you will be glad to hear this
By Will Doran. . . Sex offenders have rights, too, and in some cases the state has been violating those rights, the NC Supreme Court ruled on Friday. The ruling concerns people who have been ordered to submit to satellite-based monitoring for the rest of their lives, which forces them to wear a tracking device so law enforcement can track…
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By Morgan G. Stalter . . . Alaska’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the state’s sex offender registry violated the due process rights of those convicted of sex crimes in other states, deeming it “too broad and arbitrary when it includes offenders who are not dangerous.” The court ruled 3-2 in favor of a man, referred to as John…
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By Maynard Law Office; reprinted with permission . . . Recently, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report entitled, “Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from State Prison: A 9-Year Follow Up (2005-2014).” “Notwithstanding the sensationalist headline (“three times as likely”), the statistics reported are actually quite favorable. First, it’s important to note that this BOJ report is not based on samples…
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By Marilyn Odendahl . . . Finding the disclosures provide information that any law enforcement agent “would love to have,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Indiana’s requirement that sex offender inmates give detailed accounts of their past actions violates the Constitution’s protections against self-incrimination. Donald Lacy, a sex offender inmate in the Indiana Department of Correction, filed a…
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By Max Green . . . A federal judge in Chicago has found the Illinois Department of Corrections is violating the constitutional rights of prisoners convicted of certain sex crimes by making the restrictions on where they can live so stringent that inmates are often locked up long beyond their sentences. In a ruling issued Sunday, Judge Virginia Kendall wrote…
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By John R. Ellement . . . Convicted sex offenders retain a constitutional right to privacy, and those rights are being violated by a state law mandating that everyone convicted of some sex crimes wear a GPS monitoring bracelet as part of their sentence, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday. In a 7-0 ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court decided that…
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By Anthony Branciforte . . . Voters decided Tuesday at a town meeting to repeal an 11-year-old ordinance banning people on the sex-offender registry from many public places in town. The 50-13 vote came after more than an hour of discussion about the “child safety zone” ordinance, which is being challenged in a lawsuit by an anonymous resident and One Standard…
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By Larry . . . We are excited to report that registrants in Pennsylvania now will have a new vehicle to challenge sex offender registration. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Court handed down a precedential decision on February 27th that has the potential to be significant going forward. See Piasecki v. Court of Common Pleas,…
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By Anna Beahm . . . A federal district judge has ruled parts of Alabama’s sex offender registration and notification laws are unconstitutional under the First Amendment, court records show. The order issued on Monday referenced a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2015 that claims Alabama’s sex offender laws, known as the Alabama Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act…
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By Jeannie Roberts . . . A bill that would prohibit sex offenders from participating in certain Halloween-related activities had a setback Thursday in the House Judiciary Committee. Senate Bill 10 — sponsored by Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, and Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers — was knocked down by the committee after a lengthy discussion, but the vote was expunged,…
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