text:
If you believe it is ok to deny registered sex offenders human rights or U.S. Constitutional rights. If you do not believe registered sex offenders are denied their human and constitutional rights or if you are against free speech.
Please leave this web page now. Thank you.
By remaining on this web page you here by acknowledge that you support human rights and United States constitutional rights for registered sex offenders and that you support freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is understood to be fundamental in a democracy. The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights.
This blog is not for people to be critical of what is posted here and if the reader is critical of anything here than that means they did not read the disclaimer on the top of each of the pages here and are not welcome here and should stop reading and leave this blog upon my request and in the name of freedom of speech, and my rights as a American citizen.
No sexual abuse is ever acceptable. Sex offense laws and policies should be based on sound research and common sense, not fear, panic or paranoia. Current laws and policies that paint all sex offenders with one broad brush are counter- productive, wasteful, and cause needless harm. Each offense must be judged on its own merits with a punishment that fits the crime and does not waste taxpayer dollars. The public sex offender registry and residency restriction laws do not protect children but instead ostracize and dehumanize individuals and their families. Money spent on purely punitive measures would be better used for prevention, healing, and rehabilitation.
The author of SO FAQ does not affiliate with any other organization or people on the internet or the world for that matter. I have been saying this since I first logged on to the internet. Just because I like organizations like the ACLU; does not mean I believe in everything they believe in or stand for. Just like in our great country when we vote; we will never believe in everything the candidate we vote for; believes in or stands for. That does not mean we are should not vote.
I can see no better reason to start my new blog page with the end of my last blog page:
From: https://www.autostraddle.com/finally-free-four-wrongfully-convicted-latina-lesbians-cleared-on-all-charges-by-texas-court-360194/
November 23, 2016 at 11:45am UTC
I have read about this story many times and am very, very happy these young ladies are out of prison. In Texas there is a high probability you may die in the prison system; so at least they are still alive, too. I hope they dedicate their lives to helping others under the same human rights violations. The absolutely horrifying way these young ladies have had to suffer; for something they never did is unconscionable. When will Texas ever learn not to do things like this to people?
The sad thing is it probably took the movie to bring this to the attention of the public enough to embarrass Texas enough; to finally do the right thing. I always say to the registered sex offender; silence = death. That is the reason so many suffer because no one say's I will not "Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
Finally Free! Four Wrongfully Convicted Latina Lesbians Cleared on All Charges by Texas Court
After two decades since they were accused of a crime they didn't commit and languished in prison for more than a decade, four Latina lesbians from San Antonio are finally free. This morning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez were cleared on all charges and legally exonerated after being convicted of sexually assaulting two little girls in 1997.
The next thing I am going to do is start adding my art work here.
Sex offender doesn't have to reveal sexual history, Utah Supreme Court rules
From: http://fox13now.com/2016/11/27/sex-offender-doesnt-have-to-reveal-sexual-history-utah-supreme-court-rules/
SALT LAKE CITY — A convicted sex offender does not have to reveal his complete sexual history as a condition of his parole, the Utah Supreme Court has ruled.
Brendt Thomas Bennett sued the Utah Department of Corrections after his parole was revoked when he was ordered to disclose his sexual history — including any uncharged sex crimes — as a part of sex offender treatment. The Utah Supreme Court said in a ruling released Saturday night that it violates his Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination.
"We hold that a threat to revoke a defendant's parole constitutes compulsion for purposes of the Fifth Amendment," Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Durrant wrote.
Bennett pleaded guilty to rape of a child back in 2000. He was paroled from the Utah State Prison in 2007 into the Bonneville Community Correctional Center, with an order that he complete sex offender treatment there. As part of the program, the court said in its ruling, Bennett was ordered to make a disclosure of his sexual history to a therapist and in a polygraph exam.
"Mr. ________ invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and, though he answered some of the questions in a general way, he refused to provide more specific answers. He claims that the 'treatment team pointedly demanded answers to questions that would require me to incriminate myself,'" Chief Justice Durrant wrote.
