Criminal Law
Sex Crimes 
Covers criminals law regulating and punishing sexual violence.
Post Frequency: 2.4/day Last Entry: November 19, 2009 at 23:55:34 Recent Entries: 642
By Corey Rayburnyung
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Group Seeks To Ban MA Sex Offenders From Homeless Shelters
Posted on November 19, 2009The Boston Globe has an interesting article discussing a new push to ban sex offenders from homeless shelters. From the article: As the state?s steep budget cuts have forced organizations that help the homeless to cut beds, staff, and programs,...
Female High School Teacher Gets 12 Years For Sex With 17 Year Old Aide
Posted on November 19, 2009A female high school teacher in Tennessee was recently convicted of having sex with a 17 year old male teacher's aide and received a 12 year sentence. Volokh and Above the Law have more. From the Tennessean: District Attorney Ray...
NJ Parole Board Finds Sex Offender Polygraph Testing Effective
Posted on November 19, 2009The New Jersey Star-Ledger is reporting that the state parole board has released an internal study claiming that the use of polygraphs on paroled sex offenders has been effective in detecting and preventing parole violations. According to the article, almost...
Almost a Sex Crime: Lawyers and Clients
Posted on November 17, 2009Above the Law has a post about whether attorneys should be allowed to have sex with their clients. The post mentions that California and Texas are considering banning sex with clients in most situations. The proposed language is very similar...
Is Carrie Prejean A Sex Offender?
Posted on November 14, 2009Carrie Prejean has generated a lot of news lately. Recently, the Former Miss California sued Miss California producer K2 Productions for religious discrimination allegedly for firing her after she made public comments opposing same-sex marriage. It is now rumored that...
"Putting a Stop to Congressional Overreach"
Posted on November 14, 2009Reason Magazine has an interesting article supporting the Respondent in the upcoming United States v. Comstock case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The article also mentions the Cato Institute's amicus brief, which we previously blogged about and which is available...
MI Court: Man Doesn't Belong on Sex Offender List for Youthful Romance
Posted on November 11, 2009The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that a man convicted for a so-called "Romeo and Juliet" relationship does not belong on the state's sex offender list. You may read the decision here. From the Associated Press: Robert Dipiazza had a...
KY AG Asks SCOTUS To Stay Residency Decision
Posted on November 10, 2009After the Kentucky Supreme Court denied a stay in a challenge to the retroactive application of the state's residency restrictions, the state Attorney General has filed a motion in the U.S. Supreme Court to stay an earlier decision. You may...
"As it Turns Out, There Are Limits on Congress?s Power"
Posted on November 09, 2009Ilya Shapiro (of the Cato Institute) has an interesting post discussing the upcoming Supreme Court argument in United States v. Comstock. The Cato Institute has also filed a brief in support of the Respondent Comstock. You may read the brief...
KY High Court Denies Stay In Residency Restrictions Challenge
Posted on November 07, 2009In October, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that a state law prohibiting sex offenders from living near schools, playgrounds, and day care centers could not be applied retroactively, to those convicted before the enactment of the law. On Monday, the...
11th Circuit Upholds SORNA (Again)
Posted on November 06, 2009The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals today released an opinion in a case involving various challenges to SORNA, including under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses. The constitutional issues were previously decided by the Eleventh Circuit in United States...
FL Policy Analyst: Residency Restrictions are Ineffective
Posted on November 06, 2009A legislative policy analyst today told Florida legislators that sex offender residency restrictions do not work. The analyst cited studies from Minnesota, Colorado and Florida, which found no connection between where sex offenders lived and where they committed new crimes...
CA Supreme Court Hears Challenge To Residency Restrictions
Posted on November 04, 2009The California Supreme Court heard a challenge to the state's sex offender residency restriction law. The plaintiffs in the case are four sex offenders who were found living within 2,000 feet of place where children gather (such as a park,...
SCOTUS Schedules Oral Argument In Comstock For Jan. 2010
Posted on November 04, 2009Thanks to SCOTUSblog, we see that the Supreme Court has scheduled the oral argument in a list of cases beginning in January 2010, including United State v. Comstock (resource page available here), which is scheduled for oral argument on January...
TVs For Sex Offender Program Now Going to MN Guard
Posted on October 30, 2009Earlier, we told you about Minnesota's Moose Lake Sex Offenders Program, which lost 24 of its new 50-inch plasma TVs. Now, WKBT.com reports that some of those TVs will go to the Minnesota Guard. From the article: Eight of the...
Halloween Sex Offender Roundup
Posted on October 30, 2009Here is a (spooky?) collection of Halloween sex offender news stories from around the web: From Sentencing Law & Policy, we learn that certain Alabama sex offenders are required to attend an educational meeting on Halloween night which will feature...
Student Post - The Need for More Civil Confinement of Sexual Predators in Illinois
Posted on October 29, 2009Civil commitment of sexual predators in Illinois is a process by which an independent company, Affiliated Psychologists, evaluates inmates prior to release to determine the likelihood of recidivism of sexual predators. They evaluate approximately 2000 inmates a year...
Student Post - Cook County Sherriff Tom Dart Accuses Craigslist of Promoting Prostitution
Posted on October 28, 2009Craigslist is such a useful website. I have used it in the past to look for apartments, secure my first job before law school as a pre-school teacher, and find hard to get tickets to Cubs games. However, IL has...
Separation of Church and Sex Offender?
Posted on October 27, 2009Doug Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy has an interesting post discussing the religious rights of sex offenders. Berman also directs us to a post by Cornell Law Prof. Dorf who discusses the issue in a bit more depth. From...
Halloween Sex Offender Crackdown '10
Posted on October 27, 2009The approach of Halloween brings with it lots of interesting sex offender issues, which we have frequently blogged about. Recently, the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole has notified sex offenders on supervised release that they cannot participate in Halloween...
New Resource Pages
Posted on October 27, 2009You might notice off to the left that Sex Crimes now includes resource pages for two significant Supreme Court cases related to the AWA. As with the Kennedy v. Louisiana Resource Page, I hope to keep both the Thomas Carr...
Op-Ed: Residency Restrictions Don't Help
Posted on October 23, 2009Newsday has an interesting new editorial explaining the obvious: sex offender residency restrictions don't make kids safer. From the editorial: Conventional wisdom is a powerful force that often leads the well-intentioned astray. For example, there's the widespread belief that we...
MN Gov Says No To 50 Inch Plasmas at Sex Offender Center
Posted on October 23, 2009Officials at Minnesota's Moose Lake Sex Offenders Program have lost 24 new 50-inch plasma TVs after Gov. Pawlenty called their purchase "boneheaded." From the Star Tribune: State officials said the televisions, which were mounted in common areas, made it easier...
DOJ To Spend More Than $7M on Walsh Act Implementation
Posted on October 22, 2009The Department of Justice has announced more than $7.3 million in grants for state and local governments to implement, train, maintain, and enhance their sex offender programs. From the press release: These grants, administered by OJP's Office of Sex Offender...
Day Care Centers can do more than Care for Kids
Posted on October 21, 2009Central Florida has come up with an innovative new way of getting rid of a group of sex offenders who have congregated together in a mobile home park: set up a daycare center nearby and push them out. From WKMG...
The New Typepad
Posted on October 15, 2009Since I started this blog nearly three years ago, Typepad has undergone two major revisions of its interface for bloggers. With each one, I have noticed no increase in functionality applicable to my blogging. However, new bugs have been introducted...
Student Post - Brian Dugan, Convicted Murderer Seeks to Taint Jury Pool
Posted on October 15, 2009Brian Dugan had been sentenced to life in inprison for the 1984 rape and murder of twenty seven year old Donna Schnorr and the 1985 rape and murder of seven year old Melissa Ackerman. Prior to these two horrific incidents,...
New 'Sexting' Scholarship
Posted on October 15, 2009John A. Humbach (of Pace University School of Law) has posted a new article on SSRN entitled: 'Sexting,' the First Amendment and Prosecuting Teens. From the abstract: 'Sexting' and other teen autopornography are becoming a widespread phenomenon, with perhaps 20%...
More Op-Eds Discussing Sex Offenders and Religion
Posted on October 15, 2009Both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Time.com are running editorials asking whether sex offenders can be banned from churches, a topic we previously discussed. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: James Nichols, 31, is a convicted sex offender who can?t understand...
Sixth Circuit Split Over Retroactive SORNA Application
Posted on October 14, 2009Today a divided Sixth Circuit panel reversed a sex offender's conviction for failing to register under SORNA. Prof. Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy and Prof. Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy have more. You may read the opinion here. From...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #29
Posted on October 14, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
Polanski Loses First Bid For Release
Posted on October 09, 2009Roman Polanski lost his first bid for release from a Swiss jail while he awaits a formal request for extradition by U.S. authorities. The Wall Street Journal has more. From the WSJ Law Blog: Polanski on Tuesday lost his first...
KY Supreme Court Strikes Down Retroactive Application of Residency Restrictions
Posted on October 09, 2009The Kentucky Supreme Court in Kentucky v. Baker, (opinion available here) has found the retroactive application of the sex offender residency restriction to be unconstitutional. From the Lexington Herald-Leader: A state law limiting where registered sex offenders may live cannot...
SCOTUS Stays out of Catholic Sex Abuse Disclosure Case (for now)
Posted on October 08, 2009On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport to delay the court-ordered release of thousands of legal documents from priest sex-abuse lawsuits. The New York Times has more. From the WSJ.com Law...
"Banned from churches, sex offenders go to court"
Posted on October 08, 2009The Associated Press has an interesting article discussing the growing trend of banning sex offenders from churches. It was not long ago that the State of Georgia enacted a law prohibiting sex offenders from volunteering at church. Today, one North...
SCOTUS Grants Cert. In Carr v. United States
Posted on October 01, 2009This week, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Carr v. United States (previously blogged about here and here), which raises several constitutional challenges to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). You may view the full order list...
47 IQ, 100 Years in Prison
Posted on September 30, 2009A teen with a 47 IQ was sentenced to 100 years in prison after pleading guilty in a sex abuse case involving his six-year old neighbor. From MSNBC Aaron Hart, 18, of Paris, was arrested and charged after a neighbor...
Kansas Court Assuages Justice Scalia's Fears in his Lawrence Parade of Horribles
Posted on September 30, 2009In 2003, Justice Scalia wrote a dissent in Lawrence v. Texas where he predicted that the decision would be used to strike down state laws against (amongst other things) bestiality. Recently, a helpful reader directed us to a new Kansas...
NYT: Why Arrest Roman Polanski Now?
Posted on September 30, 2009With the recent arrest of fugitive film director Roman Polanski, the New York Times has an article asking: why now? Polanski, who resides in France, was arrested in Switzerland where he owns a home and frequently visited. From the article:...
Call for Papers: Sexual Violence In Conflict Zones
Posted on September 29, 2009Thanks to Feminist Law Professors, we see this call for original papers. The topic is: ?International Efforts to Address Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Zones." From the post: President Obama has vowed to put women?s issues at the core....
DOJ: Two Jurisdictions in Compliance With Adam Walsh Act
Posted on September 25, 2009The Department of Justice issued a press release today announcing the first two jurisdictions to implement the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), part of the Adam Walsh Act. The two jurisdictions? Ohio and the Confederated Tribes of the...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #28
Posted on September 25, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
Is SORNA Going to the Supreme Court?
Posted on September 24, 2009SCOTUSblog's recent Petitions to Watch post, which lists cases that might be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, includes a case raising constitutional issues with SORNA. The case, which we previously blogged about, is from the Seventh Circuit with an...
Free As A Bird (With Priors)
Posted on September 23, 2009Former Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle was recently acquitted of failing to register as a sex offender and lying on his driver?s license application. Pyle pled guilty in 1993 to attempted capital sexual battery and lewd assault on two young...
VA Supreme Court Lets School Boards Ban Sex Offender From School Property
Posted on September 22, 2009The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that school districts have final say in whether sex offenders are allowed on public school property. You may read the decision here. From the Charlottesville Daily Progress: The opinion, which was written by Justice...
Newspaper Article Examines Juvenile Sex Offender Registration in Texas
Posted on September 22, 2009The Houston Chronicle is running an interesting article discussing Texas' problem with juvenile sex offenders. Children as young as ten years old can be registered as sex offenders, a label which can last a decade. From the article: Samantha Portwood...
Ohio Sex Battery Not A 'Crime of Violence'?
Posted on September 22, 2009Professor Jonathan Adler over at the Volokh Conspiracy has a post discussing the Sixth Circuit's decision in United States v. Wynn, where a divided panel found that a defendant's guilty plea to ?sexual battery? under Ohio law was a not...
Suit By Miami Sex Offenders Under Bridge Dismissed
Posted on September 21, 2009A Miami circuit court judge has refused to undo the city's strict local ordinances, which have forced a group of sex offenders to live under a bridge. The ACLU of Florida, which argued against the ordinances, has an interesting page...
Seven Indicted For Child Porn Found At Sex Offender Treatment Center
Posted on September 19, 2009Seven residents at a Washington sex offender treatment center have been indicted on child pornography charges after allegedly obtaining the unlawful images at the center. From the Associated Press: In unsealing the indictments Thursday, federal prosecutors said they didn't know...
Blog Update
Posted on September 19, 2009The Sex Crimes Blog was recently featured in a couple of places. First, the blog appeared in a list of the Top 50 Criminal Justice Blogs. Second, John Schwartz, of the New York Times, included Sex Crimes on his short...
Side Effects From The Philip Garrido Case
Posted on September 17, 2009The AP has an interesting new article discussing the impact the Philip Garrido case is having on California's sex offender policy. The Huffington Post has more. From the article: After being locked away for 25 years for sex crimes, Donald...
Report: Fed. Prison Staff Sex Abuse Claims Doubled Since 2001
Posted on September 17, 2009A recent Justice Department report found that prisoner allegations of sex abuse by prison staff has more than doubled in the last seven years. You may read the actual report here. From the Washington Post: Prisoners don't command much respect....
UK Sex Offender Banned From Particular Street
Posted on September 15, 2009A British sex offender has been banned from visiting a particular street. From the BBC: John Horton, 41, has been banned from visiting the street in Chard for five years afer a court granted an injunction. Knightstone Housing Association was...
Wayne Logan on Jaycee Dugard and Sex Offender Laws
Posted on September 11, 2009Wayne Logan has a nice little post at a Washington Post blog, Short Stack, that I didn't even know existed. From the post: Suspect Phillip Garrido was on California's registry, which like other state registries is known to be rife...
9th Circuit Holds that SORNA Prosecution Violates Ex Post Facto Clause (for Juveniles)
Posted on September 11, 2009Thanks to Sentencing Law & Policy, we see that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that SORNA's retroactive registration requirement violates the Ex Post Facto clause when applied to juvenile offenders. You may read the unanimous panel opinion...
Vermont Sex Offender Wins Residency Restriction Battle
Posted on September 10, 2009A Vermont court has ruled that a sex offender could not be barred from living in areas near where children are often found. You may view the ruling here. From the Brattleboro Reformer: A sex offender who fought a city...
New Sex Offender Registration Scholarship
Posted on September 10, 2009Thanks to Sentencing Law & Policy, we see a new article on SSRN by Amanda Agan (of the University of Chicago Department of Economics) entitled Sex Offender Registries: Fear Without Function? From the abstract: I use three separate datasets and...
Seventh Circuit Skeptical of Indiana Law Restricting Adult Businesses
Posted on September 09, 2009The Seventh Circuit, via Chief Judge Easterbrook, has issued an interesting opinion in Annex Books v. City of Indianapolis, a challenge to an Indianapolis ordinance that restricts when "adult entertainment business" may operate. The Appellate Court ruled that the city...
Globalizing Sex Offender Registration
Posted on September 08, 2009Time has an interesting article detailing growing support for an international sex offender registry. A bill, H.R. 1623, was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) earlier this year to do just that. The bill, which you can read about here,...
Opinion Piece Argues Economist Article Misleading
Posted on September 01, 2009Wendy Murphy, an Adjunct Professor at New England Law School, has an opinion piece entitled Sex offender laws flawed but critical. The editorial criticizes the recent Economist article (previously mentioned here), which Professor Murphy describes as a "puff piece about...
Sex Offender Drives Drunk To Register at Police Station
Posted on September 01, 2009Drinking and driving is never a good idea, especially when you show up at a police station to register as a sex offender. From Philadelphia Inquirer: A convicted child sex offender has been charged with drunken driving because he allegedly...
TX Law Bypasses Statute of Limitations For Old Sex Assualt Cases
Posted on August 31, 2009The Wall Street Journal has an article about a new Texas law which allows prosecutors and parole boards to link DNA evidence to suspects in sex assault cases, despite the fact that the statute of limitations has expired and the...
Georgia Sex Offender Challenges Online Registration Requirement
Posted on August 31, 2009Sex offender banishment seems to be catching up with the information age. A Georgia sex offender has brought a constitutional challenge in federal court against a new state law that forces sex offenders to register their passwords, screen names, and....
Girl Held Captive Since 1991, Had Two Kids with Captor
Posted on August 28, 2009CNN has a tragic story of a young girl who was kidnapped and had two children with her alleged kidnapper in a secret backyard shed. The accused man is also a registered sex offender. From CNN: The 18-year mystery of...
Knowledge is Power by Wayne Logan
Posted on August 26, 2009Wayne Logan, who regular readers know has authored many of the most important articles about sex offender laws, has a new book coming out titled "Knowledge is Power: Criminal Registration and Community Notification Laws in America." This is from the....
9th Circuit Rejects Challenge to SORNA
Posted on August 26, 2009In U.S. v. George, the 9th Circuit rejected the constitutional challenges to a SORNA prosecution. You can download the opinion here. The Commerce Clause analysis by the court was particularly disappointing: SORNA was enacted to keep track of sex offenders...
Indiana Supreme Court Declines To Hear Ordinance Challenge
Posted on August 25, 2009The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the Indiana Supreme Court has declined to review an appellate court decision which upheld an ordinance banning registered sex offenders from parks in the suburb of Plainfield. From the Tribune: The court declined to...
Death Penalty for Repeat Sex Offenders?
Posted on August 25, 2009After the Supreme Court held in Kennedy v. Louisiana that "a death sentence for one who raped but did not kill a child, and who did not intend to assist another in killing the child, is unconstitutional," you may have...
Welcome (Back)!
Posted on August 25, 2009To all the JMLS students who began classes today, welcome or welcome back (as the case may be). If you happen to be in my Criminal Law class this semester, feel free to read along. Reading about the cases and...
Economist Article & Podcast About Sex Offender Laws
Posted on August 25, 2009The Economist, which recently ran a great article, America's Unjust Sex Laws, now has an interesting podcast interview with Sarah Geraghty, a human rights lawyer in Georgia. In the podcast, Geraghty argues that America's sex-offender laws punish too many too...
Legal Educator Blog Census
Posted on August 19, 2009My colleague, Colin Miller, at EvidenceProf, undertook the enormous task of compiling a list of all blogs authored by legal educators. His census is divided into two parts that you can find here and here.
Another Free Exercise of Religion Issue for a Sex Offender
Posted on August 19, 2009These days, sex offenders can't even go to church in some areas. Not long ago the State of Georgia enacted a law prohibiting sex offenders from volunteering at church. Now a North Carolina sex offender is fighting for the right...
Sex Offender Registry? There [Was] An App For That
Posted on August 18, 2009As Apple's iPhone gains ubiquity, strange applications are sure to appear. The Washington Post has an article about one of the most popular paid applications entitled Offender Locator (available here), which purports to show where sex offenders live in relation...
Illinois Bans All Sex Offenders from Social Networking Sites
Posted on August 18, 2009Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn singed a new law yesterday which makes it a felony for a registered sex offender to use social networking sites. Like most other broadly worded sex offender restrictions, this new law is sure to raise all...
The Emerging Criminal War on Sex Offenders
Posted on August 17, 2009I have just uploaded a draft of my new article, The Emerging Criminal War on Sex Offenders, to SSRN. You can find the article here. This is the abstract: This article addresses four central questions. First, what is the difference...
