-sentence investigations are done by a Probation Officer, Usually the Chief probation officer, And no matter what you tell them, they twist it into a bunch of nonsense and end their report with a message to the judge that the defendant should get “a significant amount of prison time followed by a significant amount of probation”.
That’s how they word their closing statements, And guess who the judges side with… Yup! Because probation officers can do no wrong. Ever.
How often do we hear news about something that went in our favor? Almost never, but we sure get plenty of news regarding new restrictions they have already passed or are planning to pass. The evidence is very clear that our legal actions are doing squat. The only people who can change this are us. We have to unite. That should be our agenda. How to unite all SORs in the nation should be our question.
I would like to apologize to RSOL as I believe a comment of mine was a bit too strong. I know Brenda Jones and all the rest of RSOL’s staff are working hard to help us all in this time of trouble that we, as sex offenders, face.
As far as these laws and ordinances go. God is still the final and supreme authority. God is no respecter of persons. Sin is Sin and a transgression of the law of God and I would say all of us have broken that law.
Believe it or not the sex offender registry stigmatizes and does more, yet lawmakers are still grinding their pen’s to persecute those caught up in all this.
I think Brenda and a lot of others would agree with me on that statement. I’m a sex offender and after I get off probation will still have a lifetime to go whether I sin now or latter on in the future or tell a lie or maybe even chop down a cherry tree.
I’m sure everyone on here can see the point that this stigmatizes those even after they spend their time in prison or on probation.
Keep up the good work as this is one form of discrimination that is more or less a cunning tactic than anything actually protecting in a lot of these situations.