Mr.________'s refusal to discuss it apparently led to his parole being revoked and his return to prison. A lower court ruled against Mr. ________, who appealed to the state's top court. The Utah Supreme Court sided with Mr. ________, and also chastised lower courts for not providing him with a lawyer as he fought the parole revocation.
In its ruling, the Utah Supreme Court said it was not rejecting the "valid and important rehabilitative purposes of sex offender treatment programs."
"Although the State argues that our decision today will undermine the purposes and effectiveness of sex offender treatment programs, a compelling state interest does not outweigh an individual's Fifth Amendment rights," Chief Justice Durrant wrote.
The ruling does not overturn Mr. ________'s conviction, but sends his parole issue back to a lower court to be decided.
I used to like North Carolina, been there a couple times. Once while my wife was at Fort Gordon for her AIT. I have no idea why these people are so cruel. I remember North Carolina as a friendly happy place.
From: Here
Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down Absurdly Repressive North Carolina Sex Offender Law
North Carolina's efforts to drive sex offenders out of public life hit another roadblock on Wednesday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit held that two key provisions of a repressive sex offender law violate the Constitution. The ruling marks the second time this year that a federal appeals court has issued a harsh rebuke to a state for enacting outrageous restrictions against former sex offenders, after the 6th Circuit upbraided Michigan for turning sex offender registrants into "moral lepers." Wednesday's decision is also a victory for reality-based jurisprudence: The court refused to accept North Carolina's baseless assertions that former sex offenders are dangerous forever, instead demanding evidence that its draconian infringements on constitutionally protected liberties actually help anybody.
The North Carolina law at issue bars sex offenders—including those whose crimes do not involve minors—from visiting "any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled" activities. A group of sex offenders challenged the law as a violation of the Due Process Clause, which proscribes laws so vague that a reasonably intelligent person could not understand what behavior they prohibit. Law enforcement officers have used this provision to indefinitely exclude sex offenders from G-rated movies, fast food restaurants, hospitals, museums, fairgrounds, and softball games, because children might be present.
But, of course, children might be present in almost any public space, and the law's phrasing is so hazy that it could be read to punish any sex offenders who leave their homes. As the 4th Circuit explained, "neither an ordinary citizen nor a law enforcement officer could reasonably determine what activity [is] criminalized" by the law. "As a consequence," the court concluded, it "does not meet the standards of due process because it is unconstitutionally vague."
Luckily for North Carolina, another, more specific provision of the law bars sex offenders from going "within 300 feet of any location intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors"—including "malls, shopping centers, or other property open to the general public." Unluckily for North Carolina, this clause violates the First Amendment. The law's sweeping breadth, the 4th Circuit wrote, inhibits offenders' ability "to go to a wide variety of places associated with First Amendment activity," including "public streets, parks, and other public facilities." It thus seriously interferes with offenders' freedom of expression and association.
To pass constitutional muster, these "sweeping restrictions" on First Amendment freedoms must "materially advance an important or substantial government interest." Put differently, all North Carolina had to do to justify its law was put forth persuasive evidence that barring sex offenders from public facilities protects women and children, as the legislature insisted it would in passing the statute. It could do so with proof that former sex offenders frequently re-offend, even after prison and parole.
But North Carolina could do no such thing. "The only 'evidence' proffered by the State," the court explained, "consisted of citations to a list of cases in which sex offenders had re-offended after a prior conviction. … None of these cases suggest with any degree of reliability that offenders with only adult victims are more likely to reoffend with minors." Even worse:
The State tries to overcome its lack of data, social science or scientific research, legislative findings, or other empirical evidence with a renewed appeal to anecdotal case law, as well as to "logic and common sense." But neither anecdote, common sense, nor logic, in a vacuum, is sufficient to carry the State's burden of proof. Thus, while the State's argument may be conceptually plausible, it presented no evidence or data to substantiate it before the district court.
Accordingly, the court permanently blocked the provision as a contravention of the First Amendment.