One of These Laws is Not Like the Others on SSRN
Posted on July 17, 2009I have uploaded the final print version of my article, One of These Laws is Not Like the Others: Why the Federal Sex Offender and Registration and Notification Act Raises New Constitutional Questions at SSRN. This is the abstract: In...
Judicial Activism by Judges on the Courts of Appeals
Posted on July 17, 2009Although this has nothing to do with sex crimes, I have posted another article of mine Defining and Measuring Judicial Activism: An Empirical Study of Judges on the United States Courts of Appeals on SSRN. This is the abstract: Existing...
AG Holder Extends Adam Walsh Compliance Deadline
Posted on July 17, 2009Attorney General Eric Holder has extended the deadline for States to comply with the Adam Walsh Act to July 2010. States that fail to comply with the federal Walsh Act face the mandatory loss of 10% of its Bryne Justice...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #27
Posted on July 17, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
FL ACLU Sues Miami-Dade County Over Residency Restrictions
Posted on July 16, 2009The Florida ACLU has filed a lawsuit against Miami-Date County over the growing colony of registered sex offenders who are forced to live under a bridge, due to strict residency restrictions. From the Miami Herald: [T]he American Civil Liberties Union...
Prosecutor Declines to Bring "Sexting" Charges
Posted on July 16, 2009A Michigan prosecutor has decided not to charge several high school students who distributed nude cell phone pictures of a 14-year old girl. From Fox News: Prosecutor David Morse told reporters Monday that Pinckney High School and parents handled the...
MO High Court Rules Federal Sex Offender Registration Trumps State
Posted on July 07, 2009Sentencing Law & Policy has an interesting post discussing a new Missouri Supreme Court ruling, which raises some interesting Tenth Amendment issues. You may read the opinion here. From the Kansas City Star: Thousands of Missouri sex offenders will have...
Texas Gov Vetoes Sex Offender Registry Reform Bill
Posted on July 07, 2009Texas Governor (and potential seceder) Rick Perry vetoed a bill which would have given young sex offenders the opportunity to have their names removed from the state sex offender registry. From the El Paso Times: Aaron Jernigan had just started...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #26
Posted on July 07, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
PA Court: Homeless Sex Offenders Not Subject to Megan's Law
Posted on July 07, 2009How Appealing reports that the Superior Court of Pennsylvania has ruled that homeless convicted sex offenders are not subject to Megan's Law registration requirements. You can read the Court's opinion here. From PennLive.com: The state appellate court found that William...
Sex Offender Cited for Two-Way Mirrors
Posted on July 06, 2009A Colorado sex offender was recently cited for installing two two-way mirrors in a town tri-plex. From the Watch: Darin Flora, 38, was cited with a summons for criminal attempt to commit unlawful sexual contact, a class 2 misdemeanor. He...
Vermont Given More Time to Comply With Adam Walsh Act
Posted on June 24, 2009The federal government has provided Vermont, and several other states additional time to comply with provisions of the Adam Walsh Act. The Bennington Banner has more. From WCAX: [The Act] requires Vermont expand its online sex offender registry, even though...
Judge Kent Reports To Prison
Posted on June 24, 2009Judge Samuel Kent entered a federal prison medical facility in Massachusetts beginning a 33-month sentence stemming from years of predatory sexual assaults on two federal courthouse employees. From the Houston Chronicle: Kent, the first federal judge to enter prison since...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #25
Posted on June 23, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
SCOTUS Grants Cert in US v. Comstock
Posted on June 22, 2009Just as Eugene Volokh predicted, this morning the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States v. Comstock. It really isn't a surprise at all given Roberts' unusual order in the case. The case (actually three cases) will test the...
House Impeaches Judge Kent
Posted on June 20, 2009Former federal judge Samuel Kent was impeached in the House by a 389-0 vote. The Senate is expected to convene a trial in the next few weeks. You can view our earlier coverage of Judge Kent here and here. Sentencing...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #24
Posted on June 12, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
House Judiciary Committee Recommends Impeaching Judge Kent
Posted on June 10, 2009ABA Journal reports that a House Judiciary Committee has referred four articles of impeachment against U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent based on allegations of sexual misconduct. Earlier Kent coverage is available here. From the ABA Journal: A House Judiciary Committee...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 68
Posted on June 10, 2009I'm behind on a few events around the Web. To start, you can find the Carnival Against Sexual Violence 68 here and this is the legal section: In Drug rape doesn't happen... oh wait posted at The Feminist Housewife, we...
"Restorative Justice and Child Sex Offences: The Theory and the Practice"
Posted on June 10, 2009Sentencing Law & Policy notes the availability of this interesting new article from the British Journal of Criminology. You can read the article on SSRN here. From the abstract: Restorative justice advocates have made a number of claims about the...
La. Gov. Scraps Civil Commitment Program
Posted on June 09, 2009Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the man who in March proposed chemical castration for sex offenders, has now scrapped a proposed post-prison civil commitment program as too expensive. From the Daily Reveille: Lauren Mendes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health...
Philly Mob Attacks "Person of Interest"
Posted on June 05, 2009A mob in Philadelphia attacked a person of interest in connection with the alleged rape of an 11 year old girl after the police union offered a reward of $10,000 for bringing him in. The beating was captured on surveillance...
North Carolina Man Uses Craigslist To Have Wife Raped
Posted on June 04, 2009People use Craigslist for all sorts of things, but one North Carolina man is accused of arranging the rape of his wife raped through the website. From CNN: Police responded to the home at about 2:45 a.m. after receiving a...
Judge Kent Resigns, Congress Prepares For His Impeachment
Posted on June 04, 2009Disgraced federal judge Samuel Kent has informed President Obama that he will resign in June 2010. Judge Kent, who is set to report to prison on June 15, admitted forcing sex acts upon his former secretary and case manager and...
Michigan Official Caught Having Sex on Public Sidewalk
Posted on June 04, 2009According to police, a Michigan official was caught having sex with a woman (who was not his wife) on a public sidewalk. His defense? he claims he was urinating and not having sex. He has been sentenced to two years...
Alabama Judge Accused of Sexually Abusing, Paddling Inmates
Posted on June 02, 2009As I try to catch up on the stories that occurred during my blogging break, some of the entries might be a little dated (starting with this one). A former Alabama judge has been arrested and accused of "sexually abusing...
Missouri Senate Votes to Apply Registry Law Retroactively
Posted on June 02, 2009The Missouri Senate has voted to apply its sex offender registry law retroactively. From The Columbia Daily Tribune: The [Missouri] Supreme Court has ruled that the registry law does not apply to those people because the law took effect in...
New Study About Online Child Predators
Posted on June 02, 2009A new study from the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center (available here) reports a tremendous increase in online child predator arrests from sting operations, despite an overall decline in sex crimes against minors. From Ars Technica:...
"Ruling lets sex offenders volunteer in churches"
Posted on June 02, 2009A federal judge in Georgia granted an injunction to a state law which would prohibit sex offenders from volunteering at church. You can read the order here. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has more. From the Gainesville Times: A federal judge this...
NV Law Would Restrict Offenders From Living Within 1,000 Feet of Victims
Posted on June 02, 2009Nevada lawmakers are considering a bill that would restrict sex offenders from living within 1,000 of their victims. From San Jose Mercury News: Nevada lawmakers debated a bill Tuesday that would provide additional protections to victims of sex offenders, by...
Iowa Gov. Signs New Sex Offender Residency Restriction
Posted on May 28, 2009Iowa Gov. Chet Culver has signed new legislation prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet from places where children gather. The new restriction is limited to certain sex offenders based of the severity of their crime. From the Chicago...
Arizona Moving Closer Towards AWA Compliance
Posted on May 28, 2009The State of Arizona is moving closer towards Adam Walsh Act compliance. A state senate panel has approved new legislation to ensure that the state doesn't lose federal funds. From the Arizona Capitol Times: A Senate panel has approved legislation...
Is Sotomayor an Activist? Not by my Measure
Posted on May 26, 2009This is a bit off topic, but I figure it will still be of interest because who doesn't care about a Supreme Court nominee? For many months, I have been working on an empirical project that measures judicial activism of...
Sotomayor's Criminal Law Record
Posted on May 26, 2009As I mentioned in my previous post, I have quite a bit of data about Sotomayor's performance in 2008 as related to other appellate judges. I decided to break down some of her numbers as compared to her peers in...
Blog Update
Posted on May 24, 2009After 49 very long days, my baby finally left the neonatal intensive care unit last Thursday and came home. Although I will surely be busy with fatherhood duties in the coming days, I plan to resume blogging this week. I...
Break in Blogging and Comstock
Posted on April 03, 2009I just had my first child and he arrived ahead of schedule. He is doing very well in the neonatal intensive care, but until all of that is taken care of, I won't be blogging. Hopefully, the break won't be...
'Sexting' Roundup
Posted on April 01, 2009As previously noted, a Pennsylvania DA has threatened to bring child porn charges about three teen girls who had provocative pictures of themselves on their cell phones. Their parent's later sued the DA (with the help of the local ACLU)...
AWA in Connecticut
Posted on March 31, 2009As promised, a public defender is covering the AWA compliance bill in Connecticut. From the post: One of the more disturbing provisions being considered by the Lege in adopting the Adam Walsh Act here in Connecticut (and this provisions mirrors...
Student Post- Sooner State in a Bind
Posted on March 31, 2009Oklahoma's age of consent has caused the state to be in a bit of a bind. The Oklahoman reported the problem on March 22, 2009. Twice in one week, officers from two different states searched for two different 16 year...
Massachusetts Bill Would Ban Elder Porn
Posted on March 30, 2009Eugene Volokh has a post discussing a proposed Massachusetts bill who prohibit the creation and distribution of any sexual "visual material" depicting anyone 60 years old or over or someone with a "a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment...
Student Post - Will the European Union's Latest Attempts to Combat Human Trafficking Be Successful?
Posted on March 30, 2009On March 25, the European Commission released a proposal designed to combat human trafficking and the sexual abuse of children. The proposal contained a series of laws that must be approved by member countries before being enacted into legislation. The...
Is There a Criminal War on Sex Offenders?
Posted on March 27, 2009That's the question I posed at Concurring Opinions and will be the subject of my next paper (the draft will be up this summer). Rather than post here also, I'd direct you take a look at my post there. There...
Leahy Asks DOJ For Extension For the States to Comply with SORNA
Posted on March 27, 2009Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is asking Attorney General Eric Holder to provide an extension to the various states currently struggling to comply with the SORNA provisions of the Adam Walsh Act. You can read the letter here. From the Senator's...
Student Post - "Wait Until She's Sober": Pentagon Official on Sex Crimes
Posted on March 27, 2009The military is launching a new crusade against sexual assault. The campaign, which comes after a reported 25% increase in sexual assault in combat zones, advises soldiers to ?ask her when she?s sober.? Last week the director of the Pentagon's...
ACLU Sues DA Who Threatened Teen Girls with Child Porn Charges
Posted on March 27, 2009Fresh off their victory over sex offender registry restrictions in the Pittsburgh-area, the ACLU of Pennsylvania has filed a complaint in federal court against a Wyoming County district attorney who threatened three high school girls with child porn charges arising...
Student Post - Somali Islamic Court Publicly Lashes Four Accused of Gang Rape
Posted on March 27, 2009A picture of a young man getting whipped by soldiers in front of a large crowd in Somalia was released to local and international news sources on March 9th, and brought controversies out in the open. The headline reads: Somali...
More On The Decision Striking Down A Pennsylvania County Residency Restriction
Posted on March 26, 2009As noted yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Gary L. Lancaster of the Western District of Pennsylvania struck down a Pittsburgh-area sex offender residency restriction. The decision, available here is a significant victory for several sex offenders who challenged the Allegheny...
U.S. v. Powers Ends with a Whimper
Posted on March 26, 2009After a strong district court opinion finding that SORNA was an unlawful exercise of federal power under the Commerce Clause, I was optimistic that the 11th Circuit might be the first circuit to reach a similar holding. However, after a...
Castration Makes a Come Back
Posted on March 26, 2009With Gov. Jindal putting sex offender policy front-and-center in Louisiana politics, the issue of castration has reemerged. The Daily Beast has more: Should we ?chemically castrate? sex offenders? Victims? rights groups, Governor Bobby Jindal?and even some sex offenders themselves?say yes...
News of the Weird
Posted on March 26, 2009In case you were wondering what the likely sentence for having sex with a car wash vacuum in Michigan is, the answer is: 90 days in prison. From the Associated Press (via Fox News): A man police caught performing a...
AWA Coverage Coming to A Public Defender
Posted on March 26, 2009Gideon is alarmed about what is happening in Connecticut and promises a lot of AWA coverage in the near future: I only just realized that there?s a bill currently in the legislature implementing the Adam Walsh Act. Folks, this is...
The False Imprisonment of a Minor Problem
Posted on March 25, 2009There have been several news stories recently outlining the problem with state registries in that imprisonment of a minor is an offense justifying listing. That means an offender who robs a store with a minor present or someone who termporarily...
Ohio Ban on Material to Juveniles
Posted on March 25, 2009Eugene Volokh at Volokh Conspiracy and How Appealing had recent posts about a Sixth Circuit decision concerning an Ohio statute which outlaws dissemination of material that is harmful to minors. From Volokh: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth...
Federal Judge Strikes Down Pennsylvania County Residency Restriction
Posted on March 24, 2009A federal judge has struck down a Pittsburgh-area sex offender residency restriction. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: An Allegheny County ordinance limiting where sex offenders can live was politically popular, but a federal judge on Friday ruled it was illegal...
Student Post - On Romania's Consideration of Whether to Decriminalize Consensual Incest
Posted on March 24, 2009All 50 United States and the District of Columbia have made incest, even when consensual, illegal. Yet, in Europe, incest is not always a crime. As a recent article by the Associated Press noted France, Spain, and Portugal do not...
NJ Supreme Court Hears Residency Challenge
Posted on March 24, 2009Today, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard a challenge to residency restrictions enacted by various cities within the state. Those laws have been in a legal limbo ever since an appellate court ruled that such restrictions must be enacted only...
Woman Lives Under Bridge With Other Sex Offenders
Posted on March 24, 2009Sex offenders in Florida do not have many residency options, as noted in this interesting article in the Miami Herald. The article discusses a peculiar colony of 52 male sex offenders that live in under a bridge and a woman...
Alaska and Florida Consider Laws against Bestiality
Posted on March 23, 2009Due to their legal status as property, animals are subject to physical and sometimes sexual abuse. While human-animal sex is almost universally condemned, it is not explicitly illegal in 15 states. Florida and Alaska, reacting to incidents of human-animal sex,...
Student Post - Teacher and Student Relationships
Posted on March 23, 2009It starts out innocently?.a woman meets a man. They go to school together and begin to get closer as they spend more time together. They start to confide in one another, telling each other secrets and personal feelings. As the...
Military Allows Convicted Rapists To Enlist
Posted on March 23, 2009CBS has an excellent article covering the treatment of women in the military. The article notes that the U.S. military is issuing "moral waivers," which allows felons, including convicted rapists to enlist. From CBS: It's a potent environment, with female...
Justice Department's SMART Case Law Update #23
Posted on March 20, 2009As previously noted, the Justice Department's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) occasionally posts updates on case law developments in the sex offender realm. You can view the latest update here...
Student Post - Georgia Sex Offender Law Over-Inclusive
Posted on March 20, 2009When the average person thinks of a sex offender or pedophile they conjure up thoughts of some middle aged man lurking in the shadows, waiting for just the right moment to rape and kill any child in their path. To...
Gender Bias in Statutory Rape Cases
Posted on March 19, 2009A helpful reader pointed me to an interesting article in the Daily Beast about gender bias in statutory rape cases: After a 17-year-old boy had sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend, he was charged with a felony for statutory rape. When...
Horrific Austrian Incest and Rape Case Ends with Life Inprisonment
Posted on March 19, 2009The Austrian father who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered a total of seven children with her was convicted of homicide, rape, incest, and other charges today. He will be sentenced to life in...
Guilt by Marriage?
Posted on March 18, 2009SexOffenderResearch points to this odd story where a sex offender's wife has had her application for a liquor license notated with a reference to her husband's criminal history. From a local news account: An application a Fort Smith woman has...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 67
Posted on March 18, 2009Congratulations to abyss2hope which just celebrated its third anniversary. Meanwhile, the new Carnival Against Sexual Violence is up and this is the legal section: In Proof That Men Who Say Rape Is Only A Women's Issue Are Fools posted at...
Probation Sentence Possible under Kansas' Jessica's Law
Posted on March 18, 2009A Public Defender reports on a case where a defendant could receive probation on remand under Kansas' Jessica's law if their crime was committed before July 1, 2008. Here is the ruling from the Kansas Supreme Court. From the post:...
New Article About Sexually Deviant Behavior
Posted on March 18, 2009A helpful reader sends word of a new article entitled: Inferring Sexually Deviant Behavior From Corresponding Fantasies: The Role of Personality and Pornography Consumption. Here is the abstract: Findings revealed that 95 percent of respondents reported experiencing at least one...
When a Robber is a Sex Offender
Posted on March 17, 2009The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an interesting article discussing Georigia's sex offender law. The article notes that many registered "sex offenders" were convicted of non-sexual crimes, such as robbery. Ohio apparently has similar troubles. From the article: Child molesters, rapists and...
The Dangers of "Sexting"
Posted on March 17, 2009The Orlando Sentinel has an article detailing the story of a teenager who received nude photos of his 16-year old girlfriend while they were dating and subsequently sent them to "more than 70 people, including her parents, grandparents and teachers"....
"Implementing sex offender registration law may prove impossible"
Posted on March 17, 2009The Providence Journal has an article discussing the difficulties states are having implementing provisions of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). From the article: In 2006, Congress enacted legislation to standardize the way states classify and register sex...
Obama Nominates District Judge in Indiana to Seventh Circuit
Posted on March 17, 2009President Obama has nominated federal district judge David F. Hamilton (of the Southern District of Indiana) to the Seventh Circuit. Judge Hamilton received some notoriety last year for striking down an Indiana law requiring sex offenders to consent to a...
Student Post - Athletes, Violence, and Sex
Posted on March 17, 2009The stance among universities and professional sports has always been that the number of incidents of sexual crimes committed by athletes is in line with the percentages of the rest of the population. The only reason why it may seem...
7th Circuit on Prostitution and Money Laundering
Posted on March 16, 2009Michael O'Hear has a detailed and interesting discussion of two 7th Circuit opinions in prostitution cases in his weekly roundup: The next two cases both deal with spas in Rockford, Illinois, that were run as fronts for prostitution. (Yes, if...
The SAFETY Act and Online Privacy
Posted on March 16, 2009A Stitch in Haste raises questions about the proposed SAFETY Act in a post titled, "We Must Be Winning the War on Terror?": This proposed Internet SAFETY Act (which will almost certainly die in committee) is the height of government...
Student Post - Teacher Accused of Sexual Assault of Student
Posted on March 16, 2009A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 13, 2009 for Linda Pithyou, who has been charged with sexual assault. Linda was a teacher at Lawrence Hall Youth Services. She is accused of having sex with one of her male students...
4th Circuit Reverses SORNA Convictions on Statutory Grounds
Posted on March 13, 2009Doug Berman beat me to the punch in noting that the 4th Circuit, in U.S. v. Hatcher, held that SORNA did not apply the defendants at the time they committed the alleged criminal acts. From the decision: Because the Appellants?...
Student Post - Dominican Republic Rape Case has Similar Issues as in the United States
Posted on March 13, 2009There are many issues and difficulties for rape victims in the United States that extend far beyond the trauma from the actual rape incident. Legal scholars continue to write about ways to reform rape law in America. Some of these...
Mass. District Court Finds Civil Commitment Law Unconstitutional
Posted on March 12, 2009A helpful reader let me know that there was a new decision out of the District of Massachusetts finding the federal civil commitment scheme for sex offenders under the Adam Walsh Act was unconstitutional. You can read the opinion here....
