Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Links of Interest: May 2014

Should young sex offenders be identified that way for life?
The challenge to the current registratrion requirements has brought more attention to the issue of juvenlie sex offenders — some of them are as young ...
 
Saturday letters: Sex offenders, moving crude
The main goal of this agency is to keep track of sex offenders released into the community. ... Bakken Crude was being transported, with the latest being "Government issues emergency order on crude oil trains" (Page B7, Thursday).
 

Jamaica Observer
Registry for sex offenders getting closer, Bunting says
The registry, which was established in relation to the Sexual Offences Act of 2009, has also been delayed due to a number of issues, including the ...
 
Recent attack on child shows issues with sex offender registries
Recent attack on child shows issues with sex offender registries ... FOX23 reported on Sunday that police arrested convicted sex offender Kyle ...
 
Fletcher: Need to change sex offender registry requirements
There is no need for 15- to 22-year-olds to register as sex offenders, and be scarred for life ... That becomes their problem and deserve what they get.
 
 
 
 

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Stand Up and Be Heard – The Progressive RSO

May 19, 2014 in True Confessions

The question is, as a RSO are you willing to be in the public eye and fight for reformation of these Laws that are in effect subjecting us to a life of living hell? Are you mad as hell and can’t take it anymore?

http://floridaactioncommittee.org/stand-up-and-be-heard-the-progressive-rso/


Megan's Law & Sex Offender Registry

What is Megan's Law? Thanks to Megan's Law, passed by Congress in 1996 as an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children's...

http://family-law.lawyers.com/child-abuse-and-neglect/megans-law-and-sex-offender-registry.html

Teen faces life in prison over hash brownies

A Texas teenager is facing five years to life in prison for allegedly baking and selling pot brownies.

 http://news.yahoo.com/life-in-prison-pot-hash-brownies-texas-150807587.html

Legal Changes for Registered Sex Offenders

  • Georgia passed a new law that lessens restrictions on registered sex offenders
  • Hundreds of people are being dropped from Ohio’s list of registered sex offenders because the state’s new sex offender law was ruled unconstitutional
  • The US State Department didn’t know it could deny passports to convicted sex offenders
 http://criminal.lawyers.com/sexual-crimes/legal-changes-for-registered-sex-offenders.html

RSOL National: QUICK! We need YOUR HELP to lobby legislators!


Your financial support is urgently needed to help us attend two upcoming events. We would like to have booths at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, which runs from July 29 through August 2, and at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Legislative Summit in Minneapolis from August 12 through August 15. These two events will provide us with a fantastic opportunity to promote our cause and share our message with lawmakers and attorneys from all over the nation, so it's extremely important for RSOL to be represented at both events!
RSOL is prepared to send our most experienced representatives. However, their attendance will require significant personal and financial sacrifices since they will have to take time off from work in order to attend both conferences. Leading our delegation will be Larry Neely (Admin Team, Chair of our Scarlet Legal Action Project, and Board member of RSOL-NM). Larry is the ideal person to lead RSOL’s delegation. With his extensive background in legislative advocacy and firm understanding of our particular area of interest, Larry knows how to present our core message of constitutional and civil rights to busy politicians and attorneys.
We must raise no less than $5000.00 to ensure our representatives' attendance at these critical conferences. Time is short, so your immediate consideration is requested. You can rest assured that we will do everything we can to keep costs down. However, the expenses for two representatives, which will include at least four nights at a hotel, four days of meals, and airfare will cost $1,200.00 for each event. An additional cost of $800 would allow one of our representatives full access to all the sessions at both events. Finally, renting the space and providing necessary materials for the exhibition area is expected to cost more than $2000.00 for both conferences.
We believe you want to see RSOL’s message delivered to the lawmakers and attorneys who will attend these important events. So, please give as generously and as quickly as you can. For your convenience, you can donate online. Please select “Presence at NCSL/NACDL” so that we can be sure to credit your gift appropriately. Or, if you prefer, you may send your checks today to RSOL, P.O. Box 36123, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87176. Write “NCSL/NACDL” on the subject line. 
Thank you for helping us help you.

The RSOL Admin Team
 http://nationalrsol.wildapricot.org/Default.aspx?pageId=1836633

Friday, May 16, 2014

Another registrant has been murdered in Florida, just hours after registering.

May 16, 2014 in Featured Articles, Press 

Norman Bill Williams, 59, was killed by Bobby J. Bullock, Jr., 46, this past Saturday, just hours after registering as a Sexual Predator in Franklin County.

The Apalachicola & Carrabelle Times reports that the registrant, “…attracted widespread media attention in Sept. 2011, when he fled the woods outside Eastpoint after being released there from a stint in state prison. Because he was a sexual predator who had been shunned by his family, Williams had no place else he could legally stay, so probation officials placed a tracker on Williams’ leg and told him to remain in the woods. He shed the device, and fled.” (source)

The Florida Action Committee does not condone the crime that led to Williams’ registration requirement or his fleeing (which led to an additional two years imprisonment for failure to register). However, FAC condemns the action of the probation department in sending him to go live in the woods and naturally we condemn his murder.
One must wonder whether Williams would have had a possibility of returning to a functional life if he had a stable place to live and any chance of finding employment. Also, whether he would still be alive today.

The Florida Action Committee also condemns the comments posted beneath the article applauding this individual’s murder. Ashley Sikes of Panama City writes, “Bullock should have a national holiday named after him. Bullock Day!!”  Sabrina Brooks of Fort Pierce  writes, “Bobby Bullock Jr. you are my hero!” What kind of a society do we live in that applauds the murder of anyone?

Florida Action Committee (FAC), founded in 2006, is a state-wide consortium of concerned citizens and professionals whose purpose is to promote the prevention of sexual abuse while preserving the safety and dignity of all citizens through carefully structured laws targeting the truly violent, forced, and/or dangerous predatory acts of sex. FAC believes that many aspects of the current approach to sex offenders seriously undermine justice and actually increase the threat of sexual assault against others, particularly children. FAC opposes a publicized registry of sex offenders and seeks to bring an end to the humiliation of people who have already paid for their crimes. FAC asserts that only by supporting justice for all people—offenders and victims alike can a truly safe society be built and secured for all Americans.

One to See Change Blog List

"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
* * * *
“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.


But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?


All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution


Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
* * * *
What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
* * * *
“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”