The struggle to restore sex offenders' constitutional rights—following a nasty, decadeslong campaign of misinformation that vilifies offenders as beyond rehabilitation—enjoys relatively few victories. Indeed, North Carolina has already passed a new sex offender law that clarifies the older statute's unconstitutionally vague language, although it still poses serious First Amendment problems. Still, on the whole, the courts appear to be demanding more proof from states that—in the words of the 6th Circuit—their "onerous, "retributive," "byzantine codes" really do protect women and children from sex crimes. That's a terrific development. Just as judges are increasingly asking for evidence that voter ID laws prevent voter fraud and abortion restrictions protect women, courts should seriously query whether harsh sex offenders law truly help anybody. In 2017, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving the First Amendment rights of former sex offenders. It'll mark a prime opportunity for the justices to reiterate that a former criminal's constitutional liberties do not disappear simply because his name appears on a sex offender registry.
I got another snail mail letter advertising Chapter 62 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure again; this time from from ESTES & FRIDIE, PLLC - ATTORNEYS .
I added them to my links. I am always holding out hope that I will be able to no longer have to register and because I received deferred adjudicated and legally that is not a conviction it may be possible to win in court. Seeing these letters in the mail; encourages me, knowing that this type case is building momentum.
2001 Bryan Street
Suite 2110
Dallas, Texas 75201
From: http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/05/two-federal-courts-call-bs-on-banning-se
Two Federal Courts Says No on Banning Sex Offenders From 'Child Safety Zones'
Rulings deem Indiana and North Carolina laws unconstitutionally vague and unjustifiably wide.
Dec. 5, 2016 10:30 am
A couple of years ago, Brian Valenti, a registered sex offender who lives in Hartford City, Indiana, received a citation for sitting in his brother's car. The car was parked outside his brother's house, which happens to be across the street from a school. By sitting in it, Valenti violated a local ordinance prohibiting anyone convicted of a sex offense involving a minor from entering a long list of "child safety zones"—including schools, parks, libraries, swimming pools, athletic complexes, movie theaters, and bowling alleys— or "loitering" within 300 feet of those locations. Because of Hartford City's ordinance, Valenti, who committed a sex offense 28 years ago in California, was not allowed to visit his daughter's school, go to the library with her, visit local parks, join the YMCA, enroll his daughter in activities there, go bowling with his family, or vote at his designated polling place.
Under a similar law in North Carolina, registered sex offenders whose crimes involved minors or violence are forbidden to venture within 300 feet of "any place intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors." They are also required to stay away from "any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled educational, recreational, or social programs." Five sex offenders who challenged the law said it prevented them from attending church, visiting their children's schools, participating in adult softball games, going to events at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, eating at fast food restaurants with play areas, attending town council meetings held near a library, and visiting the state legislature, which meets in a building near a natural history museum that attracts children. The plaintiffs also worried that they were committing felonies by working on construction projects within a 300-foot zone or by going shopping or commuting to work, since they could easily drive by forbidden locations on the way.
Last week federal courts overturned both of these laws, deeming them unconstitutionally vague. The judge who heard Valenti's challenge to Hartford City's ordinance also concluded that it imposed retroactive punishment, violating the Indiana Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws, while the appeals court that ruled against North Carolina's law found that it unjustifiably interfered with activities protected by the First Amendment. Like last summer's 6th Circuit decision against Michigan's Sex Offender Registration Act, last week's rulings go beyond the usual hand waving about child protection to ask whether the restrictions imposed by such laws can be justified by their purported public safety benefits.
When Valenti was fined for sitting in his brother's car, Hartford City's ordinance defined loitering near a child safety zone as "standing [or] sitting idly, whether or not the person is in a vehicle or remaining in or around an area." In 2015 the city council changed that definition to "remaining in a place or circulating around a place under circumstances that would warrant a reasonable person to believe that the primary purpose or effect of the behavior is to enable a sex offender to satisfy an unlawful sexual desire, or to locate, lure, or harass a potential victim." U.S. District Judge Theresa Springmann concluded that both definitions violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of due process, since they fail to give people fair notice of when they are violating the law and invite arbitrary enforcement.