AG Holder Talks About AWA
Posted on March 12, 2009Stateline.org continues its great sex offender law coverage by covering the new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's comments about federal sex offender policy. From the article: Sex offender policy also could be revised in the states? favor under President Obama...
Sex Offender Ordered to Pay Victim $19M
Posted on March 12, 2009A sex offender has been ordered to pay more than $19 million to a woman who accused him of sexually abusing her as a child. From the Palm Beach Post: A jury Wednesday ordered a registered sex offender to pay...
"Registry lists need to label offenders accurately"
Posted on March 12, 2009The Newark Advocate is running an interesting op-ed arguing that current sex offender registries are inaccurate and need to be fixed. From the editorial: Convicted criminals don't deserve sympathy often, especially those who held people, including children, hostage...
Ohio Senate Approves Retroactive Residency Restrictions
Posted on March 12, 2009The Ohio House will now consider a bill prohibiting sex offenders from living near schools or places where children congregate. The bill, which today passed in the Senate 30-0, will apply retroactively. From MSNBC: The Ohio Senate has passed a...
Federal Sentencing Reporter Sex Offender Issue is Out
Posted on March 11, 2009As Doug Berman notes, the Federal Sentencing Reporter issue dedicated to sex offender issues is out. You can find the details here. I was honored to be one of the contributors and as I noted I have also made my...
SORNA and the Commerce Clause
Posted on March 11, 2009The final version of my short Federal Sentencing Reporter article, The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act and the Commerce Clause, is up on SSRN. You can find it here (click download to get the full article in PDF form)....
Castration in Europe
Posted on March 11, 2009The New York Times has an article on the debate over castrated sex offenders in some European countries:Whether castration can help rehabilitate violent sex offenders has come under new scrutiny after the Council of Europe?s anti-torture committee last month called...
When is Circuit Agreement Really a Circuit Split?
Posted on March 10, 2009The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA), enacted in 2006, created a new federal crime of "Failure to register." Section 18 U.S.C. 2250 allows for prosecution of sex offenders who do not register as required by the Sex...
Ill. Reps Want Sex Offenders Off Facebook, MySpace
Posted on March 09, 2009Sentencing Law & Policy mentions a newspaper article detailing efforts by Republicans in Illinois to ban sex offenders from social networking sites. From the State Journal-Register:Illinois House Republicans say state government should do more to keep sex offenders away from...
Scary Story about Prostitutes in New Mexico
Posted on March 09, 2009Feminist Law Professors directs us to this interesting article concerning the mysterious disappearance of more than a dozen prostitutes. From the Associated Press:In the desert outside Albuquerque, hikers have sometimes stumbled upon human remains partially buried under the hardy scrub...
Ill. Sex Offender Busted for Not Registering His MySpace Page
Posted on March 09, 2009The State of Illinois requires sex offenders to register with law enforcement various online identifying information, including "all blogs and other Internet sites maintained by the sex offender or to which the sex offender has uploaded any content or posted...
CNN Interview With Darfur Soldier Describes Atrocities
Posted on March 09, 2009CNN has an interesting and disturbing interview with a former Sudanese solider who describes being ordered to rape and kill children. Rape continues to be an ugly weapon of war in Sudan. From CNN:Last year in Darfur aid workers told...
Student Post - Will the Victim Have a Role in the Osborne Case?
Posted on March 09, 2009On Monday, March 3, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District, et al. v. Osborne. The Court is considering two questions on certiorari: 1) whether Osborne may use 1983 as a discovery...
Walsh Wants Walsh Act Funded
Posted on March 06, 2009America's Most Wanted host John Walsh is calling on Congress to fund the Adam Walsh Act, a law named after his murdered 6 year-old son. From the Amarillo Globe-News: John Walsh, host of "America's Most Wanted," told a standing-room-only crowd...
APA Praises Comstock Ruling, Criticizes Civil Commitment
Posted on March 06, 2009We previously blogged about U.S. v. Comstock (opinion here), where the 4th Circuit struck down a provision of the Adam Walsh allowing the indefinite civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" persons. The American Psychiatric Association has now issued its response to...
Nevada Man Convicted of Filming Himself Raping Toddler
Posted on March 06, 2009A Nevada man has been convicted of videotaping himself sexually abusing a toddler. From CNN:After deliberating for more than four hours, a jury convicted a Nevada man of 22 counts Tuesday for videotaping himself sexually assaulting a toddler, CNN affiliates...
11th Circuit Rejects Constitutional Challenges to SORNA
Posted on March 06, 2009In United States v. Ambert , the 11th Circuit reviewed and rejected all of the major constitutional challenges to SORNA prosecutions under 2250(a). I had never heard of this case before, perhaps because the defendant was represented by a private...
Diaper-Flashing Sex Offender Evades Prosecution
Posted on March 06, 2009Prosecutors in Utah are frustrated by the recent actions of a diaper-wearing sex offender, who recently exposed his diaper to some young children. While the man has a history of exposure, prosecutors are having difficulty charging him with an actual....
Scaring Johns Straight
Posted on February 26, 2009Police in Los Angeles are testing an interesting new program designed to reduce the solicitation of prostitutes. The program allows first-timers to avoid a conviction for soliciting prostitutes, if they take are willing to be yelled at and lectured for...
Student Post - Operation Cross Country Hits Chicago
Posted on February 26, 2009Operation Cross Country,an attempt by the federal government to remove child prostitutes from the streets, has met with what some would call moderate success. In the sweep reported on February 23, FBI had "rescued" 48 teenage prostitutes from the streets...
Massachusetts Struggling to Comply with AWA
Posted on February 25, 2009Thanks to a helpful reader, I see that the Boston Herald has an interesting article concerning the lack of adoption of the Adam Walsh Act by Massachusetts and other states. From the article:It?s the most sweeping sex offender tracking law...
Second Circuit on Internet Role Play
Posted on February 25, 2009Court-Martial Trial Practice has a discussion about a Second Circuit case wherein the court reversed a conviction because the trial court did not allow an expert to testify about Internet chat role-playing. You can read the decision here. From the...
Student Post - Holy Sex Offenders
Posted on February 25, 2009A few years in seminary school does not make you a saint - in fact, it could mean the opposite. The Catholic Church holds a reputation of employing many of the most enlightened of holy leaders, but all too often...
Texas Gov. Appoints Anti-Sex Toy Activist to Parole Board
Posted on February 25, 2009Grits for Breakfast has a post noting that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has appointed Shanda Perkins to the state parole board. Ms. Perkins' is probably best known for her efforts to against the sale of sex toys in one Texas...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 65
Posted on February 24, 2009It's up at abyss2hope and this is the legal section:In Algeria CIA Station Chief Accused of Drugging, Raping Women posted at Feministing, we get a discussion of the case where Algeria's top CIA operative has been accused of drugging and...
Will Judge Kent have to Register as a Sex Offender?
Posted on February 24, 2009While people are asking if Judge Kent is getting off easy, I think it is relevant to consider whether he will be subject to the registration requirements of the AWA after he is released from prison. Since Judge Kent took...
Judge Kent Roundup
Posted on February 24, 2009The blawgosphere is abuzz with news of Judge Kent's resignation and plea deal. Here are links to some of the great reporting and commentary around the web: Sentencing Law & Policy (1, 2), ABA Journal (1, 2), The New York...
Milestone at Sex Crimes
Posted on February 23, 2009Yesterday, Sex Crimes had its 200,000th visitor. I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of you readers out there. Thanks!
Republican Legislators Introduce Internet Record-Keeping Bill
Posted on February 23, 2009Republican legislators in the House and Senate have introduced identical bills entitled the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act of 2009 or the SAFETY Act. The bills impose record-keeping requirements upon both Internet Service Providers and...
Student Posts Start this Week
Posted on February 23, 2009As I previously mentioned, students from my Sex Crimes seminar will be posting on the blog during this semester. The first two such posts are due this week. There will be at least two (usually three) posts a week by...
Judge Kent Pleads Guilty, Resigns
Posted on February 23, 2009In an astonishing turn, Judge Kent has pled guilty to obstruction of justice today and retired from the bench, thereby avoiding trial on the other issues. From the Houston Chronicle:U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent pleaded guilty to one count of...
Facebook Removes 5,500 Sex Offenders From Its Site
Posted on February 23, 2009After MySpace removed 90,000 sex offenders from its website, Facebook has followed by removing more than 5,500 sex offenders' profiles. From the Associated Press:Facebook has removed more than 5,500 convicted sex offenders from its social networking Web site since May,...
Judge Kent's Trial Begins Today
Posted on February 23, 2009U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Kent may be used to the courtroom, but not as a defendant. Judge Kent is the first federal judge ever to be charged with a sex crime, specifically fondling two court employees. From the Dallas...
"Rights of Sex Offenders Must Be Observed"
Posted on February 20, 2009Tufts Daily, the student newspaper of Tufts University, is running an editorial concerning the declining rights of sex offenders in this nation. From the editorial:Rights balancing is a tricky business, and sometimes it?s just easier to look the other way...
No Homes for Sex Offenders
Posted on February 19, 2009The New York Times has covered this story a couple of times. Now, the Wall Street Journal has an article of its own that is quite good. From the article:Laws cracking down on sex offenders enjoy broad public support across...
U.S. v. Valverde Roundup
Posted on February 19, 2009Last week, I blogged about U.S. v. Valverde, the Eastern District of California decision that dismissed a SORNA indictment on Commerce Clause grounds. Afterward, the Sacramento Bee published an article about the opinion. Unfortunately, it misstates the legal landscape concerning...
Wisconsin Town Hears Evidence and Decides that Maybe Residency Restrictions Don't Work
Posted on February 19, 2009A Green Bay, Wisconsin city official who questioned a proposed local residency law has apparently been heard by the city leaders in nearby Manitowoc. Manitowoc officials are now looking for other ways to handle sex offender residency. From WBAY:The City...
Another Polanski Update
Posted on February 19, 2009It seems like every few days there is a Roman Polanski article. And they alternate between sounding like defense lawyer press releases and prosecutor press releases. Here is the latest news from CNN:Attorneys for the 75-year-old Academy Award-winning director will...
Nevada Legislative Committee Kills Bill Over Due Process Concerns
Posted on February 19, 2009A Nevada bill affecting the lifetime supervision requirements imposed on sex offenders has been scrapped over due process concerns. From MSNBC:A legislative committee has killed a bill that would have changed lifetime supervision requirements imposed on convicted sex offenders...
Three Flashes And You're Out?
Posted on February 19, 2009Utah's serial flashers may soon find themselves labeled as sex offenders under a new bill passed yesterday by the state's House of Representatives. The bill only affects persons convicted of flashing their private parts three or more times. You can...
Sex Offender Madness
Posted on February 19, 2009I'm a bit slow in responding to apublicdefender's call for help regarding a story about sex offender madness (I blame my cold that will never go away). From the original post:Sex offender hysteria is well documented. Apparently, the Federal Government...
House Republicans File Amicus Brief Concerning AWA Mandatory Minimums
Posted on February 18, 2009In response to a federal judge's ruling that a 30 year mandatory minimum prison sentence was cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment, a group of House Republicans have filed an amicus brief in the Eleventh Circuit arguing that the...
Alabama House Passes Bill Banning Sex Offenders from Living Near Colleges
Posted on February 18, 2009Alabama's elected officials are at it again. The Alabama House yesterday unanimously passed a bill which would restrict sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of any college or university. You can read the text of the bill here. From...
Illinois Legislature Considers More Sex Offender Restrictions
Posted on February 17, 2009From one of my colleagues, I learned that the Illinois Legislature is considering a number of new sex offender bills. From the St. Louis Post-DispatchEvery year, Illinois' list of registered sex offenders grows. And every year, the Legislature introduces a...
Law Enforcement Portions of the Stimulus Package
Posted on February 17, 2009Grits for Breakfast has an excellent post concerning the law enforcement portions of the newly signed stimulus package. The most relevant items for our purposes include "$225 million for Byrne competitive grants," which will be cutback for states that fail...
States Stuggle With Adam Walsh Act Compliance
Posted on February 16, 2009There has been a lot of Adam Walsh Act related news lately. The State of Wisconsin has requested an extension on the deadline to comply with the Walsh Act. From MSNBC:The state of Wisconsin wants an extension on the deadline...
Virginia Bill Seeks to Require Sex Offenders to Provide Online Information
Posted on February 16, 2009The Virginia House of Representatives, looking to join at least the twenty other states with similar provisions, unanimously passed a bill requiring sex offenders to register their online identifiers with the authorities. From the Chatham Star Tribune:A bill sponsored by...
Alabama Legislator Wants Death Penalty for Child Rapists
Posted on February 16, 2009Although the Supreme Court held in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for commiting the crime of raping a child, one Alabama legislator apparently wants to press the issue (or is oblivious to the Court's...
Iowa Seeks to Comply With AWA, May Scrap Residency Restrictions
Posted on February 13, 2009Legislators in Iowa are looking to change the state's sex offender law in order to bring the state in compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Act. Some lawmakers are proposing removing the state's harsh residency restrictions. From Radio Iowa: Iowa...
First Person Civilly Committed as Sexually Dangerous Person Under AWA
Posted on February 13, 2009Thanks to a helpful reader, I see that a Maine sex offender became the first person in the nation to be civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person under the new Adam Walsh Act. The man was committed to the...
District Court in Third Circuit Upholds SORNA
Posted on February 12, 2009A federal judge in Delaware has issued an order dismissing a constitutional challenge of the Adam Walsh Act. The decision is believed to be the first time a court in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled on a...
NY Town May Ban Sex Offenders From Living Together
Posted on February 12, 2009Town officials in Colonie, New York are considering a new law which seeks to prohibit certain sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of each other or where children typically congregate. David Giacalone over at the f/k/a blog has an...
WikiLeaks Releases Two Adam Walsh Act Reports
Posted on February 12, 2009WikiLeaks, a wiki-style website that distributes sensitive documents anonymously, has released thousands of reports authored by the Congressional Research Service, including two reports discussing the Adam Walsh Act from April 2007. The first is entitled: Adam Walsh Child Protection and...
New Article About Prison Rape
Posted on February 11, 2009A helpful reader sent along an interesting article entitled Prison Rape in Context. Unfortunately, viewing the article requires a subscription, but you can view the abstract here. From the abstract: Fear of sexual violence is a defining characteristic of the...
Possible Gender Discrimination in Statutory Rape Charges
Posted on February 10, 2009The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has issued a ruling discussing why a 14 year old boy who was accused of statutory rape was charged, but not the three under-aged girls with whom he allegedly had sex. The opinion (available here)...
Editorial: Hawaii's Sex Offender Registry Laws Must Be Changed
Posted on February 10, 2009The Honolulu Star Bulletin has an excellent editorial calling for Hawaii's sex offender registry law to be changed. Specifically, the editorial notes that the July deadline for states to comply with the federal Adam Walsh Act "has become even more...
Maine Supreme Court to Consider Retroactivity of Sex Offender Registry
Posted on February 10, 2009Although many states have had no problem applying their respective sex offender registry laws retroactively, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court is hearing argument on the issue. From the Associated Press:The issue of whether Maine's online sex offender registry can be...
North Dakota Votes Down Residency Restriction Bill
Posted on February 10, 2009North Dakota's House of Representatives recently voted down a residency restriction bill. From the Grand Forks Herald:The House defeated a bill Monday that would have restricted convicted sex offenders from living near or being near schools, day care centers and...
Another District Court Dismisses SORNA Indictment on Commerce Clause Grounds
Posted on February 10, 2009In U.S. v. Valverde, the Eastern District of California held that Congress lacked the authority to enact SORNA because the Act could not be justified under by the Commerce Clause. This is how the order addressed the jurisdictional limitation of...
Alabama Bill Calls For Surgical Castration of Sex Offenders
Posted on February 09, 2009A bill before the Alabama House of Representatives would require male sex offenders, who are convicted of sexual crimes against victims under the age of 12, to undergo surgical castration. From the Tuscaloosa News: A bill introduced in the Alabama...
Illinois Busts Sex Offender for Having Internet Access and a MySpace Account
Posted on February 09, 2009Now that MySpace has handed over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders on its site to every state attorney general, an Illinois sex offender faces charges after he failed to tell the authorities that he had the Internet at...
States Resistant to Adopt Federal Sex Offender Registry Standards
Posted on February 09, 2009The New York Times has an excellent article discussing the problems facing state governments who are trying to enact Adam Walsh Act-compliant laws. Citing the article, TChris at TalkLeft calls for the repeal of the Adam Walsh Act altogether. From...
Sex Offender Laws in New Jersey & New York Both Ineffective
Posted on February 06, 2009A recent study (which I cite in my new article) published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law claims that New York's Sex Offender Registration act had no effect. According to the study, over 95% of all sex offenses (as determined...
Feds Change Course, Upset Judge
Posted on February 06, 2009Prosecutors in the Northern District of California would be well advised to not bring charges for failure to register under SORNA, only to drop the charges shortly after extensive briefing on the matter. That does not make for a happy...
Council of State Governments Opposed To Registering Juvenile Offenders
Posted on February 06, 2009Recently, the Council of State Governments has adopted a resolution stating its opposition to SORNA, as it applies to juveniles. You can read the resolution here. From the Resolution:WHEREAS, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) requires that juvenile...
Council of Europe: Surgical Castration "Degrading"
Posted on February 06, 2009The Council of Europe has made public a report condemning the Czech Republic's practice of surgically castrating sex offenders. You can read the report here and the response from the Czech government here. The BBC has more. From CNN:The Czech...
CT Sex Offender A Madoff Victim
Posted on February 06, 2009Bernard Madoff is accused of orchestrating a $50 Billion Ponzi scheme involving many victims listed in a 163 page document (available here) released yesterday. The list includes many celebrities and at least one Connecticut registered sex offender. From The News-Times:Carl...
New Article About Gender Neutrality in Rape Law
Posted on February 06, 2009Philip Rumney of the University of the West of England has posted his new article Gender Neutrality, Rape and Trial Talk onto SSRN. The article appears in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. From the abstract: This article...
Social Networking Site Bans Sex Offenders, Turns Over Data
Posted on February 05, 2009The social networking site MySpace has provided the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders now banned from the site to two state attorneys general. The move comes despite the fact that a government sponsored task force found that online solicitation...
"Sex registry stigma too much for young"
Posted on February 05, 2009While the Tennessee legislature debates whether to include juveniles on the state's sex offender registry, one newspaper is ran an editorial discussing the flaws of such a proposal. From The Tennessean:Tennessee's top law-enforcement officials want juveniles convicted of sex crimes...
Fourth Circuit: Statutory Rape Not a "Violent Felony" Under ACCA
Posted on February 04, 2009The Fourth Circuit, in United States v. Thornton, No. 08-4251, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 1988 (4th Cir. Feb. 3, 2009), held that Virginia's statutory rape offense is not a "violent felony" under the Armed Career Criminal Act in light of...
Colorado Woman Allegedly Rapes Adult Man
Posted on February 04, 2009A 53-year-old Colorado woman has been arrested over allegations that she drugged a 50-year-old male friend and then raped him. TMZ has more. You may read a copy of the police report here. From the Daily Camera:A 53-year-old Longmont woman...
Sex Offender Agrees To Stay Behind Bars
Posted on February 04, 2009A convicted sex offender, who faces indefinite incarceration, has agreed to skip a hearing that would determine whether the State of Illinois has "enough evidence to proceed with claims that he is a sexually violent person." From the Daily Herald:...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 64
Posted on February 04, 2009The 64th edition of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence is out at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In "Lying" about sexual orientation in a rape trial posted at Polymorphous Perversity, we get a discussion about a Tennessee Court of Criminal...
Polanski Loses Bid to Disqualify All LA Superior Court Judges
Posted on February 03, 2009A California appellate panel has rejected a motion by fugitive Academy Award-winning film director Roman Polanski to have every Los Angeles trial court judge disqualified from hearing his request to have his 31-year-old rape case dismissed. We previously discussed Mr...
DOJ Report: Sex Offender Registries Often Incomplete, Inaccurate
Posted on February 03, 2009To be honest, I sometimes forget if I have posted certain reports I come across. So, if this has been posted before, I apologize. According to this report from the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of...
Florida County Alerts Residents By Phone When Sex Offenders Move In
Posted on February 03, 2009Want to know if a sex offender is moving into the neighborhood, but don't have internet access? Well, residents in one Floridian county will receive "a heads-up phone call when a sex offender or predator moves into their neighborhood." From...
New York State Senator Proposes Residency Restrictions
Posted on February 02, 2009One week after a New York court struck down Rockland County's sex offender banishment law (opinion available here), State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith has proposed a new bill entitled ?Major Statewide Legislation Aimed to Protect Children from Sex...
Gov. Jindal Getting Tougher on Sex Offenders
Posted on February 02, 2009In what Doug Berman refers to as "yet another example of the one-way ratchet of criminal laws and the potential harm of legislative reactions to one awful crime," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has announced a series of new sex offender...
Life Without Parole For Rape at 13 Cruel and Unusual?
Posted on February 02, 2009A man who was convicted of rape at age 13 (he is now 33) and sentenced to life without parole is petitioning the Supreme Court to consider whether his sentence is a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel...
CIA Algerian Station Chief Accused of Rape
Posted on January 30, 2009Two women claim that a former CIA Algerian station chief gave them date-rape drugs and raped them at the station chief's official residence in Algeria. The Washington Post has more. From CNN:A former CIA station chief in Algeria is under...
Which Community Standard?
Posted on January 30, 2009If a company is under indictment for the sale of obscenity in one state and the purchaser (an undercover agent) is in another state,"what community standards should be used to determine if a crime was committed?" The situation exemplifies a...
What Does Comstock Mean for SORNA?
Posted on January 29, 2009With the 4th Circuit's opinion in Comstock striking down part of the AWA on Commerce Clause grounds, a logical question is whether the decision has any relevance as to other parts of the AWA, mainly SORNA. In a recent 4th...
Homeless Sex Offender Denied Bed, Dies on the Street
Posted on January 29, 2009A Michigan sex offender was found dead on the streets recently after he had tried to seek entrance to a shelter, but was "denied a bed because he is a registered sex offender." Sentencing Law & Policy has more. Sex...
England Bans "Sexually Violent" Imagery
Posted on January 29, 2009A new British law gone into effect whereby people caught with 'sexually violent' images faces imprisonment of up to three years. From the BBC:A law banning violent online porn has come into force following a campaign by a mother whose...
Shocking Concession Comes out of the Government in Eighth Circuit SORNA Case
Posted on January 29, 2009I have been aghast that district courts have allowed prosecutions under SORNA based upon interstate travel that occurred before the passage of the Act. I began my forthcoming Federal Sentencing Reporter outlining one such egregious case:In 1992, Glen Aubrey Pitts...
A Very Handy Website
Posted on January 28, 2009All of you may already know about this, but I just discovered that the DOJ/SMART has a website with summaries of SORNA cases and other sex offender related opinions. You can view the site here. The 2250(a) prosecution cases are...
SORNA Compliance Update
Posted on January 28, 2009SMART has issued an update on where states stand in regards to SORNA Compliance. You can read the brief document here. By my count, six states have received extensions for one year to comply. And another fifteen have submitted preliminary...
11th Circuit Issues SORNA Opinion
Posted on January 28, 2009In U.S. v. Dumont, the 11th Circuit held that the defendant's alleged interstate travel during the gap period did not create an Ex Post Facto Clause problem. This has been the majority approach of district courts, so the result is...
Landlord Face Fines, Jailtime For Renting to Sex Offenders
Posted on January 27, 2009Landlords in one Florida town face fines or jail time if they rent to sex offenders in violation of residency restrictions. From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:Landlords in Davie who rent to sex offenders or sex predators in violation of residency...
Congressman Proposes "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act"
Posted on January 27, 2009Congressman Peter King (R-NY) has introduced a new law entitled the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414). The proposed law would "require mobile phones containing digital cameras to make a sound when a photograph is taken." The Act makes...
New York Court Invalidates Residency Restrictions
Posted on January 27, 2009Thanks to the many helpful readers who forwarded me the news about this case. Following the lead of its neighbor, New Jersey, a New York has ruled, in State v. Oberlander, that a local residency restriction ordinance is inconsistent with...
Former Law School Assistant Dean Pleads Guilty to Child Sex Abuse
Posted on January 26, 2009A former law school assistant dean at Pat Robertson's Regent University has pled guilty to sexually abusing children. Above the Law has more. From the Virginian-Pilot: McPherson, 39, of Chesapeake entered guilty pleas to two counts of forcible sodomy and...
Connecticut AG Demands Sex Offender Data From MySpace
Posted on January 26, 2009Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal's office is demanding that MySpace hand over data of registered sex offenders on its social networking site. From CNET: Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal also told CNET News that his office is reviewing independent research about...
New Draft of "One of These Laws" on SSRN
Posted on January 23, 2009I have posted a new draft of my article, One of These Laws is Not Like the Others: Why the Federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act Raises New Constitutional Questions, forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Legislation. Here is...
The End of COPA
Posted on January 23, 2009COPA, the Online Child Protection and Safety Act, has finally met its end. The 3rd Circuit repeatedly struck down the statute and the United States Supreme Court has finally put the 1998 Act out of its misery. From SCOTUSBlog:The Supreme...
Sleepwalking as a Defense to Child Molestation Charges?
Posted on January 23, 2009The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a defendant in a child molestation case can use expert testimony to support sleepwalking as a defense. From a local news account:The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a Nashville firefighter is entitled...
Kate Winslet Offended By the Term "Statutory Rape"
Posted on January 22, 2009In a recent interview with actress Kate Winslet on ComingSoon.net, the following discussion took place:Q: Do you ever have any trepidations about approaching controversial material like abortion in "Revolutionary Road" or statutory rape?Ms. Winslet: I'm so sorry, "statutory rape"? I've...
"Blow-up doll sex suspect arrested in Australia"
Posted on January 22, 2009In Australia, a man is accused of breaking into an adult shop and having sex with the blow-up dolls. CrimProf Blog also has the story. From CNN:The 23-year-old allegedly broke into the Laneway Adult Shop in the northen Australian city...
Woman who was Involved with Minor and Sex Offender Receives Probation
Posted on January 22, 2009A 19 year old Wisconsin woman will receive two years of probation, but no jail time for her participation in "three-way sexual encounters" with a 15-year-old girl and a sex offender. From the Sheboygan Press: Johanna N. Peters, of 23...
Gary Glitter Gives up Fight, Will be Registered Sex Offender
Posted on January 22, 2009Gary Glitter, the British glam rock star whose legal troubles have been previously discussed, has given up his fight to have his name taken off Britain's sex offender registry. As you may remember, Glitter spent nearly three years in a...
New Posters Coming to Sex Crimes
Posted on January 21, 2009This semester, I'm doing a little experiment in blogging. I'm teaching for the first time a seminar titled "Sex Crimes." I currently have the maximum 24 students in my class. During this semester, a small portion of their grade will...
Welcome Back JMLS Students!
Posted on January 21, 2009Classes began yesterday at JMLS. So, if you are one of my Criminal Law or Sex Crimes students, feel free to read along this semester (and feel free to do so even if you aren't one of my students).
California Appellate Court Agrees To Hear Polanski's Argument
Posted on January 21, 2009The ABA Journal is reporting that a California appellate court has "agreed to hear a claim by fugitive film director Roman Polanski that the criminal system has been biased in its handling of a decades-old child-rape case against him." The...
Character Evidence in Child Molestation Cases
Posted on January 20, 2009Colin Miller at EvidenceProf has a post about a recent effort in South Dakota to allow the use of prior child molestation evidence in certain instances in criminal prosecutions:South Dakota does not currently have a rule of evidence that allows...
When a GPS Bracelet isn't Enough
Posted on January 19, 2009A helpful reader alerted me that some Washington lawmakers are pushing for a brave new world in sex offender punishment:Lawmakers are considering a controversial bill that would outfit sex offenders with a surgically-implanted device that tracks their movement...
L.A. Times Calls for Jessica's Law to be Rewritten or Dropped
Posted on January 19, 2009The Los Angeles Times is running an interesting editorial calling for Jessica's Law to be dropped or rewritten, since it "is unaffordable and doesn't improve safety." From the Los Angeles Times:Of all the ill-considered ballot initiatives approved by California voters...
Washington Lawmakers Seek to Close Teacher-Student Sex "Loophole"
Posted on January 19, 2009Lawmakers in Washington state have proposed a new law which criminalizes sexual relationships between school employees and students. The move comes as a result of a state Court of Appeals decision (previously discussed here) finding that a law banning teachers...
Eleventh Circuit Affirms Very Long Child Porn Sentence
Posted on January 16, 2009Sentencing Law & Policy has a post about a Eleventh Circuit decision involving a more than 27 year sentence for one count of receiving child pornography. You can view the opinion here. As the SL&P post notes, the case offers...
All California Sex Offender Parolees To Wear GPS Ankle Bracelets
Posted on January 16, 2009The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has announced that all 6,622 sex offender parolees in the state will now be fitted with GPS ankle bracelets. From MSNBC:Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger applauded the move as an added layer of protection for...
Residency Restrictions Causing Increased Homelessness
Posted on January 16, 2009As expected, laws meant to restrict where sex offenders live are having an unintended consequence: increased homelessness. Sentencing Law & Policy has more. From the Washington Post:Strict new laws aimed at keeping track of sex offenders after they leave prison...
Judge in Northern Ireland Bars Newspaper From Publishing Sex Offender's Picture
Posted on January 16, 2009A judge across the pond in Northern Ireland has enjoined a newspaper from publishing pictures of a convicted sex offender. From the Belfast Telegraph:A judge in the North has barred a newspaper from publishing photographs of a convicted sex offender....
Teens Send Nude Pics, Face Child Porn Charges
Posted on January 16, 2009Ars Techinica has an article discussing a case in which two young girls sent nude pictures to two boys using their cell phones. The pictures were discovered when one of the kids was caught using a cell phone during school...
Do Residency Restrictions Work?
Posted on January 15, 2009Every state that reviews the efficacy of residency restrictions seems less than enthusiastic about the results thus far. Add California to the list of states wondering about the value of these statutes:A state panel is urging the governor and legislators...
Mayor is Busted for Sex Crimes
Posted on January 15, 2009A Wisconsin mayor has allegedly committed some very bad crimes from possession of child pornography to attempted sexual assault of a child. From a local news account:Mayor Gary Becker has been arrested on multiple felony charges related to attempted sexual...
Eighth Circuit Issues New SORNA Opinion
Posted on January 15, 2009I was a bit disappointed with the Eighth Circuit's opinion in United States v. May because it didn't address in depth the legitimate constitutional arguments against SORNA prosecutions. To some degree the court's opinion in United States v. Howell cures...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 63
Posted on January 15, 2009The 63rd edition of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence is out at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In Senator Alquist introduces Statute of Limitations for Sex Crimes (SB 46) posted at CALCASA Public Policy, we get a discussion about a...
11th Circuit Issues a Puzzling SORNA Opinion
Posted on January 15, 2009There has been a lot of federal appellate court action in relation to SORNA lately (I'll be covering the 8th Circuit's notable Howell opinion later today). Normally, the cases go in favor the government. However, when the defendant wins at...
Sex Between Teacher and 18 Year Old Student Legal In Washington State
Posted on January 15, 2009A unanimous all-female panel on the Washington Court of Appeals found that a state law banning teachers from having sex with minors does not apply to 18-year-olds. You may view the opinion here. Cradle-robbing teachers in Iowa however, should be...
Sex Offender Wins Lottery, Suffers Severe Beating
Posted on January 14, 2009Earlier we reported that an Alaskan sex offender won a $500,000 lottery sponsored by a rape support group. Police are now saying that the sex offender was attacked on a downtown Anchorage street with a tire iron or metal pipe....
Ice
Posted on January 14, 2009The Supreme Court issued an opinion today in a case where the underlying crimes were sexual in nature. However, the opinion in Oregon v. Ice had little to do with the sexual aspect of the crimes. So, since I don't...
Internet Not So Bad For Kids
Posted on January 14, 2009The Internet may not be so dangerous for children as previously believed. "A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a...
Man Allegedly Sold Daughter for Beer, Meat, and Cash
Posted on January 14, 2009And that's not the worst of it. He allegedly sold his 14-year old daughter to an 18-year old for purposes of sex. Thus, there is a human trafficking and statutory rape charge. From a brief news account:A Californian man arranged...
David Meggett, Say it Ain't So
Posted on January 14, 2009Dave Meggett was one of those NFL players that I just liked for some reason when I was younger. Unfortunately, he is being charged with rape (after already being charged with another sexual assault). From ESPN.com:Several months after he was...
A Military Trial for Rape with a Twist
Posted on January 13, 2009Out.com published a feature concerning the trial of Capt. Devery Lane Taylor based upon allegations that he raped a male soldier. The article describes the difficulties and oddities associated with such prosecutions in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," military...
Recent 7th Circuit Cases
Posted on January 13, 2009Michael O'Hear does a great job in rounding up the 7th Circuit criminal law cases at the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog (which has become my favorite faculty blog and I definitely recommend checking out). Recently, he covered a...
Ninth Circuit Found Failure to Register Sentence Unconstitutional
Posted on January 13, 2009Among the many stories I missed while I was traveling over the break was the Ninth Circuit's holding in Gonzales v. Duncan. The court held that the application of the three-strikes law resulted in a constitutionally excessive penalty. From the...
More Sex Offender Info Available Online
Posted on January 12, 2009Stateline.org has an excellent article detailing how many state sex offender databases are now offering many new features. From the article:Arizona parents who want to find out whether a suspicious e-mail has been sent by a registered sex offender now...
Notable Child Porn Opinion From Sixth Circuit
Posted on January 12, 2009Sentencing Law and Policy has a discussion of a recent split Sixth Circuit's affirmance of a within-guideline child porn sentence in US v. Paull, No. 07-3482. You can view the opinion here. The dissent, citing a recent Wall Street Journal...
Sex Offender Exposes Teen To AIDS
Posted on January 12, 2009A sex offender with AIDS is facing charges of exposing a teenager to the disease. The man allegedly had AIDS medication in his possession when he was arrested. From WPIX:Nassau County police arrested a registered sex offender with AIDS, after...
Sex Offender Wins Lottery Held by Rape Support Group
Posted on January 12, 2009A registered sex offender has won a $500,000 lottery sponsored by a non-profit group that helps rape victims. The man was thrice convicted of sexually abusing minors. From USA Today:When a non-profit that helps rape victims decided to hold a...
Federal Judge Pleads Not Guilty to Sex Charges
Posted on January 09, 2009Federal District Judge Samuel Kent pled not guilty to "sex and obstruction charges related to his alleged mistreatment of a court employee." The Houston Chronicle has more. From the ABA Journal:A federal judge in Texas pleaded not guilty this morning...
Larry Craig Won't Appeal To MN Supreme Court
Posted on January 09, 2009Former Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has announced that he will not ask the Minnesota Supreme Court to let him withdraw his guilty plea. Sen. Craig pled guilty in 2007 to disorderly conduct after he allegedly solicited sex in an airport...
4th Circuit Got it Right in Comstock
Posted on January 08, 2009(In the interest of full disclosure, I did help out in a very minor way in the Comstock appeal, so I'm not a wholly disinterested spectator in this case)The Fourth Circuit issued a unanimous and very noteworthy AWA opinion today...
Presentation at AALS
Posted on January 08, 2009Yesterday, I was on a panel at AALS in the Law & Sexuality section. My talk was about the aftermath of Lawrence v. Texas and how lower courts have treated the decision. I reviewed every case that has cited the...
New Mexico Seeks Adam Walsh Act Compliance
Posted on January 08, 2009State legislators in New Mexico are expected to introduce Adam Walsh Act-compliant legislation soon and it will be up to the former Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of Commerce-nominee Governor Bill Richardson to sign it. From the Valencia County...
California Lawyer Caught With Child Porn
Posted on January 06, 2009The lawyer who introduced John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic Convention and served in the Clinton administration pled guilty to federal child pornography charges. From CNN:A lawyer who served in the Clinton administration and more recently was an adviser to...
New York Lets Sex Offender Keep Law License
Posted on January 06, 2009The New York Appellate Division, First Department has released a divided opinion allowing an admitted sex offender to keep his New York law license. The dissent argued that that man should have been disbarred. You may view the opinion here....
Woman Beats 7'3" Sex Offender With Baseball Bat
Posted on January 06, 2009A Washington woman pled guilty to assaulting a 7' 3" sex offender with an aluminum bat. From Seattle Post-Intelligencer:The Pierce County woman who used an aluminum baseball bat to attack a 7-foot-3 sex offender living in her trailer park has...
I'm Back - Posts Forthcoming
Posted on January 05, 2009My "intermittent blogging" turned into "no blogging" as I was busy over the holidays. I've completed my East Coast road trip to visit family, and more importantly completed my grades for last semester, so I'll be back to my normal...
7th Circuit Rules on SORNA Constitutionality
Posted on January 05, 2009The Seventh Circuit, in U.S. v. Dixon, joined the Eighth and Tenth Circuits in reaching the constitutional issues that arise in failure to register prosecutions under SORNA. The opinion is especially notable because it was written by Justice Posner. There...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 62
Posted on January 05, 2009While I was traveling, the 62nd edition of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence came out at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In An honest (and honorable?) gendered sentencing outcome in adult-teen sex case posted at Sentencing Law and Policy, we...
Intermittent Blogging
Posted on December 16, 2008I'm going to be driving across the country to visit family. So I will be blogging in spurts. I'm also a bit under the weather, so I haven't been posting about a few things that I have wanted to.In particular,...
Dividing Sex Offenders
Posted on December 15, 2008Sentencing Law & Policy points to a Houston Chronicle article about an effort to only list the most dangerous sex offenders on registries. From the article:Martin Ezell is tired of the dead-end jobs and unrelenting stigma that comes with being...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 61
Posted on December 15, 2008It's up at abyss2hope and this is the Legal section:In Judge entitled to comment on rape complaint delay posted at West Law Report, we get a discussion of an appeals ruling about a judge's reminder to the jury to balance...
The Airport Bathroom Scandal That Never Ends
Posted on December 12, 2008Larry Craig continues to chug along long after his political future was declared dead and buried. And amazingly, his case has carried on. However, the Court of Appeals has ruled that the lower court did not abuse its discretion when...
Some Sex Crime Sentences
Posted on December 12, 2008Sentencing Law & Policy has three posts about three recent sex crimes sentences. In Another notable child porn sentencing decision, Berman points to a notable Judge Pratt opinion in a child pornography case. In An honest (and honorable?) gendered sentencing...
20% of Teens Put Nude Pictures Online?
Posted on December 11, 2008I'm skeptical, but that's what a recent survey indicates. From Ars Technica:What good would technology be if people weren't constantly using it to send naked pictures of themselves to each other? I would know, too?since the age of 12, my...
Case of School Teacher with Pop-up Porn Resolved
Posted on December 10, 2008Almost two years ago, I posted about the case of Julie Amero, the school teacher who had some pornography pop-up on her computer during class. TChris at TalkLeft recently posted about the resolution of the case:You may remember the case...
The Thin Line Between Pornography and Prostitution
Posted on December 10, 2008While filming pornography might seem different than prostitution, the difference between the two can be illusory when money changes hands. Eugene Volokh explains in analyzing a recent New Hampshire case:People sometimes ask -- if it's a crime to pay someone...
Southern District of Florida Dismisses SORNA Indictment on Commerce Clause Grounds
Posted on December 09, 2008In contrast to the holdings in the Tenth Circuit, Judge Zloch, in U.S. v. Myers, held that a prosecution under SORNA for failing to register was an unlawful extension of Commerce Clause authority. I was delighted to see the court...