Springmann also found that the ordinance's punitive effect outweighed its regulatory purpose, meaning that even if it were crystal clear it could not constitutionally be applied to sex offenders convicted before it was passed. "Considered as a whole," she writes, "the Ordinance imposes substantial affirmative restraints on the Plaintiff that he did not have fair warning of when he committed his offense in 1988, or was convicted in 1993." Those restrictions, she concludes, are excessive in light of the regulatory purpose they are supposed to serve, Springmann notes that "the Ordinance does not provide any means by which the Plaintiff can petition for an exemption," "does not provide any particularized risk assessment," and does not make exceptions for situations that pose no plausible threat to public safety, such as parent-teacher conferences.
The North Carolina law does allow such exceptions with special permission, but it is broader than the Hartford City ordinance in that it does not specify all the settings to which it applies, leaving sex offenders and police the challenge of figuring out what is meant by "any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled educational, recreational, or social programs." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs that a sex offender or a cop "cannot reasonably determine (1) whether a program for minors is 'regularly scheduled' or (2) what places qualify as those 'where minors gather.'" Hence "that subsection does not meet the standards of due process because it is unconstitutionally vague."
Like Judge Springmann, the 4th Circuit also highlighted the indiscriminate scope of the law, which in North Carolina's case seeks to keep sex offenders away from places where minors gather even when their crimes had nothing to do with children. "It applies to all restricted sex offenders, not just those who pose a danger to minors or are likely to pose such a danger," the court notes. Since the law interferes with activities protected by the First Amendment, such as attending church services and lobbying legislators, the state was required to present evidence of a reasonable fit between the restrictions and the goal of protecting children. Yet "for reasons not apparent from the record," it conspicuously failed to do so. "Without empirical data or other similar credible evidence," the 4th Circuit says, "it is not possible to tell" whether the 300-foot rule "responds at all to the State's legitimate interest in protecting minors from sexual assault."
That is a pretty strong indictment of the failure to justify the burdens that legislators impose on sex offenders long after they have served their sentences, without regard to the threat they currently pose. The 4th Circuit's dismay at the state's lack of proof is reminiscent of what the 6th Circuit said in August about Michigan's law: that there was "no evidence in the record that the difficulties the statute imposes on registrants are counterbalanced by any positive effects." To the contrary, it said, "the punitive effects of these blanket restrictions...far exceed even a generous assessment of their salutary effects." After years of deferring to pretty much anything legislators did in the name of protecting children from sexual predators, the federal courts are finally beginning to ask whether these laws make sense in light of the goals they are supposed to achieve.
You can get the quick low down on the four Hispanic lesbians sent to prison for twenty years for something they never did; by watch the beginning of this video:
I love this show on FSTV and have been watching it for years. Ann and Andy are amazing no nonsense journalist and the world would be very sad with out them. I am happy to endorse getting on their email list and donating to them as well.
Thanks Gay USA for your contribution to upholding the rights of our fellow Americans.
Sign here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/urgent-new-law-would-charge-protesters-with-terrorism?source=direct_link&
You must sign this petition! What if a employer worked our citizens until they died and made all the women have miscarriages. Wouldn't you endorse boycotting them? If this law is past you would go to prison for that. This law would take away our rights as Americans!
This is a disaster. A new law proposed by a State Senator in Washington would allow the authorities to charge protesters with "economic terrorism," and slap them with serious felony charges that could lead to jail time, just for making their voices heard.
The outrageous proposed bill would make any form of protest that causes an "economic disruption" a class C felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. It wouldn't just apply to people who engage in illegal acts or vandalism, it could be used to prosecute any person or group who organizes a protest that authorities deem as "disruptive." Broadly interpreted, this law could apply to time honored traditions of nonviolent dissent like boycotts and civil disobedience.
Charging protesters with terrorism clearly violates the First Amendment and is an attempt to silence legitimate dissent. Please sign the petition telling lawmakers to reject this dangerous legislation.
Here's the text of the petition:
"Organizing and participating in protests is a basic Constitutional right guaranteed by the First Amendment. I urge all lawmakers to reject any legislation that criminalizes protesters or labels protests as a form of "economic terrorism."