Tenth Circuit Issues Two Opinions Upholding SORNA
Posted on December 09, 2008Following on the heels of the 10th Circuit opinion in U.S. v.Husted, the court issued two new opinions allowing SORNA prosecutions to proceed. Sentencing Law & Policy drew my attention to the decision in U.S. v. Lawrance date December 8th....
Will Roman Get a Reprieve?
Posted on December 08, 2008Jeralyn at TalkLeft recently had a post calling for a pardon for director Roman Polanski:Director Roman Polanski, now age 75, has filed a new motion to have the sex assault charges against him dismissed. His motion alleges prosecutorial and judicial....
Kozinski Case Takes More Twists and Turns
Posted on December 08, 2008Some have said that lesson of the Martha Stewart prosecution was: It's the coverup, not the crime. Maybe the lesson of Kozinski's ethics investigation is: It's the security breach, not the porn. What started out as a sortid tale of...
Posner and the Problem of Private Entrapment
Posted on December 08, 2008One of the problems with the Internet age is that it enables unusual forms of private action within the criminal justice system. Among the most notorious of the private involvements is that of organizations like Perverted Justice which use sting-type...
Connecticut, Iowa Newspapers Calling For Sex Offender Law Reform
Posted on December 05, 2008One Connecticut newspaper is calling for the state's sex offender registry law to be fixed. A Public Defender has more. From The Hartford Courant:Connecticut's sex offender registry law needs to be updated. The state Department of Public Safety announced recently...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 60
Posted on December 05, 2008It's up at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In Round here we call that rape posted at Incertus, we get a discussion about a case where an armed police officer coerced a woman with a threat of arrest and who...
DOJ Announces Updated Sex Offender Website
Posted on December 04, 2008The Department of Justice has issued a press release noting new improvements to the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender website, which is now more "user-friendly" and makes it easier to find sex offenders. From the press release: The U.S. Department...
Tennessee Uses Sexual Servitude Statute for First Time
Posted on December 04, 2008Two Tennessee men are being charged using a sexual servitude statute for the first time in the state's history. As Ann Bartow appropriately noted, "I wonder how many times they didn?t think forced prostitution was 'serious enough' to do so."...
Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law
Posted on December 03, 2008The new issue is out with a wonderful sex-crimes-focused lineup of articles. Wayne Logan, who does excellent work in this area put together a symposium of three very important articles.The first article is Virginia Davis and Kevin Washburn, Sex Offender...
British Father Rapes Daughters Over 27 Years
Posted on December 03, 2008A British man has been accused of raping two of his daughters over 27 years, resulting in nineteen pregnancies and nine births. The case appears similar to an Austrian case, which was previously discussed here. From CNN:A British man was...
Parents Sue Over School's ID Scanning
Posted on December 03, 2008A Texas couple is suing a local school district over a requirement that visitors' identification be checked against a sex offender database. Neither are sex offenders. Those who do not consent may be turned away. From the Houston Chronicle:A background...
Where Adultery is Still a Crime
Posted on December 02, 2008There is a major scandal breaking in South Korea because of an actress invovled in criminal adultery. This article highlights the unusual history of South Korea's adultery laws:South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday demanded a popular actress who tried to overturn...
Preventive Detention
Posted on December 02, 2008TChris at TalkLeft had a recent post about the use of preventive detention in America. The post primarily focused on those detained as part of the "War on Terror." However, TChris had this brief reference to sex offenders:The concept of...
Iowa May Scrap Residency Restrictions
Posted on December 01, 2008Iowa lawmakers who are faced with a deadline to enact Adam Walsh Act-compliant laws might use the opportunity to eliminate the state's 2,000 foot residency restriction. From the Chicago Tribune: As Iowa faces a deadline to update its sex offender...
Strict North Carolina Sex Offender Laws Take Effect
Posted on December 01, 2008North Carolina's new sex offender restrictions took effect today, requiring some offenders to remain on the state's registry for 30 years and requiring offenders to stay at least 300 feet from places where children might congregate. From the Winston-Salem Journal:Stricter...
Alabama Newspaper Calls For Overhaul of Sex Offender Laws
Posted on December 01, 2008An Alabama newspaper is calling for a revision of the state's sex offender laws. Specifically the editorial calls for legislators to "[r]emove this cruel label from those who do not deserve it [and] [s]eparate the true sex offenders from those...
Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted on November 26, 2008Sex Crimes is going on a holiday hiatus. Normal blogging will resume on Monday.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
Posted on November 25, 2008The United Nations has designated today, November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. A quick Google News search about the day yields some strange results. It seems like almost all of the media coverage of the...
Life Sentence For Failure To Register Cruel and Unusual in Georgia
Posted on November 25, 2008The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that a mandatory life sentence given to a sex offender two twice failing to register was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the sentence violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment...
Louisiana Supreme Court Addresses Kennedy Re-Sentencing
Posted on November 25, 2008In light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Louisiana Supreme Court has ordered that Mr. Kennedy be re-sentenced to "life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence." The Advocate...
On What Authority?
Posted on November 24, 2008Typically, registry listing of sex offenders is controlled entirely by legislatures. The statutory definitions list who is required to register and the penalty for not registering is also defined by a criminal statute. However, in some states, in certain circumstances,...
Reasonableness Review in Child Porn Case
Posted on November 24, 2008Berman continues his coverage of some of the oddities of child pornography sentencing. This time, he refers to the Sixth Circuit's reasonableness review in U.S. v. Blackie:The district court?s failure to comply with the requirements of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c)(2)...
My New Article on SSRN
Posted on November 24, 2008I've posted a draft of a shorter article of mine that will be out soon in the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The article builds upon the Commerce Clause discussion in my other forthcoming article, One of These Laws is not Like...
A Moment of Self Indulgence
Posted on November 24, 2008I started working at John Marshall Law School a little over a year ago. I have found the experience to be immensely rewarding. I love teaching and have the freedom to research and write about topics that interest me. Above...
Another Long Child Pornography Sentence
Posted on November 24, 2008Appellate Law & Practice has a post with a title ("Fifteen Year Mandatory Minimum for Guy in Wheelchair Trying to Produce Child Pr0n Okay") that pretty much encapsulates what a First Circuit opinion was about. This was S. Cotus's summary...
New Sex Offender Notification Article
Posted on November 22, 2008Mike Connelly sends word of an interesting new article, Sex Offender Community Notification and Community Stratification. From the abstract:The study articulated findings from mapping and regression analyses that suggested a greater concentration of sex offenders in disadvantaged communities than in...
Sex Crimes Prosecutor Charged With Rape
Posted on November 22, 2008A California prosecutor assigned to a sex crimes unit has been charged and arraigned for an alleged rape at the home of a fellow district attorney. From the ABA Journal:Michael Gressett, 51, who is a 20-year prosecutor assigned to the...
HLR Publishes Kennedy Case Note
Posted on November 21, 2008Harvard Law Review's latest issue is now available online. The issue includes a nice case note on Kennedy v. Louisiana. From the summary:... Writing for the Court, Justice Kennedy held "that a death sentence for one who raped but did...
Utah: More Sex Offenders in Prison, Less Treatment Options
Posted on November 21, 2008As the number of sex offenders in Utah prisons rise, the waiting list for treatment grows longer. From the Salt Lake Tribune:Members of the Judiciary Interim Committee reviewed a report presented by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice...
Ask Pam Anderson
Posted on November 21, 2008President-elect Obama may have enough on his plate, but that did not stop Pamela Anderson from offering him some advice on her official website and to other news outlets. The relevant excerpt reads:Dear Mr. Obama: My thoughts/hopeful ideas:...There are too...
Accused Necrophiliacs in Wisconsin Claim Innocence
Posted on November 20, 2008Three Wisconsin men who are accused of necrophilia entered not guilty pleas. Recently, lawyers for the men sought and were denied a change of venue. From Pioneer Press:Three men accused of trying to dig up a grave in Cassville in...
Cal. Court: Registration Requirements are Punishment Under Apprendi
Posted on November 20, 2008Sentencing Law & Policy posts about a new California Court of Appeal opinion which found that "the residency restrictions in California's sex offender registration law are 'punishment' for Apprendi purposes." You may view the opinion here. From the opinion: This...
Oregon Man Gets 6 Years For Attempted Sexual Abuse of a 12 Year Old
Posted on November 19, 2008An Oregon man has received a 6 year prison sentence for attempted sexual abuse after sending sexual texts to a 12 year old girl. Her mother saw the messages and notified police who then arrested the man where he was...
Georgia's Sex Offender Law Called "Mindlessly Harsh"
Posted on November 19, 2008Although it is not the first Georgia newspaper to recognize the problem, the Augusta Chronicle ran an excellent op-ed piece arguing against Georgia's one-size-fits-all approach to sex offender regulation. From the editorial:Should the law punish a motorist who is ticketed...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 59
Posted on November 18, 2008It's up at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In Rape Is Never the Fault Of the Victim posted at Womanist Musings, we get a discussion of a gang rape case in the UK where a14 year old girl was assaulted...
10th Circuit Rules on SORNA's Retroactivity
Posted on November 18, 2008In U.S. v. Husted, the 10th Circuit has gone against the majority of courts reviewing SORNA prosecutions by finding that retroactive application of the statute to interstate travel before the passage of the Act was in conflict with the plain...
Technical Difficulties
Posted on November 17, 2008It seems like blogging software of all types is failing me lately. I'm heavily dependent on Bloglines yet it has been a disaster for the last couple of weeks. Sometimes, it shows 200 new posts for every subscribed blog. Then,...
Iowa Supreme Court Upholds Law Barring Single Parents From Living With Sex Offenders
Posted on November 17, 2008In a divided opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a law barring single parents from living with convicted sex offenders. You can read the opinion here. From Chicago Tribune:The Iowa Supreme Court, in a split opinion Friday, upheld a law...
Colorado Newspaper Says "Naked Pumpkin Run" Streakers Are Not Sex Offenders
Posted on November 13, 2008A Colorado newspaper is running an editorial asking that a dozen streakers who were arrested in Boulder's annual Naked Pumpkin Run not be charged with indecent exposure, as it "carries the penalty of having to register as a sex offender."...
New South Carolina Law Restricts Residency, Reduces Penalty For Failure to Register
Posted on November 13, 2008South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has signed a new bill into law that prohibits sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a church, school, daycare center, or playground. The law however, reduces the penalty for sex offenders who fail...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 58
Posted on November 13, 2008With Carnvial 59 about to come out, I realized I never posted the Legal section from 58. Here it is:In On Those Supposed ?Rape Exceptions? posted at The Curvature, we get a discussion about the South Dakota anti-abortion measure which...
Lawsuit Challenging Parole Board Review of Sex Offender Cases
Posted on November 13, 2008Grits has the details on a very interesting lawsuit challenging the lack of individualized review in parole restriction decisions for sex offenders in Texas. Here is the Dallas Morning News's account of some of the history of the issues involved:It's...
What's Happening in Vermont?
Posted on November 12, 2008As my colleague Colin Miller has indicated, quite a bit is happening in Vermont. Colin focuses, not surprisingly, on the evidence law related issue. While members of the Vermont Senate have proposed a 34-point plan, among the ommitted suggestions was...
Former Congressman Mark Foley Apologizes
Posted on November 12, 2008Mark Foley, the former Republican congressman from Florida who resigned two years ago after sending sexually explicit instant messages to a 17-year old page, gave an interview this week in which he apologized for his behavior. TalkLeft sums up the...
Sex Offender Attacks Reporters
Posted on November 12, 2008A California sex offender who moved from Fresno to Oakdale is in custody after apparently attacking TV reporters and cameramen who showed up at his residence. The man recently moved to the area, but told officials that he did not...
Sex Offender Sues Over Long Airport Detention
Posted on November 11, 2008A sex offender who was detained for almost 14 hours due to his criminal record at London's Heathrow Airport is now suing airport officials. From United Press International:An Indian man who admitted sexually assaulting a sleeping woman is suing after...
Constitutionality of Park Ban Upheld in Kentucky
Posted on November 11, 2008A Kentucky judge has upheld the constitutionality of a city ordinance which prohibited convicted sex offenders from using the city's parks. From The Courier-Journal:The ruling last week by Superior Court 1 Judge Vicki Carmichael came in a lawsuit brought by...
Six Years For Heavy Petting Cruel and Unusual?
Posted on November 10, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy has an interesting article discussing a case where an Oregon adult female counsel was convicted of unlawful heavy petting of her underage ward. The woman was sentenced to sex-plus years in prison, which her attorney argues...
Spitzer Escapes Federal Prosecution
Posted on November 10, 2008The U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York has announced that Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will not be charged in connection with the prostitution scandal that resulted in his resignation. From CNN: "After a thorough...
Feds Want All Ninth Circuit Judges Off Obscenity Case
Posted on November 10, 2008Federal prosecutors in the criminal trial over adult filmmaker Ira Issacs are asking for the recusal of every judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A mistrial was declared after reports surfaced that Chief Judge Alex Kozinski posted sexually...
No Blogging Until Monday
Posted on November 07, 2008I'm out of commission with a nasty cold, so there won't be any new blog posts until Monday. See you all then.
Texas Decides Not to Seek Cert in Sex-Toy Case
Posted on November 06, 2008The State of Texas has decided not to seek a writ of certiorari following the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision which overturned Texas's sex-toy ban. The Fifth Circuit's opinion can be viewed here. I can't seem to find the...
DOJ Gives Tribes Over $3M in AWA Grants
Posted on November 06, 2008The Department of Justice has announced that it has awarded more than $50 million dollars in grants to assist Native American communities. Of that award, more than $3 million are marked for the implementation of the sex offender registry and...
ACLU Asks Indiana Supreme Court to Review Town's Park Ban
Posted on November 05, 2008The ACLU has asked the Indiana Supreme Court to review an appellate court decision which upheld one town's ban of a sex offender from its parks. From The Indianapolis Star:Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union warn that if Plainfield's...
California Proposition 6 Fails
Posted on November 05, 2008This is from the L.A. times summary of Proposition 6: Increase the annual state funding of state and local criminal justice programs by $365 million to $965 million, adjusting for inflation. It also would boost penalties for gang activity and...
Florida Senate Report Weighs Pros, Cons of Adam Walsh Act Compliance
Posted on November 05, 2008A helpful reader directs us to a Florida Senate Report entitled: Fiscal, Policy, and Legal Considerations Regarding State Compliance with the Adam Walsh Act. From the report's Background section:The [Adam Walsh Act], of which [the Sex Offender Registration and Notification...
Editorial Argues That Sex Offender Laws Go Too Far
Posted on November 05, 2008The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is running an interesting op-ed piece which discusses how Georgia's sex offender law goes too far. From the editorial:Andrew Norton grew up in a brutish household. His stepfather beat him and his brothers and made them watch...
Nevada AG To Appeal Decision Barring Retroactive Enforcement of Sex Offender Law
Posted on November 03, 2008The Nevada Attorney General's Office has announced that they will appeal decision by a federal judge that enjoins the state from applying its new sex offender law retroactively. You may view our previous coverage of this decision here. From The...
Racial Disparity in Child Porn Prosecutions?
Posted on November 03, 2008A federal judge has raised the issue of a racial disparity in two criminal cases involving child pornography. In one case, a white University of Pennsylvania student was charged for a hacking scheme, but spared from a possible decade-long sentence...
Oklahoma Reflects on First Year Since Enacting AWA-complaint Law
Posted on November 03, 2008An Oklahoma newspaper looks at what has happened in the year since the state has passed an Adam Walsh Act-complaint law. From Tulsa World:One year has passed since Oklahoma began classifying sex offenders into a three-level ranking system that designates...
Closing Out the Halloween Crackdown Coverage
Posted on October 31, 2008As I am done handing out candy for the night, I leave you all with Grits' post about the panic involved in the annual Halloween restrictions:I'm glad to see this year more thoughtful critiques popping up of grandstanding by law...
Woman Accused of Bringing 3 Year Old to "Sex Party"
Posted on October 31, 2008A woman from southern Illinois is now facing federal child exploitation stemming from an incident where she allegedly brought a three-year-old girl to an Indiana "sex party." From the Chicago Tribune Breaking News Blog: A 32-year-old Midlothian woman faces federal...
WSJ Looks At Child Porn Sentences, Threat
Posted on October 30, 2008The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article discussing the tough sentences given out to 'consumers of child pornography,' and the potential threat they pose to society. From the article:Are people who download and view child pornography -- but aren't...
Former Killer, Rapist Gets Life Without Parole
Posted on October 30, 2008A California man who committed murder in the 1970s, was eventually let out, committed rape in the 1990s, got out, and then stabbed his wife to death and wounded two others, has been sentenced to life without parole. From the...
Prison Rape Prosecution
Posted on October 30, 2008An interesting new paper has appeared on SSRN entitled: Prosecuting Sexual Violence in Correctional Settings: Examining Prosecutors' Perceptions by Brenda V. Smith. Here is the abstract: The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) is the first piece of federal...
Eighth Circuit Allows Missouri Restrictions to be Enforced on Halloween
Posted on October 30, 2008The Eighth Circuit has issued a stay to the preliminary injunction that I blogged about here. From a news account about the stay:Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon?s office says a court order means a new state law aimed at keeping...
Attempted Rape and Self Defense
Posted on October 29, 2008Eugene Volokh posts about an interesting case with an unsatisfactory resolution:The trouble is that it's of course impossible to tell from the news accounts ? at least the ones I've seen ? whether this was self-defense, or even whether there's...
Missouri Federal Court Bars Enforcement of State Efforts to Restrict Sex Offenders on Halloween
Posted on October 29, 2008There has been a lot happening around the blogosphere related to Halloween crackdowns on sex offenders. Perhaps most notably, a federal district court in Missouri has issued a preliminary injunction barring some efforts in that state. From the order:In their...
Georgia Supreme Court Rules that Registration Requirements Unconstitutionally Vague as Applied to Homeless
Posted on October 28, 2008The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled in a case that we blogged about a while back concerning homeless sex offenders in the state. In a 6 to 1 decision, the Georgia Supreme Court held that the statute was unconstitutional as...
Happy Birthday to the Sex Crimes Blog!
Posted on October 28, 2008It's hard to believe, but two years ago I started this little blog. A lot has happened during that time. I think the area of sex crimes law will continue to present unique and complex issues and I hope to...
FBI Operation Frees Dozens of Child Prostitutes
Posted on October 28, 2008A nationwide FBI operation has freed dozens of children from forced prostitution and has resulted in hundreds of arrests. From CNN:Dozens of juveniles have been freed from forced prostitution by a nationwide operation that resulted in the arrests of hundreds...
Interesting District Court Opinion About Whether Running Hash Values is a Search
Posted on October 28, 2008Orin Kerr has some great coverage and analysis of a case out of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, U.S. v. Crist. From his very lengthy post:First, the facts. Crist is behind on his rent payments, and his landlord starts to...
Rape in International Conflict
Posted on October 28, 2008Stories like this are far too common, but CNN recently covered the ongoing sexual violence in the Congo:Eve Ensler can't find the right words to describe what she's seen and heard."Obscene. Horrible. Out of control...." The activist tosses out a...
Sex Offender Residency Restrictions Popular Despite Ineffectiveness
Posted on October 27, 2008According to an interesting newspaper piece, although research shows that residency restrictions on sex offenders inhibits rehabilitation, new restrictions are being enacted across the country. From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:Despite research that shows sex offender residency requirements actually hamper the rehabilitation...
Halloween Sex Offender Restrictions Roundup
Posted on October 27, 2008As Halloween approaches, law enforcement officials are advising parents to check state sex offender registries before letting their children go Trick-or-Treating. Sex offenders in Missouri are challenging the further restrictions related to Halloween activities...
Supreme Court Denies Cert. for Case Involving Ban of "Rape"
Posted on October 27, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case (previously discussed here and here) involving a Nebraska judge who banned the word 'rape' in a criminal trial for sexual assault. The victim later sued the judge and appealed to the...
No Blogging Until Monday
Posted on October 24, 2008I'm at the advanced empirical legal research workshop at Northwestern, so there won't be any posts for today. I'll have a bunch to catch up on this Monday.
Ninth Circuit: Statutory Rape Not Necessarily A Deportable Offense
Posted on October 23, 2008The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that consensual sex with a minor did not necessarily amount to 'sexual abuse of a minor,' for purposes of mandatory deportation when the immigrant was 20 and his girlfriend was 16. You...
LAPD Failed to Test DNA for Sex Assualt Cases On Time
Posted on October 22, 2008An audit of the Los Angeles Police Department released Monday has revealed that as many as 200 possible sex assault cases have not been prosecuted because police officials did not meet the legal deadlines to test DNA forensic evidence. From...
Vermont Weighing Costs, Benefits of AWA Implementation
Posted on October 22, 2008The State of Vermont stands to lose up to $35,000 in federal funds if it does not enact Adam Walsh Act-complaint legislation. However, that may be the far cheaper option. From The Times Argus:The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety...
Federal Judge Resigns Over Allegations By Former Prostitute
Posted on October 22, 2008U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham Jr. has submitted his resignation to President Bush because of allegations that the Judge asked a prostitute to mislead investigators regarding their relationship. TalkLeft has more. From The Denver Post:A series of sexually charged...
Cert. Denied For Woman Who Refused Settlement of Priest Sex Abuse
Posted on October 21, 2008The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari for a case involving a Rhode Island woman, who turned down an offer from the Catholic Diocese of Providence to settle her lawsuit alleging sexual abuse because she wanted a trial. Her lawsuit was...
Colorado Senator Calls for Federal Judge's Resignation
Posted on October 20, 2008U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) is publicly urging Chief U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham Jr. of the District of Colorado to resign over allegations that he tried to persuade a former prostitute to lie about paying her for sex to...
It's That Time of Year Again, Part II
Posted on October 20, 2008Law enforcement officials in Florida have announced the launch of "a Halloween-themed radio public service announcement" designed to get people to sign up for an e-mail system, which will send out alerts when sex offenders move in. From the Naples...
UK Registered Sex Offenders Increase
Posted on October 20, 2008According to the British Ministry of Justice, the number of registered sex offenders has increased by 3% from last year. From the BBC: The number of registered sex offenders in England and Wales increased by 3% to more than 31,300...
Teen Who Sent Nude Pics of Self Won't Be Classified As Sex Offender
Posted on October 20, 2008The 15 year old girl accused of using a cell phone to send nude pics of herself (previously discussed here), apparently will not be classified as a sex offender. The prosecutor and defense attorney issued a joint statement today. From...
Connecticut and Propensity Evidence
Posted on October 17, 2008apublicdefender has a long, well researched post about propensity evidence in a Connecticut rape case. The post is difficult to excerpt, so you should definitely check out the whole thing. He is a small snippet:So basically, once a rapist always...
ABC Covers Problems of Kids as Child Porn Defendants
Posted on October 17, 2008It's interesting to see a major media source noticing the increase in the cases of teenagers taking nude cell phone pictures and being prosecuted for serious charges:Earlier this year, an Ohio boy reportedly made a sexual cell phone video of...
It's That Time of Year Again
Posted on October 16, 2008The Associated Press is reporting that Maryland sex offenders are required to place signs outside their doors reading 'No candy at this residence,' or face a possible parole violation. We discussed similar requirements last Halloween. From the Washington Post: The...
Texas Attorney General Wants Sex Offender Internet Info
Posted on October 16, 2008Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said yesterday that he would like to expand the state's sex offender register to include Internet information, such as e-mail address and screen names. We previously discussed a similar program from the federal government...
South Carolina School District Plans Sex Offender Checks on Volunteers
Posted on October 16, 2008A school district in South Carolina plans to begin checking the names of parents who volunteer through the state's sex offender register. We recently discussed a similar story out of Colorado. From The Greenville News: The Greenville County school district...
Welcome to the Blogosphere
Posted on October 16, 2008My colleague, Steve Schwinn, is part of the team who have recently started the Constitutional Law Prof Blog (which is part of Law Professor Blogs Network). I'll definitely be reading. Welcome, Steve!
Sex Offender Pleads Guilty to Viewing Child Porn at Library
Posted on October 16, 2008A Georgia sex offender, who was arrested at a library for downloading 'child erotica,' has pled guilty as a result of the incident. From The Times-Herald: James Lee Garner entered his plea on Monday in Coweta Superior Court before Judge...
Update on Judge Samuel Kent
Posted on October 15, 2008You might remember Judge Samuel Kent as the federal district judge in Texas under investigation for all sorts of nasty stuff. Grits for Breakfast has a good post detailing what's happening in the Kent case:Allegations that Kent forced himself on...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 57
Posted on October 15, 2008It's up at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In Mixed signals or ignored signals? posted at Change Happens: the SAFER blog, we get a discussion of the common belief that most non-stranger rapists are merely confusing signals which ignores the...
New Article about Kennedy v. Louisiana
Posted on October 15, 2008Bidish Sarma has written a short article at the Yale Journal Pocket Part about the legacy of the Court's decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana. Sarma was involved in the litigation, so the article comes from an interesting perspective. I think...
Sex Offenders Required to Register Internet Details
Posted on October 14, 2008Under a new law signed by President Bush ("Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008" or the "KIDS Act of 2008,"), social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace will be able to track and expel potential...
Victims as Defendants
Posted on October 14, 2008A few weeks ago, we mentioned a new bill signed into law by New York Gov. David Paterson which shields sexually exploited children from being charged with prostitution. A Stitch in Haste ties together the law with a different case...
Rape Victim Devotes Herself to Science After Misidentifying Her Attacker
Posted on October 13, 2008A Texas rape victim, who discovered that she misidentified her attacker nine years after his death in prison, has decided to study the science of human memory. From The Dallas Morning News:Michele Mallin said she was "100 percent sure" when...
Sex Offenders Required to Wear Blue Wristbands at Mayo Clinic
Posted on October 13, 2008Convicted sex offenders who are receiving care at the Mayo Clinic will now be required to wear blue wristbands in order to identify them. The rule also applies to other 'predatory offenders.' From Rochester Post-Bulletin: Convicted sex and other predatory...
Florida Teacher Avoids Jail, Sex Offender Registry
Posted on October 10, 2008A Florida former middle school teacher avoided jail and registering as a sex offender by pleading no contest to felony battery charges. The woman was accused of having sex with a 14 year old student. She was sentenced to five...
Second Circuit Finds Lack of Probable Cause in Child Porn Warrant
Posted on October 09, 2008The Second Circuit, in United States v. Falso held that a child porn search warrant did not show probable cause under the Circuit's precedent. From the opinion: Absent any allegation that Falso accessed the cpfreedom.com website, and with little or...
Ohio Teen who Sent Nude Pics of Self May Have to Register
Posted on October 09, 2008A 15 year old Ohio girl, who is accused of sending nude pictures of herself to other youths, may have to register as a sex offender if she is convicted. From The Newark Advocate:[The girl] was arrested Friday after school...
Utah Residents Protest Sex Offender Rehab Center
Posted on October 09, 2008Residents of a Utah town are protesting a zoning law allowing for sex offender rehab centers in some neighborhoods. Alliance Youth Services intends to establish a sex offender rehab center about 300 feet from a childcare center. From Fox News:Residents...
ACLU of Pennsylvania Files Suit Against Residency Restrictions
Posted on October 09, 2008The ACLU has sued a Pennsylvania county, claiming that sex offender residency restrictions effectively bar them from living almost anywhere. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has more. From UPI:The American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Pittsburgh...
The Lessons of the Iowa Sex Assault Scandal
Posted on October 08, 2008I've blogged before about the sexual assault at my alma mater by former football players. abyss2hope has an interesting post about the policy lessons we can draw from the incident:To see what can go wrong when a university has a...
Another Variation in Child Porn Sentencing
Posted on October 08, 2008At SL&P, Berman continues to track the variations in prosecutor's requests for child porn sentences at the federal level. The latest data point was described as follows:Regular readers may get tired of my regular anecdotal reports on federal child porn...
Army Seeks to Lower Incidents of Sexual Assault
Posted on October 07, 2008The U.S. Army is launching a new effort to decrease incidents of sexual assault. The move is comes in response to new data showing disparate sexual assaults in the Army relative to the other military branches. From The Wall Street...
Indiana Teacher Gets Two Years Home Detention for Sex with Student
Posted on October 07, 2008An Indiana middle school teacher has been sentenced to two years of home detention, with four years on probation after her sexual 'tryst' with a 15 year old boy. The woman, 36, who taught at an alternative school, must also...
When Residency Restrictions Aren't Enough
Posted on October 06, 2008Florida jockeys with Georgia for the overall most restrictive residency restrictions in the United States. Florida's state laws aren't the harshest, but the actions of local governments to supplement the state law makes for a very onerous scheme of restrictions...
Child Porn Sentences
Posted on October 06, 2008Sentencing Law & Policy (which seems to be having some RSS feed problems for me) has a post discussing the oddities and uncertainties with child pornography sentencing in federal courts:Regular readers may recall some of my recent posts discussing my...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 56
Posted on October 03, 2008It's up at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section:In District Court Finds 30 Year Mandatory Minimum in AWA Unconstitutional posted at Sex Crimes, we get a discussion of the Northern District of Georgia court ruling based on the 8th Amendment...
A New Error in Kennedy
Posted on October 03, 2008CAAFlog has the details on an error (albeit a less significant one) in the majority's statement regarding rehearing in Kennedy:I'm not sure what the word "final" means in that sentence (does he mean "approved"?). But regardless of what "final" means,...
Grits For Breakfast Responds To Texas Registry Change
Posted on October 03, 2008Grits For Breakfast via Pegasus News has a response to a story which we previously discussed about the State of Texas posting the employers of sex offenders, along with other information. From the post: This is a foolish move by...
Kennedy Rehearing Roundup
Posted on October 03, 2008To finally put the blogger's nail in the Kennedy v. Louisiana coffin, here are some interesting links about rehearing (including a couple that were actually posted before the Court voted against rehearing):Death Penalty for Child Rape: How to Measure Consensus?Kennedy...
Father Who Killed Sex Offender In Daughter's Bedroom Won't be Punished
Posted on October 02, 2008Not surprisingly, an Indiana man, who found and killed a man inside his daughter's bedroom, will not be prosecuted. From the Indianapolis Star:A Northwestside man who killed a would-be rapist in his home last weekend was justified in his actions,...
Maine Committee Studies How To Manage Sex Offenders
Posted on October 02, 2008The Kennebec Journal is running an article discussing a committee of Maine legislators tasked with the problem of how the state should manage sex offenders. From the article:Victims of sex crimes and the offenders often live in the same home,...
DOJ To Give States $4M Grant For Adam Walsh Act Compliance
Posted on October 02, 2008The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has announced a nearly $4.3 million grant to assist states in creating and/or enhancing their sex offender registry and notification programs. The grants will help states implement provisions of the federal...
Iowa's Residency Restrictions Has Unintended Consequences
Posted on October 02, 2008A Nebraska TV News station (which evidently likes to repeat its name) has an article discussing the un-anticipated consequences of Iowa's residency restrictions. From the article:Convicted sex offenders whose victims were minors can not live within 2,000 feet of a...
Sex Offender Put in Charge of Kids Area at Pot Festival
Posted on October 01, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy is reporting an unusual story out of California where a female sex offender was apparently placed in charge of a children's play area at a marijuana festival. The Contra Costa Times has more. From Fox News:A...
Washington To Monitor All Potentially Violent Sex Offenders
Posted on October 01, 2008The ABA Journal notes that Washington state plans to require all newly released sex offenders who are considered potentially violent to wear tracking bracelets, for at least the first 30 days. The Seattle Times has more:The state of Washington plans....
Spain Conducts Large Child Porn Crackdown
Posted on October 01, 2008CNN has an article detailing a Spanish investigation that uncovered an international network of child pornography traders. From the article:Spanish police have arrested 121 men and seized millions of computer files in the country's biggest operation against child pornography on...
Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Registration Statute Against Ex Post Facto Challenge
Posted on October 01, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy reports that the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that amendments to the state's sex offender registration and reporting law apply retroactively and do not violate prohibitions on ex post facto laws. The decision itself (which split...
Court Modifies Kennedy Decision
Posted on October 01, 2008From SCOTUSBlog, the Court has modified both the majority and dissenting opinions in Kennedy v. Louisiana by adding footnotes to each opinion. The modifications can be seen here in the modified opinion. Footnote * of the majority opinion now reads:When...
No Action on Kennedy Today
Posted on September 30, 2008As SCOTUSBlog noted, the USSC didn't issue any orders after their Monday conference. However, action on Kennedy could occur at anytime.
California Passes a Law Restricting Sex Offenders from Teaching
Posted on September 30, 2008Via Crime & Consequences, there is an AP story about new California efforts to keep sex offenders from teaching at public schools. The new laws close loopholes in California's teacher licensing system that had allowed some teachers accused or even...
Texas Posts Sex Offenders' Jobs on Registry
Posted on September 29, 2008Crime and Consequences notes that "[i]n addition to a sex offenders' name, home address, photograph and criminal record, the Texas Department of Public Safety is now posting their employers." From WOAI:Just within the past few days, the Department of Public...
New York Protects Exploited Children From Prostitution Charges
Posted on September 29, 2008CrimProf Blog has a post discussing a New York Times article detailing a New York law which will end the practice of charging underage prostitutes. From The New York Times:Ending years of debate and delay, Gov. David A. Paterson on...
My Article on Kennedy Rehearing is Up
Posted on September 29, 2008Thanks to the great efforts of the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, my short article, Is Military Law Relevant to the "Evolving Standards of Decency" Embodied in the Eighth Amendment?, is available here. You can also download a PDF version...
CAAFBlog on the Final Kennedy Brief
Posted on September 26, 2008Col. Sullivan notes some of the positive aspects of the new Louisiana brief:Beyond this and other statements of respect for the military justice system, the brief engages in nuanced discussion of military law reflecting great familiarity with the system...
Sex Offender Held for Being Homeless
Posted on September 26, 2008A Vermont sex offender who was set to be released from prison has been charged with a probation violation because he his homeless. From The Bennington Banner: A sex offender set to be released from prison on Sept. 20 was...
Final Rehearing Brief in Kennedy
Posted on September 25, 2008The last brief is in on the question of whether Kennedy v. Louisiana should be reheard. From Louisiana's new brief:Military law is American law. Yet the briefing to this Court continues to be marred by misstatements that demonstrate an inattention...
New Stimulus Package to Fund AWA
Posted on September 25, 2008Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) have announced the Reid/Byrd Economic Recovery Act of 2008, a stimulus package of $56.2 billion. The bill "extend[s] unemployment insurance benefits for seven weeks and provide[s] money for a range of other...
Colorado School District to Conduct Sex Offender Checks on Volunteers
Posted on September 25, 2008School volunteers in one Colorado city will soon have their names "cross checked with a sex-offender registry." Because the registries are publicly available, the checks should not cost schools "anything but staff time." From The Daily Camera:Boulder Valley School District...
Indiana Appellate Court Upholds Sex Offender Ban
Posted on September 24, 2008The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that although Plainfield, Indiana's ban on sex offenders in the parks does have punitive effects, it is not unconstitutional. The ruling, which may be viewed here, upholds an ordinance "prohibiting persons on the...
Michigan Court Rules that Bestiality Crime Doesn't Result in Registry Listing
Posted on September 24, 2008A recent ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals found that a man who pled no contest "to sodomizing a sheep does not have to register as a sex offender after his release from prison." You can view the opinion...
Oklahoma Judge Disbarred; Will be on Sex Offender Registry
Posted on September 24, 2008The Oklahoma Supreme Court has disbarred a former judge, finding that his "repeated use of a sex device in the courtroom brought shame on the judiciary and the legal profession." The man served a 20 month prison sentence after a...
What's at Stake with the Kennedy Rehearing
Posted on September 23, 2008Peter Verniero recently had this to say:There is something almost sacrosanct about recitations of law contained in decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Lower-court judges, attorneys, law professors and everyday citizens depend on those statements in myriad ways even when...
SORNA Featured in ABA Journal
Posted on September 23, 2008In the ABA Journal, there is an interesting piece in this month's issue about the problems with the AWA registry system embodied in SORNA. The article quotes Wayne Logan who has written extensively and persuasively about sex offender policy and...
Around the Web
Posted on September 22, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy has a post discussing a new article on SSRN entitled: Banishment of Sex Offenders: Individual Liberties, National Rights and the Dormant Commerce Clause, Environmental Justice, and Alternatives. You can view the article here...
Around the Web
Posted on September 19, 2008The Greensboro News Record has an editorial discussing a sex offender registry loophole in North Carolina law. The op-ed discusses a case where a woman, "convicted in 1995 of taking indecent liberties with a child, registered her address as required....
Carnivals Against Sexual Violence 54 and 55
Posted on September 19, 2008I'm behind in reporting the Carnivals at abyss2hope. This is the legal section from number 54:In "In a rape, the rapists are on trial, not the raped" posted at churumuri, we get a discussion of the ruling by the Supreme...
Around the Web
Posted on September 18, 2008EvidenceProf Blog notes that in United States v. Jospeh (2nd Cir. 2008), a Defendant "appealed from his conviction for using his computer to send messages on the Internet to entice an individual he believed to be an underaged girl to...
Col. Sullivan on the New Kennedy Briefs
Posted on September 18, 2008Colonel Sullivan at CAAFlog had some critical remarks for the new brief by Kennedy in Kennedy v. Louisiana:Kennedy's brief displayed unfamiliarity with the military justice system. Any number of military justice experts would have made themselves available to help Kennedy's...
New Briefs in Kennedy v. Louisiana
Posted on September 17, 2008As noted by SCOTUSBlog and Sentencing Law & Policy have noted, new briefs are out in Kennedy v. Louisiana. First up is the brief from Kennedy. This is from the SCOTUSBlog summary:Lawyers for a death-row inmate in Louisiana, arguing that...
District Court Finds 30 Year Mandatory Minimum in AWA Unconstitutional
Posted on September 17, 2008It is very rare to see the 8th Amendment applied in favor of the defendant in non-death case. However, Judge Beverly Martin, of the Northern District of Georgia, in U.S. v. Farley , did just that. The Court held that:......
Around the Web
Posted on September 16, 2008The Las Vegas Review-Journal is running an interesting editorial entitled Upholding our rights: Even sex offenders are entitled to protections of Constitution. The editorial argues that despite being "an unsympathetic lot, ... if the government is allowed to trample and...
New Violent Crime Statistics
Posted on September 15, 2008Both TalkLeft and Grits have posts about the new violent crime statistics. Violent crime was down in 2007 (for the first time since 2005). One of the biggest statistical declines was in the category of "forcible rape." I'm not sure...
Helen Mirren on Date Rape
Posted on September 15, 2008Celebrities often don't do well when talking about politics. Well, if Helen Mirren is an example, talking about rape isn't really a strength of celebrities either. Here is what Mirren had to say in the context of her own experience...
My New Article on SSRN
Posted on September 12, 2008After the Supreme Court requested new briefing in Kennedy v. Louisiana, I decided to start again on a project I had abandoned. I've posted a draft of my short piece, Is Military Law Relevant to the 'Evolving Standards of Decency'...
Around the Web
Posted on September 12, 2008An attorney for Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) has asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to allow Sen. Craig to "withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct after his arrest in a sex-sting operation at an airport men?s room last year."...
Does 18 U.S.C. 242 Permit the Death Penalty for Rape?
Posted on September 11, 2008That was the question that Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy asked and then answered. Before I even read the post, Kent Scheidegger at Crime & Consequences had already pointed the error that Kerr made in his analysis. And so now...
Around the Web
Posted on September 11, 2008A Wisconsin appellate court has ruled that "[p]olice who videotaped a man having sex with his comatose wife in her nursing home room violated his constitutional rights." The man visited his wife, a stroke victim, at a nursing Home in...