Sign here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/urgent-new-law-would-charge-protesters-with-terrorism?source=direct_link&
Officials leave sex offenders' election ballots uncounted
Sex offenders at treatment center sue for alleged rights violations
Updated: December 6, 2016 9:52pm
AUSTIN - Like millions of Americans who wanted to have their say, more than 100 men inside a West Texas treatment center for sexually violent predators registered to vote in last month's presidential election.
Local election officials, however, refused to count their ballots, a decision that attorneys say likely violates federal and state laws.
The tossed-out votes now are the subject of a growing legal fight in the small town that once begged to get the treatment center for the jobs and the multimillion-dollar payroll that it brought, but now appears to be having second thoughts about the more than 200 convicted sex offenders that came with it.
"They didn't want us going out into their community, so they made us vote by mail, and now they're denying us the right to vote at all," said Clarence Brown, 54, one of the men in the Billy Clayton Center whose ballots were rejected. "This place isn't supposed to be a prison, but this run-down, bigoted little town is trying to make it one so we can't exercise our constitutional right to vote. Even if they don't like us, what they have done is not legal."
Brown said he and 65 other men at the center have filed a challenge to the decision to reject their ballots by Early Voting Ballot Board Judge Steve Busby. They said they plan to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the case as a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which makes it a federal crime to prevent a qualified voter from casting a ballot.
Officials with the Texas Civil Commitment Office that operates the sex offender program and top elections officials at the Texas Secretary of State Office acknowledged the problem but said there is little they can do.
Lamb County elections officials contend it was not their decision and referred questions to Busby. He did not return repeated phone calls.
Documents obtained by the Chronicle show the state laws that Busby cited in rejecting the ballots were the same ones state officials used to allow the men to vote by mail: They were disabled, they were confined and could not get to a polling place to vote and that they had fully discharged their prison sentences.
"It sounds like a pretty clear violation," said Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and expert on Texas elections law. "If they completed their sentences, they should have been allowed to vote."
'There was grumbling'
Under Texas law, felons who have completed their prison sentences are entitled to vote.
State files show the fight began earlier this year when Brown and as many as a dozen other men at the Clayton Center registered to vote in the March primaries. County officials advised them to vote by mail, records show, but none were counted.
"There was grumbling, and I asked the county how they could vote, to resolve this in the future," said Marsha McLane, executive director of the Texas Civil Commitment Office. "There were three options: They could either go a polling place on Election Day or they could bring a polling place to the center to let them vote there or they could do it by absentee ballot."
Officials confirmed that before all the men in the state's civil-commitment program were moved to Littlefield in September 2015, many had voted in Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and other locations where they were housed in jails and halfway houses.
Because many of the men at the Littlefield facility did not have proper identification cards to cast ballots in person, the civil commitment agency transported the prospective voters - about 50 of them - to a Texas Department of Public Safety office in Lubbock to get state-approved ID cards. Each man paid the $21 cost for the cards, McLane said.
Internal state emails show Lamb County officials in May nixed in-person voting as an option and again urged absentee ballots to avoid problems with local residents, including the possibility of violence.
"I will assure you that if the ballot by mail does not work, I will not intentionally violate anyone's constitutional right to vote," County Judge Mike DeLoach wrote in a May 24 email to McLane. "I am gravely concerned if you bring your residents into town to vote, it is going to cause problems - in fact, it is not a 'maybe' or a possibility' - it is going to My concern is not only for the public and their safety, but also for your facility/staff and your residents' safety; neither the county nor the city maintain resources to provide security at polling places."
DeLoach also noted that while 30 men wanted to vote at the time, up to 300 eventually may want to vote in the future, a number that could impact local election races.
As of Monday, the center housed about 240 men.
DeLoach did not return calls requesting comment.
'Disabled' option OK'd
By late May, DeLoach said he had asked County Attorney Scott Say to request a legal ruling from Attorney General Ken Paxton on whether the men could vote absentee by claiming the "disabled" exemption. The Secretary of State's Office soon signed off on the mail ballots for the men.
"It can reasonably be argued that a person who has been clinically assessed ... to the point where the individual civilly committed and is unable to leave the commitment facility without being accompanied is disabled for purposes of voting by mail," Caroline Geppert, a staff attorney in the Elections Division, wrote in a May 31 email to the civil commitment agency. "Such an individual may credibly claim to have a sickness or condition that prevents the person from voting in person without the need for personal assistance."
Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, confirmed that election officials had approved mail ballots for the men. In a message to the agency, DeLoach said that was good enough to resolve the issue for county officials.
Then, Nov. 17, Brown and 65 other men received notice that the ballot each had mailed was rejected by the Early Voting Ballot Board and was not counted.
Three state laws were listed: Those covering disability, confinement in jail and the qualifications to be a voter.
Defining coercion
Privately, several local and state officials said they disagree with the decision, noting that Early Ballot Voting Boards in most counties only compare signatures on mail ballots to validate their authenticity, as well as other record-keeping details, and do not disqualify ballots for other reasons.
The state handbook for those boards confirms that.
Ten days after the election and a day after Busby officially rejected the ballots, Say, who serves as both the district and county attorney in the community of 6,300 residents, asked the attorney general to determine whether the men who voted can claim a "disability," a ruling that could block future voting if that option is nixed.
If that happens, McLane said she plans to transport eligible voters from the center to a local polling place despite the objection of local officials. "The law appears to be clear. I don't want to get sued," she said.
While advocates insist Texas law makes it a misdemeanor for anyone who "influences or attempts to influence a voter not to vote or to vote in a particular manner," state election officials said they do not believe that law covers the Littlefield situation.
"It seems to be applicable to bribery or coercing someone to vote or not to vote, not specifically relayed to counting the vote," Pierce said.
Wood disagreed.
"Taking a person's ballot and throwing it out is coercion," he said.
Bill Marshall, a Houston attorney who represents Brown and other men at the treatment center, said the case appears to be a clear denial of voting rights, especially since some of the men's ballots were counted and others were not.
"The feds should go after this," he said.
You do not have to tell me twice to avoid children like the plaque. In these days in our sex offender paranoia infected community's; every human being needs to avoid children whenever possible.
Once you are on the registry you have to understand that you are a victim of prejudice that is as extreme as it gets; second would be being LGBT or African American. Most people of our legal system consider everyone on the registry to be a pedophile, a child molesting, a rapist, a violent sexual predator. The fact is in some states you can be on the registry for public urination.
Law limiting movement of sex offenders ruled unconstitutional by 4th circuit court
Published 12/07/16 12:57am
Published 12/07/16 12:57am
from: http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2016/12/law-limiting-movement-of-sex-offenders-ruled-unconstitutional-by-4th-circuit-court
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling declaring a North Carolina law restricting the movement of sex offenders unconstitutional on Nov. 30.
The court issued its opinion on Doe v. Cooper and unanimously ruled two sections of the law were unconstitutional. Subsection (a)(2), which was ruled in violation of the First Amendment, said sex offenders could not be within 300 feet of places that were primarily meant for the use, care or supervision of minors if those places were on the premises of areas not focused on minors.
Subdivision (a)(3) prevented certain sex offenders from going near places where minors gather for regular programs and was ruled unconstitutionally vague, and thus considered a violation of due process.
Jamie Markham, an associate professor at the UNC School of Government, said the intent of the law was to protect children.
"I think it was out of a sense that somebody who is a sex offender, regardless of what they were on the sex offender registry for, might be perceived as posing a risk to children, and so I think it was an effort to be as protective as possible," he said.
Chapel Hill attorney Amos Tyndall said the law limited many forms of free speech because it is impractical to avoid going near any location intended for minors.
" ... It includes all kinds of activity that's associated with First Amendment, including free speech in public places as well as religious freedom — attending church," he said.
The lawsuit was brought against then-Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is now governor-elect, and all North Carolina district attorneys by a group of registered sex offenders, who argued the law was broad, vague and a violation of due process.
"I mean, the government's trying to protect kids but the issue is that the restriction they put in place applies to lots of sex offenders, including some whose crimes were not against children," Markham said.
He said the N.C. legislature changed subsection (a)(2) before the ruling to no longer apply to individuals who didn't commit crimes against minors.
Morgan Davis, an associate at Hatch, Little & Bunn, said although the law was changed, the court's ruling is still important.