Kennedy v. Louisiana Resource Page Updated
Posted on September 11, 2008Because of the USSC's request for new briefing, the Kennedy v. Louisiana resource page has been updated. It will be updated periodically until the Court finally decides if it is going to rehear the case.
Around the Web
Posted on September 10, 2008Crime and Consequences points us to a Poughkeepsie Journal report that "a convicted sex offender who violated the terms of probation less than an hour after he left the courtroom in July received 1 1/2 to five years prison sentence...
Tipping Point Against SORNA?
Posted on September 10, 2008I've long felt that economics are the most significant constraint on increasingly restrictive sex offender policy. That's why less states have civil commitment provisions (very costly) than basic registries (relatively cheap). The Justice Policy Institute has just issued a report...
Court Asks for More Briefing Concerning Kennedy Rehearing
Posted on September 08, 2008It looks like "irregular blogging" turned into "no blogging" during my trip. It's the middle of the night in Scotland and I fly back to the States tomorrow. I have a lot to catch up on, but I just saw...
Irregular Blogging Schedule
Posted on September 03, 2008I am headed out to a conference in Scotland to present a paper that has absolutely nothing to do with sex crime law, so I'm not sure what my blogging schedule will be like for the next week. I'll try...
Only Words?
Posted on September 02, 2008The unusual prosecution for obscenity of a person based entirely upon writings has ended in a plea deal. From the WSJ Law Blog:From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, we have news of an interesting obscenity case, long in the making, that reached...
Another District Court Finds AWA Registration Provisions Unconstitional
Posted on June 14, 2008And the holding was apparently based upon Commerce Clause grounds. Sentencing Law & Policy is covering the story. Like Berman, I couldn't find the opinion (the District of Montana's website has a link for opinions that is under construction). Here...
Not Guilty
Posted on June 13, 2008After all this time, R. Kelly was find not guilty on all counts. I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised. Here is the story from CNN: A Chicago jury has acquitted R. Kelly on all counts at his...
Around the Web
Posted on June 12, 2008More media fallout regarding the sexually explicit files found on the personal server of the Chief Judge of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals occurred today. First, Judge Kozinski (who is currently presiding over a high-profile obscenity trial) acknowledged...
Locked in Limbo
Posted on June 12, 2008A couple of helpful readers let me know about this wonderful series in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the Minnesota's post-incarceration institutionalization program. The story is divided into four parts on the paper's website and you can find those links...
More on ISP Agreement Regarding Child Pornography Sites
Posted on June 11, 2008Dan Filler at The Faculty Lounge covers the story that I mentioned yesterday and addresses the problem of public/private coordination: Private ISP's are (largely) free to shut down any information streams they choose - whether that be child pornography or...
Around the Web
Posted on June 11, 2008The Department of Justice has issued a proposal which would implement provisions of the Adam Walsh Act which would require that "producers of depictions of simulated sexually explicit conduct to maintain records documenting that performers in those depictions are at...
A Famous Judge, Cows, and Obscenity
Posted on June 11, 2008How Appealing reports that a Los Angeles obscenity case will test the community standard in the nation's pornography capital. This article in the LA Times quotes the filmmaker as saying his films feature bestiality and defecation, but still have artistic...
Agreement with ISPs to Block Child Pornography
Posted on June 10, 2008Cuomo has announced an agreement with 3 ISP's to block access to certain websites that post child pornography. Here is the story from the Washington Post: Three of the nation's major Internet service providers have agreed to block customer access...
Around the Web
Posted on June 10, 2008A three judge Nevada Supreme Court panel has ruled that a former sex offender who is serving time for a non-sexual offense does not need a psychological certification before getting parole. Typically, before Nevada sex offenders are released, a panel...
Humanitarian Workers and Rape
Posted on June 10, 2008Via abyss2hope, there was this recent story on CNN about humanitarian workers engaging in sexual violence: Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in several war-ravaged and food-poor countries, a leading European charity has said...
Computer Search Subject to Probation Condition
Posted on June 09, 2008FourthAmendment.com has details on a case where a computer was searched for child pornography subject to a probation condition: Probation search condition that permitted search of work place computer was not unreasonable and furthered the purposes of probation...
Defense Rests in R. Kelly Trial
Posted on June 09, 2008After waiting an eternity for the trial to begin, it is almost over in the blink of an eye: Defense attorneys have rested their case in the child pornography trial of R&B singer R. Kelly in Chicago. The singer looked...
Conviction in Major Obscenity Trial
Posted on June 06, 2008A man who went by the alias "Max Hardcore" has been found guilty of 20 counts of obscenity violations in a Florida federal court: A Tampa federal jury that watched more than eight hours of graphic and violent pornography in...
TalkLeft on FLDS
Posted on June 06, 2008TChris at TalkLeft posts about how the fear of sex abuse led to some mistakes in the handling of small children in the FLDS crackdown: Some of the minors at the FLDS compound may have been coerced into sexual unions...
Around the Web
Posted on June 05, 2008A Michigan sex offender, who walked away from prison work detail 38 years ago, was arrested this week in Wisconsin. The man was sentenced in 1968 to a term of five to ten years after a conviction for taking indecent...
More from SSRN
Posted on June 05, 2008I talked a bit about Berman & Bibas's new article, but I am little behind on the rest of my reading on SSRN (144 essay exams by 1L's will do that to you). Here are some interesting articles posted recently...
Around the Web
Posted on June 04, 2008CrimProf Blog has a post noting an NPR story discussing Kennedy v. Louisiana which is currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. NPR speaks to Ted Cruz, "the former Solicitor General of Texas, who also participated in Kennedy's Supreme Court...
Berman Responds to My Comments
Posted on June 04, 2008In response to my comments about his article (co-authored with Bibas), Berman had this to say: In my view, connecting the emotion/rational divide to the retribution/deterrence divide is insightful, but incomplete. I personally think there is and should be some...
A Trifecta of Fourth Amendment Issues in Sex Crime Cases
Posted on June 04, 2008FourthAmedment.com has had three recent posts concerning search and seizure issues in kiddie porn cases. First up was a post about whether voluntary showing of some computer images constituted consent for viewing of other images on the computer at a....
Berman and Bibas on Capital Emotions
Posted on June 03, 2008Two leading sentencing scholars have posted a paper revolving around the Louisiana v. Kennedy case. Here is the abstract on SSRN: The Supreme Court, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, is about to decide whether the Eighth Amendment forbids capital punishment for...
Sex Crimes Makes Top 100 Criminal Law Blogs List
Posted on June 03, 2008I'm not sure who created this list, but I'm honored to have my humble little blog included. A lot of my favorite blogs make the list as well (including a lot that have very little criminal law content). There are...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 48
Posted on June 03, 2008It is up at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section: In Do we have to have several decades of lawsuits? posted at Change Happens: the SAFER blog, we get a discussion about rape survivors suing their schools (the University of...
Repressed Memory and Sex Abuse by Catholic Priests
Posted on June 03, 2008Largely due to statutes of limitations on claims against Catholic priests in sex abuse cases, the use of repressed memory arguments have played a central role in making such lawsuits possible. At Prawfsblawg, Tim Lytton has an interesting post (related...
Around the Web
Posted on June 02, 2008Prosecutors in California announced that they will seek the death penalty in the murder trial of a convicted sex offender who is accused of killing a young woman whose body was found in a trash can in the mountains near...
Mole Found
Posted on May 30, 2008It looks like the defense argument that R. Kelly was not on the infamous video tape has run into a snag. Apparently, the prosecution has found the mole that the defense previously said was missing: The mole that R. Kelly's...
Around the Web
Posted on May 29, 2008In the R. Kelly trial today, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that "[t]he woman who had been scheduled to testify this week that she had a sexual threesome with R. Kelly and an underage girl will not testify today," but...
I Laughed
Posted on May 29, 2008Someone sent this to me and it is so wrong. But I laughed anyway. Here are the details of Larry Craig "Bobblefoot" night (image and story courtesy of the Smoking Gun): Capitalizing on Senator Larry Craig's restroom bust, a Minnesota...
Will the Kennedy Court Take Notice?
Posted on May 29, 2008One of the trickier parts of the "evolving standards of decency" analysis in Kennedy v. Louisiana concerns what should be made of those states that have considered, but not adopted capital child rape statutes. If Orin Kerr is right that...
The End of the Road for the Madera Case
Posted on May 29, 2008I've been following the Madera case for a while now and when I was out of town, the decision from the 11th Circuit was filed. Basically, the court found for Madera because the prosecution was before a declaration of retroactive...
Around the Web
Posted on May 28, 2008The Volokh Conspiracy has a post discussing a new California bill which "would impose a tax on the sale of, or the storage, use, or other consumption of, tangible personal property that is adult material, as defined, in this state...
Dorf on Williams
Posted on May 28, 2008I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend. I took some extra time off after fulfilling my best man duties at my best friend's wedding. So, I have a lot of catching up to do today. First up is...
Ice Cream Trucks Now Sex Offender Free in California County
Posted on May 22, 2008Updating this previous story, Dan Filler has the details of the California county that has joined other jurisdictions in banning sex offenders from being ice cream truck drivers: Nobody ever lost an election by adopting new punishment regulations for sex...
R. Kelly Trial has Finally Started
Posted on May 22, 2008And there is obviously a lot of coverage around the Web. Here are some of the highlights so far. The infamous sex tape was shown to the jury: Prosecutors played the sex tape at the center of R. Kelly's child...
James Woodard
Posted on May 22, 2008CNN has the story of James Woodard who was exonerated for raping and murdering his girlfriend after 27 years in prison: James Woodard is slowly returning to life. He is starting over after spending 27 years behind bars. He was...
Should a 17 yr. old be charged?
Posted on May 21, 2008From the Lacrosse Tribune comes this story: Felony charges were filed today against a La Crosse teen accused of posting nude photographs of a 16-year-old female on his MySpace page. Alex Phillips, 17, of W4300 Hwy. M, No. 79, was...
GPS Devices and Probable Cause
Posted on May 21, 2008EvidenceProf has the story of how the planting of a GPS device raised questions as to seizures of evidence in the case of the "wooded rapist": Tennessee authorities have apprehended Robert Jason Burdick, the man they suspect of being the...
Odd AWA Ruling From the 5th Circuit
Posted on May 21, 2008Last week, Sentencing Law & Policy had the details about a 5th Circuit decision reversing a sentence under the SORNA provisions of the AWA. Here is a portion of the decision: Sanchez pleaded guilty to failing to register pursuant to...
Around the Web
Posted on May 20, 2008School and law enforcement officials notified a Missouri man that he could not attend his son's eighth-grade graduation, because he was a convicted sex offender and wasn't allowed on school property. The man faces up to four years in prison...
Welcome to the Blogosphere
Posted on May 19, 2008Frequent Sex Crimes commenter, David Hess, has started a new blog, Sex Offenders - A Reality Based Discussion. He already has quite a few interesting posts. I'll definitely be reading.
US v. Williams
Posted on May 19, 2008I've recovering from a nasty cold, but the USSC issuing an opinion in US v. Williams was enough to wake me from my Sudafed-induced daze. You might remember this was the case that Doug Berman said had definite sleeper potential....
Around the Web
Posted on May 19, 2008The New York Times has an article discussing a unique courtroom in Westchester County, New York that handles sex offender cases and almost nothing else. According to the article, the idea was that such courts might cultivate expertise among judges,...
Anonymous Rape Kits
Posted on May 15, 2008Huffington Post has the story of how anonymous rape kit testing will go nationwide over the next year: Starting next year across the country, rape victims too afraid or too ashamed to go to police can undergo an emergency-room forensic...
Residency Restrictions and the USSC
Posted on May 15, 2008Berman posts: It is clear based on lots of lower court litigation that the constitutionality of sex offender residency restrictions will come before the US Supreme Court sooner or later. It is thus interesting to speculate exactly when and how...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 47
Posted on May 15, 2008It has been posted at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section: In Amnesty International Calls for Protocol for Rape Victims at IHS posted at Falmouth Institute/American Indian Report Blog, we get a discussion of the request for people to join...
He Will Be Getting Out of Prison Around 3338 AD
Posted on May 14, 2008Sentencing Law & Policy has the story of a rather lengthy sentence for one sex offender: A convicted sex offender could be sentenced to more than a millenium in prison for molesting two girls, a prosecutor said Thursday. Horace Mann...
Who Are the Online Predators?
Posted on May 14, 2008I'd like to thank Corey for his warm welcome and his gracious offer to guest blog here at Sex Crimes. I often read Corey's fine work as I follow the ongoing social, legal, and political developments that have become our...
Guest Blogger: Steven Erickson
Posted on May 13, 2008I hope you all will join me in welcoming Steven Erickson who will be guest-blogging here at Sex Crimes. Some of you might know him from his blog posts (which I often link to) at Crime & Consequences. Erickson is...
Beyond Rape
Posted on May 13, 2008The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a five part series titled Beyond Rape about one rape survivor's experience with the criminal justice system. Here is a portion of the second piece in the series: Six days after I identified David Francis,...
Congratulations . . .
Posted on May 13, 2008. . . to my 144 Criminal Law students who took their exams today. Good job to all of you. I enjoyed teaching both of my sections a lot (I hope the feeling was mutual). Of course, over the next...
Court Rules Ohio's AWA Compliance Statute Unconstitutional
Posted on May 12, 2008In Evans v. Ohio, a court in Cuyahoga County ruled that the state's AWA compliance statute is unconstitutional because it violates the Ohio Constitution's prohibition against retroactive punishments and violates the ex post facto clause of the U.S. Constitution...
National Conference on Prostitution, Sex Work and Human Trafficking
Posted on May 09, 2008The University of Toledo is hosting the 5th Annual National Conference on Prostitution, Sex Work and Human Trafficking on September 18-19, 2008: The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners across the country and abroad to...
More on Massachusetts Rape by Fraud Statute
Posted on May 09, 2008NPR has more on the Massachusetts proposal to make rape by fraud a felony: Massachusetts is the latest state to consider putting a new crime on the books: rape by fraud. Currently, a sex act only qualifies as rape if...
Difficulties with Enforcing City Residency Restrictions
Posted on May 08, 2008A helpful reader sent me this article about some of the problems with enforcing residency restriction laws: It's one thing to adopt a bylaw restricting where convicted sex offenders can live. It's another matter to enforce the new rules. Southborough...
BJS Stats on Domestic Violence
Posted on May 08, 2008Via Empirical Legal Studies, I see that the Bureau of Justice Statistics has released a report concerning domestic violence prosecution and punishment. Among the many notable findings is this tidbit: Prosecuted domestic sexual assault defendants had a higher overall conviction...
US v. Williams as a Sleeper Case
Posted on May 08, 2008US v. Williams concerns the constitutionality of the PROTECT Act, yet another child pornography law which potentially runs afoul of the First Amendment. The Court granted cert to hear the case in March 2007 and heard arguments in the case....
Facebook and Sex Offenders
Posted on May 08, 2008Facebook is joining efforts by other online social networking websites by trying to limit sex offender access to the website: Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from...
Fear of Pedophiles
Posted on May 07, 2008Dan Filler at The Faculty Lounge continues to post about sex crime issues with an interesting bit about how the government plays on the fear of pedophiles. Filler was writing in response to this online ad. Here is what he...
DNA Evidence in 9th Circuit Appeal
Posted on May 07, 2008The 9th Circuit vacated the sexual assault conviction of a man because the prosecution exaggerated the reliability of the DNA evidence. From the LA Times: A Nevada man sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting a young girl should...
Legal Update on R. Kelly Trial
Posted on May 06, 2008After much anticipation and an incredibly long wait, the R. Kelly proceedings are finally underway. However, coverage has been hard to come by because of the heavy-handed restrictions put in place by the judge handling the case. EvidenceProf has the....
New Mexico Cult Leader Arrested on Sex Crime Charges
Posted on May 06, 2008While not currently the biggest criminal law story regarding a religious compound, a leader in New Mexico has been arrested on sex crime charges. It seems like a bad time to be in a religious compound. From CNN: The leader...
A Poorly Drafted Sex Crime Law and "Rape by Fraud"
Posted on May 05, 2008Eugene Volokh (who has been doing a lot of great blogging about sex crime issues lately) has the story of a law which would unintentionally criminalize adultery in Massachusetts: That's what would happen under a proposed statute that's being promoted...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 46
Posted on May 05, 2008It went up last week at abyss2hope. As always, here is the legal section: In The Survivor Manual: Detective speaks about Report It. posted at Allegory of the Cave, we get a discussion of a police officer's comments about what...
Around the Web
Posted on May 01, 2008The Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting article entitled: What Are the Ages of Consent Throughout the Western World? The article focuses primarily on the Western World: "the U.S., Europe West of the Iron Curtain, plus the Western Anglosphere, which is...
New on SSRN
Posted on April 30, 2008There a couple interesting new sex-crime related articles up on SSRN. First, there is an article by Jenny Roberts at Syracuse titled The Myth of Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions: Involuntary Commitment of Sexually Violent Predators. The article is forthcoming...
Are There any Lawyers on Staff for Law & Order: SVU
Posted on April 30, 2008Given the subject matter of this blog, it probably isn't surprising that I have been a regular viewer of Law & Order: SVU. For a while, it was the best of the various Law & Order shows. The show often...
Was "Rocket" a Sex Criminal?
Posted on April 29, 2008While the statute of limitations has long since passed, the allegations being made against Roger Clemens indicate that he may have committed statutory rape. If he did have sexual relations with Mindy McCready when she was only 15 years old,...
Around the Web
Posted on April 28, 2008The Stanford Daily has an article covering law professor Jeffrey Fisher, who recently argued Kennedy v. Louisiana before the U.S. Supreme Court. According to Fisher, "[t]his was definitely one of the very biggest [cases] that I?ve done, in terms of...
Age of Consent
Posted on April 28, 2008After Rick Hills posted this insightful post at Prawfsblawg about strange results of American age of consent law, I took the opportunity to talk about the oddities described in Hills's post. I'm not sure if Hills's post also inspired Eugene...
Horrible Incest and Rape Case in Austria
Posted on April 28, 2008The media has been focusing a lot on this truly horrific incest and rape case: Authorities in Austria are trying to piece together the details of how a 73-year-old man managed to keep his daughter imprisoned in a windowless cellar...
Around the Web
Posted on April 25, 2008An Indiana state court judge rejected a request by a convicted sex offender to be allowed to watch his son play baseball in a city park. The man completed his sexual battery sentence in 1996 and no longer was required...
Military Contractor Rape
Posted on April 24, 2008The Nation has the story of a horrible set of rapes by military contractors in Iraq in Afghanistan: As news broke of the rape of yet another US military contractor employee in Iraq [see "Another KBR Rape Case" at thenation.com],...
Teenage Sex and Stupidity
Posted on April 24, 2008Rick Hills posts two recent cases which illustrate how American law often addresses teenage (or adolescent) sexuality in unusual ways: Item #1: Two teenagers -- a sixteen-year-old girl and a seventeen-year-old boy -- took racy pictures of themselves with their...
Around the Web
Posted on April 23, 2008The San Jose Mercury News has an interesting story which discusses how Oakland police are now treating child prostitutes as victims, instead of criminals. The article also mentions that the Oakland Police Department has been awarded a $300,000 federal grant...
Sex Crimes Make for Good TV
Posted on April 23, 2008It's seems as though Law & Order isn't the only TV show that uses stories "ripped from the headlines." As Dahlia Lithwick at Convictions notes, Boston Legal just broadcast its version of the Kennedy v. Louisiana case: Anyone happen to...
When Podiatrists Attack
Posted on April 23, 2008From the files of strange sex crimes, here is the latest addition from Illinois: A podiatrist who practiced on Chicago's South Side was found guilty Monday of sexually assaulting an elderly woman after she sought treatment for a sprained ankle...
Around the Web
Posted on April 22, 2008Grits for Breakfast reports that Oklahoma authorities have "charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail." The Sheriff resigned just as state prosecutors...
Maryland Court of Appeals Reverses Maouloud Baby Decision
Posted on April 22, 2008Right after I started this blog, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals issued an opinion in Maryland v. Maouloud Baby. The court held that a person couldn't withdraw consent from a sex act once that sex act had begun. The...
Around the Web
Posted on April 21, 2008The New York Times reports that the judge in the Texas polygamous sect case has ordered all 416 children seized by authorities to be "held in protective custody by the state pending further investigation into whether they had been abused,...
Missouri Can't Wait
Posted on April 21, 2008While all of us wait to see if the Supreme Court will uphold the statute in Kennedy, Missouri is chomping at the bit to adopt a capital child rape statute: Emphasizing that the most heinous crimes deserve the harshest penalty,...
More on the Powers Case
Posted on April 21, 2008Ilya Somin added another post at Volokh Conspiracy to the discussion of whether the AWA registration provisions run afoul of the Commerce Clause after Raich: In my earlier post on the federal district court decision striking down a part of...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 45
Posted on April 21, 2008It went up last week at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section: In Voluntary intoxication as a defence to rape posted at Criminal Letters, we get a discussion of the trial of Marek Mierzwa where he was found not guilty...
Florida District Court Strikes Down Registry Provisions of AWA on Commerce Clause Grounds
Posted on April 20, 2008I never blog on weekends, but since everyone else is beating me to the punch on a big story that I was going to blog about on Monday, I had to chime in. The title of the post says it...
CLEAR Initiative Symposium - Sex Crimes Panel Live Blog
Posted on April 18, 2008My comments are in italics. Everything else can be attributed in paraphrase to the speaker. First up is Terri Mascherin: She says they cheated by putting "sex crimes" in the title and says that is probably why most of the...
New Article at Stateline
Posted on April 18, 2008Stateline has done a fantastic job covering sex offender law issues in the past. Here is the latest article by John Gramlich concerning crackdowns on sex offenders: From California to North Carolina, a flood of litigation has accompanied an expansion...
Blogging at the CLEAR Initiative Symposium
Posted on April 18, 2008Today, John Marshall Law School and the John Marshall Law Review are hosting the Criminal Law Edit, Alignment and Reform (CLEAR) Initiative: A Symposium on the New Illinois Criminal Code. The conference has a variety of speakers from the state...
Around the Web
Posted on April 17, 2008Prosecutors in Utah have charged a 15-year-old boy with a felony in a nude cell phone picture case. He was charged with one felony count of dealing material harmful to a minor, and three misdemeanor lewdness counts. We have previously...
Kennedy - The Day After Posts
Posted on April 17, 2008Following the oral argument, here are some interesting links from around the Web: Supreme Court debates execution in child rape case, Times-Picayune (HT: How Appealing) Supreme Court ponders death for rapists of children, McClatchy Newspapers (HT: How Appealing) Justices skeptical...
SCOTUSBlog's Summary of Kennedy Argument
Posted on April 16, 2008You have seen my summary over several posts. Here is the always diligent and interesting Lyle Denniston summarizing the argument in Kennedy. This is a small portion: Those exchanges may turn out to be significant because, if Coker does not,...
The Petitioner's Rebuttal
Posted on April 16, 2008Lastly, the Petitioner had a brief rebuttal: He goes right to the narrowing argument. He breaks down the numbers in the briefs about how many people are eligible for the death penalty under the Louisiana law. The Petitioner also explains...
Texas's Argument
Posted on April 16, 2008Next up is Texas who is an amici arguing on behalf of Louisiana: Texas starts off with Megan's and Jessica's laws - I'm really baffled by this. They also say seven (not the normal six) states factor into the evolving...
Louisiana's Argument
Posted on April 16, 2008In this post, I've attempted to summarize the key arguments by Louisiana: The Respondent starts off with the brutal details of the fact. Stevens interjected to point out that the victim's physical injuries were not, in fact, "permanent" as the...
A Summary of the Petitioner's Argument
Posted on April 16, 2008Here is my summary of the key arguments on my first read through of the transcript of the Petitioner's argument: Interestingly, Scalia starts the questioning of the Petitioner on the second, narrowing issue. This gives some credence to my idea...
Argument Transcript for Kennedy is Up
Posted on April 16, 2008I'm reading through it now. You can find it here. Related Posts: Kennedy v. Louisiana Resource Page
Markel, Retribution, and Kennedy
Posted on April 16, 2008Dan Markel has an interesting post at PrawfsBlawg about how retributive theory fits into the Kennedy case: This article of mine from a couple years ago (update: sorry, I had the wrong link earlier) tries to systematically undermine that conclusion....
How Does Baze Affect Kennedy?
Posted on April 16, 2008You might have heard that the lethal injection protocol decision, Baze, was issued today. As you would expect, the place to go for coverage of the case is Sentencing Law & Policy. Since a major Eighth Amendment decision was issued...
One of These Statutes Is Not Like the Others
Posted on April 16, 2008Of the six states that currently have capital child rape statutes, Louisiana's is perhaps the most unusual of the group. In evaluating an "emerging standard of decency" under the Eighth Amendment, it seems to make sense to treat the six...
Mid-Morning Kennedy Links
Posted on April 16, 2008There is more coverage across the web: No death penalty for rapists, Los Angeles Times Court meeting to weigh death penalty for child rapists, Associated Press Should child rapists be executed? High court to rule, McClatchy Newspapers (HT: How Appealing)...
Filler on Kennedy
Posted on April 16, 2008Dan Filler has a pair of interesting posts at the Faculty Lounge connecting the Kennedy case with the issues surrounding Megan's Law. First, he emphasizes the commonality of rhetoric used to support Megan's Laws and the Louisiana capital child rape...
Morning Kennedy Links
Posted on April 16, 2008Since the oral argument is today, I'm sure there will be a lot of coverage of the Kennedy case. To start things off, here are a few major media links: The Limits of the Death Penalty, New York Times A...
Around the Web
Posted on April 15, 2008CBS News is reporting on a new phenomenon: teens using their cell phones to send nude pictures of themselves. According to the article, these messages "often spread quickly and sometimes find their way to public Web sites." The article mentions...
The Other Argument in Kennedy
Posted on April 15, 2008The first argument being argued in Kennedy, that capital child rape statutes are (not) part of an evolving standard of decency, has overshadowed the second argument in media and web coverage. The second argument concerns whether the class of defendants...
CNN on Kennedy
Posted on April 15, 2008Kennedy v. Louisiana is the headline story right now on CNN: For the first time in 44 years, a state is preparing to execute a man for a felony other than murder. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday...
Around the Web
Posted on April 01, 2008The Associate Press is reporting that a Kansas judge has ordered a convicted sex offender to post "signs around his house and a decal on his car proclaiming that he is a sex offender." The signs in front of his...
I'm Speechless - Sex Crime Allegations Against Formula 1 Organization President
Posted on March 31, 2008Periodically, I see a sex crime reported in the news and I think to myself that what I am reading is truly the strangest most depraved thing I have ever seen. Of course, I'm always wrong and run across a...
I'm in Buffalo
Posted on March 29, 2008I'm here coaching our Criminal Law moot court team in the Weschler National Criminal Law Moot Court competition. Interestingly, the problem for them to argue this year is the Kennedy v. Louisiana case. I'm looking forward to seeing how law...
A Bunch of New Kennedy Posts
Posted on March 27, 2008I haven't had time to post about all the great recent posts concerning Louisiana v. Kennedy. Sentencing Law & Policy has three interesting posts: Show me support for capital child rape laws (concerning the MO. amicus brief) Is the editorial...
Is Bigfoot a Sex Offender?
Posted on March 27, 2008From Virginia, we get this story which defies easy explanation: A man who claims that he was molested by Bigfoot as a child was ordered to serve 20 years in prison yesterday for his own molestation-related activities. Gene R. Morrill,...
Are Sex Offenders Ill?
Posted on March 26, 2008One of the assumptions that plagues policy discussions about sex offender policy is that sex offenders are mentally ill. This assumption usually leads to sometimes oppositional conclusions. First, some believe that offenders are sick, but incurable. This means they require...
The New New York Governor and Megan's Law
Posted on March 26, 2008Dan Filler at the Faculty Lounge highlighted an unusual characteristic of the new governor of New York: he has been a vocal critic of Megan's Law: In the U.S. House, Megan's Law passed by a415-3 vote - and only one...
Around the Web
Posted on March 26, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy notes that the Utah-based Deseret Morning News has published a four-part series on sex offenders. The articles look at the prevalence of sex abuse within the state, the differences between adult and juvenile sex offenders, how...
Bizarre New Proposal in Massachusetts
Posted on March 25, 2008Dan Filler, at the new blog Faculty Lounge, points to a really odd proposal for restricting sex offenders in Massachusetts: Massachusetts state legislator Demetrius Atsalis has proposed that high risk sex offenders be prohibited from voting at polling places located...
Around the Web
Posted on March 25, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy has a post discussing California's reaction to Jessica's Law. From the article: "As the state Supreme Court considers the validity of California's sex-offender statute, known as Jessica's Law, San Diego and other cities are passing tougher...
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 42
Posted on March 25, 2008It went up at abyss2hope while I was out of the country. This is the Legal section: In The Truth About (Rape) posted at PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer, we get a discussion about the irreversible impact...
Welcome to the Blogosphere, Convictions
Posted on March 25, 2008Via Volokh and Sentencing Law & Policy, I see Slate is offering up a new blog with an amazing list of contributors named Convictions. I agree with Berman that the form of the Blog isn't the best and it isn't...
Don't Click that Link
Posted on March 25, 2008Both Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy and Jeralyn at TalkLeft recently covered the story of how the FBI is utilizing fake child porn links to get probable cause for home searches. This is from the media account of the story:...
Around the Web
Posted on March 24, 2008How Appealing reports that a divided three-judge Ninth Circuit panel has recently ruled that "[d]ouble jeopardy prevents a criminal defendant from being convicted for the federal offenses of receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography when the conduct...
I'm Back
Posted on March 24, 2008I'm back in town and have a lot to catch up on. I'm weeding through all of my emails now. I hope you all enjoyed the auto-posting while I was gone. I have a bunch of things to post about...
Rape Shield Laws at EvidenceProf
Posted on March 20, 2008EvidenceProf Blog has had quite a few posts on rape shield laws that raise very difficult questions. Here is another one: The Court of Appeals of Kansas' recent opinion in State v. Jackson, 2008 WL 538948 (Kan.App. 2008), contains an...
People v. Madera (Part III)
Posted on March 19, 2008On this last post about Madera, I cover the Appellant's reply brief. Sadly, the reply brief doesn't make any new arguments in regards to the commerce clause. There are a lot of interesting arguments that you should check out for...
People v. Madera (Part II)
Posted on March 18, 2008Yesterday, I covered the Appellant's brief. Today I cover the government's response to the commerce clause argument. The government spends substantially more time on the commerce clause issue, so I will only excerpt key portions below. Madera concedes that 18...
Blog Against Sexual Violence Day
Posted on March 17, 2008As abyss2hope notes, it is on April 3, 2008. I will definitely be participating again this year.
People v. Madera (Part I)
Posted on March 17, 2008Some of you might remember an AWA case in Florida that I blogged about some time ago: People v. Madera. At the time, I remarked that, "I think to ignore Morrison and Lopez in its analysis puts the opinion on...
Problems in Sex Crime Policy Advocacy
Posted on March 14, 2008I have advocated certain policy reforms that many would argue are "soft" on sex crimes. I've also advocated reforms that might be perceived as being unfairly "hard" on sex crimes. In each case, I may find myself agreeing with persons...
20/20 on Age of Consent
Posted on March 14, 2008As seen on the new grey-at-law blog, 20/20 is showing a special program titled "Age of Consent" tonight. I won't be in the country to see it, so if you have any comments on the program, post them here.
Another Residency Restriction Article on SSRN
Posted on March 13, 2008Proving that I really need to subscribe to various SSRN feeds (as opposed to checking periodically) so that Berman stops scooping me on sex crime articles, Sentencing Law & Policy directs us to this article on SSRN by Asmara Johnson:...
Criminal Law in Virtual Worlds
Posted on March 13, 2008As noted on Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr has posted a very interesting article on SSRN about regulating virtual worlds. He is very much in favor of a hands-off approach: When does conduct by an online player in a virtual world...
Kennedy v. Louisiana Respondent's Merits Brief
Posted on March 13, 2008As reflected in an update to the Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana Resource Page, the Respondent's merits brief is now available here. You can expect more coverage of this brief in the near future.
Around the Web
Posted on March 12, 2008LexisNexis has announced the release of Sex Offender Alerts, "a solution that provides law enforcement officials with automated notification of the location of sex offenders, especially as they move from one law enforcement jurisdiction to another." These alerts are designed...
Is There a Trend?
Posted on March 12, 2008With the Respondent's brief in Kennedy v. Louisiana today, I have the case on my mind. One of the key points in the matter will be whether there is an "evolving" trend toward applying the death penalty to the crime...
Spitzer Resigns!
Posted on March 12, 2008Here is the story from CNN: Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday that he will step down from the state's top office, saying he cannot allow his "private failings to disrupt the public's work." "I am deeply sorry that I did...
I'm Out of the Country - Blogging Will Continue as Normal
Posted on March 12, 2008I'm going to be out of the country from tomorrow until the following Friday. I'll have no Internet access and won't be responding to emails. I'm already way behind on email (sorry about that), but I'll catch up when I...
Spitzer Roundup
Posted on March 11, 2008I don't have much new to add beyond my initial post on the subject of Spitzer. I'm just waiting to see if and when he will resign (I think it seems likely) and if and when he will be indicted...
Around the Web
Posted on March 10, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy notes an interesting New York Times article about sex offender tracking. The article discusses the person who runs Parents for Megan?s Law and the Crime Victims? Center. The organization "has been painstakingly compiling such information about...
Governor Spitzer Linked to a Prostitution Ring (Updated)
Posted on March 10, 2008The New York Times has the details: Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning. Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top...
New Sex Offender Law in Virgina
Posted on March 10, 2008French-kissing someone under the age of 13 if you are an adult will land you on the sex offender registry in the state if the recently passed bill is signed into law: State legislators passed a law Saturday that would...
So Long to "The Wire"
Posted on March 10, 2008I echo Rick Garnett's sentiments after seeing the series finale to "The Wire" last night on HBO. While it was about drug crimes and not sex crimes, I think anyone interested in criminal justice should watch the series. It was...
New York Times on To Catch a Predator
Posted on March 10, 2008The Times has a very interesting article about To Catch a Predator and the suicide that resulted during a raid. The article really focuses on a point that I think is the genuine problem with the show - the coordination...
Around the Web
Posted on March 07, 2008Sentencing Law and Policy also reports that a split 10th Circuit panel has upheld the reasonableness of a below-guideline sentence in a sex offense case. The case (available here) is US v. Smart, No. 06-6120 (10th Cir. Mar. 4, 2008)....
Interesting New Article on Registration and Notification Laws
Posted on March 07, 2008J.J. Prescott, of Michigan, and Jonah Rockoff, of Columbia Business, have posted a very interesting empirical study concerning the efficacy of sex offender registration and notification laws on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In recent decades, sex offenders have been...
Around the Web
Posted on March 06, 2008CNN is reporting that 14 Americans are in custody after an FBI crackdown on a well-organized suspected child pornography ring. The group allegedly distributed more than 400,000 lewd pictures and movies. The Nevada Appeal has an article discussing state legislative...
Sex Offender Ghettos
Posted on March 06, 2008I have long thought that sex offender ghettos are an inevitable result of residency restrictions. A while ago, there was an excellent New York Magazine article about a sex offender "cluster" in Long Island. Once these ghettos communities form, the...
Failure to Prosecute TYC Sex Abuse Cases Doesn't Stop Election Victory
Posted on March 05, 2008Grits has the details: There's an old saying in politics that a gerrymandered incumbent can typically only be defeated if they're caught with a "dead girl or a live boy," which explains why the Pyote case generated such turmoil in...
New Article on Residency Restrictions
Posted on March 05, 2008Concurring Opinions is nice enough to post the tables of contents of leading law reviews. Like Doug Berman, I noticed that the recent Northwestern University Law Review includes a student note on the subject of residency restrictions. I read through....
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 42
Posted on March 05, 2008It's at abyss2hope. Here is the legal section: In First-ever global anti-human trafficking forum opens posted at Holly's Fight to Stop Violence, we get a discussion of the United Nations forum held in Vienna, Austria with 1200 experts, legislators, law...
Welcome to the Blogosphere
Posted on March 05, 2008I see from Steven Erickson at Crime and Consequences that there is a new addition to the criminal law blogosphere. The blog is "Less Than the Least" and features Bill Stuntz at Harvard and David Skeel at Penn. It isn't...
Around the Web
Posted on March 04, 2008How Appealing reports that the State of Texas is seeking a rehearing en banc of the Fifth Circuit ruling about the state's sex toy law. You can read the petition here. The New Hampshire House of Representatives will soon vote...
No Posts Until Tuesday
Posted on February 29, 2008I'm out of the country with limited Internet access. So, there won't be any new posts until Tuesday.
Around the Web
Posted on February 28, 2008The ABA Journal reports that one in 100 adults in the U.S. is serving time in prison or jail right now. According to 2006 Justice Department figures, the numbers are even higher for minority groups: 1 in 36 Hispanic adults...
Markel's Sex Ed License
Posted on February 28, 2008A little while ago, I posted about Dan Markel's questions about a statutory rape case and about the age of consent for marriage. As part of that discussion, Markel raised the possibility of issuing a Sex Ed License to allow...
We're Number 43!
Posted on February 28, 2008It doesn't have a nice ring to it, but it's nice to be recognized as the 43rd most influential law faculty blog by The Race to the Bottom. I just have to say: look out TortsProf Blog - we're coming...
Around the Web
Posted on February 27, 2008The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog is reporting that NBC is being sued following an incident produced for the ?To Catch a Predator? series. A Texas prosecutor contacted a decoy who had been posing as a 13 year-old boy, which...
Strange Indiana Ruling on Residency Restrictions
Posted on February 27, 2008A helpful reader drew my attention to this lower court ruling in Indiana (on the Indiana Law Blog) concerning residency restrictions in the state. In analyzing whether the residency restrictions were designed to punish offenders, the court seemed to make...
Rape on YouTube
Posted on February 26, 2008This story out of England is hard to believe: SICK footage of a young mum allegedly being gang-raped in front of her kids has been put online for all the world to see. The horrific three-minute film appears to have...
Three New Amicus Briefs in Kennedy
Posted on February 25, 2008Only two appeared on last Thursday, but now there are five total amicus briefs for the Petitioner. First up is a brief from Leading British Law Associations, Scholars, Queen's Counsel, and Former Law Lords. That brief is primarily focused on...
NCJRS Abstracts
Posted on February 25, 2008Michael Connelly brings our attention to three new NCJRS studies: Denial and Minimization Among Sexual Offenders: Posttreatment Presentation and Association with Sexual Recidivism. This study examines "the relationship between sexual recidivism and posttreatment denial and minimization among sex offenders in...
Around the Web
Posted on February 25, 2008NPR's All Things Considered discusses a new report which find that more California sex offenders are homeless because of the state's residency restrictions. The report is available here. Sentencing Law and Policy also points to a really interesting L...
Amicus Briefs for Petitioner in Kennedy
Posted on February 22, 2008The amicus briefs in favor of the Petitioner in Kennedy v. Louisiana were due yesterday and they are now available online. The first brief is from the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The second is from the ACLU and...
Around the Web
Posted on February 21, 2008Crime and Consequences reports that the relatives of a murder victim are asking the British government to restore the death penalty. The man became a suspect after his DNA matched samples found on the nude bodies of the five women...
Erickson, Technocorrections, and Sex Offenders
Posted on February 20, 2008The always level-headed Steven Erickson offered some thoughts about sex offender policy in response to this article that I blogged about here. There are a lot of interesting points made by Erickson (so check out the whole post), but here...
The Property Rights Argument is Gaining Force
Posted on February 20, 2008After the Georgia takings case was decided, I downplayed the importance of the decision. I felt that the takings arguments only applied to a limited number of cases under a few statutes. However, two more state courts have issued decisions...
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