"So the legislature did go back before Doe v. Cooper and change the law, but it sets a precedent that there needs to be a higher standard of scrutiny than has been required before when crafting these laws," she said.
Chapel Hill Attorney Taylor Hastings said the problem with the subdivision is it infringed on the constitutional rights of sex offenders whose victims were not minors.
"That doesn't mean that if you committed sex offenses against a minor that that law wouldn't still be constitutional — it would be— it's just the fact that it's too broad against those individuals that didn't commit crimes against minors and it takes away an extremely important constitutional right," he said.
I asked a famous lawyer one time by email; which state is better for sex offenders Texas or my home state of Connecticut. He was from Connecticut and quickly responded; Connecticut. My dad was a police officer for half my life in the same town as the state police headquarters; so I have some pull in that town. When I inquired about the sex offender laws there. The state police sent me a big folder of legal documents containing all the sex offender laws. I was shocked at how extremely unconstitutional they were. After reading this I say; give me a T for Texas!:
From: http://www.dentonrc.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20161217-krums-sex-offender-ordinance-on-way-out.ece?416978302
Sex offender ordinance on way out:
A Krum ordinance that greatly restricts where convicted sex offenders may live appears headed for the dustbin. Similar ordinances in Argyle, Hickory Creek, Oak Point and Ponder could fall soon.
This week, the 2nd District Court of Appeals in Fort Worth sided with Taylor Rice, who sued Krum in 2015 over the city's residency rules. The appeals court said Krum did not have the authority to adopt the restrictions and sent the case back to District Judge Margaret Barnes of the 367th District Court in Denton for final disposition.
Many small Texas towns adopted restrictive local rules in recent years knowing they didn't have the authority to do so, according to Denton attorney Richard Gladden. He represented Rice in his complaint against Krum.
"A lot of these cities decided to ignore what had been the law since 2007," Gladden said.
Gladden is referring to an opinion by Greg Abbott, who was state attorney general at that time. Abbott ruled small Texas cities didn't have the authority to restrict where sex offenders may live.
Lance Vanzant, who serves as Krum's municipal attorney, did not return a call for comment.
Cities have argued Abbott did something that had never been done before through an attorney general's opinion: take away a city's authority.
In reviewing the case against Krum, a majority of the appeals court agreed that Texas cities without charters cannot restrict where sex offenders live.
Charters are approved by a city's voters to create the "home-rule" authority for a city to govern its citizens. Because state law doesn't allow cities under 5,000 population to adopt charters, most smaller Texas cities exist as "general-law" cities governed by state statutes.
General-law cities can only adopt ordinances expressly allowed by state law. But home-rule cities govern themselves as they see fit, as long as a state or federal law doesn't expressly forbid a local ordinance.
In the past several years, more than 80 Texas cities adopted ordinances that restricted sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet — in some cases, more than 2,000 feet — of a place where children gather. In Rice's case, the 22-year-old could not return to his family home, where he was born and raised, without violating Krum's ordinance.
After filing the Rice case, Gladden agreed to challenge other Texas cities on behalf of Texas Voices for Reason and Justice. The nonprofit advocacy group says no sexual abuse is acceptable, but also says that sex offense laws and policies should not be based on panic and paranoia that cause needless harm to families of sex offenders.
Gladden wrote letters to 46 small Texas cities, telling them they did not have the authority to adopt the local rules and they risked a lawsuit. About half of those cities repealed their ordinances upon receiving notification, he said. More repealed their ordinances when Gladden filed suit.
But Krum and 14 other cities across the state, including Argyle, Hickory Creek, Oak Point and Ponder, held out.
Although one of the appeals court judges wrote a dissenting opinion, Gladden said he's confident the majority ruling is the "final nail in the coffin" for the current ordinances.
For now.
The Texas Municipal League and Texas cities have been lobbying for a legislative fix. State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, has pre-filed a bill for the Texas Legislature's next session that would eliminate the difference between home-rule and general-law cities in adopting "child safety zones."
Senate Bill 76 would give those 14 cities currently being sued the authority to pass local ordinances that place residency restrictions on sex offenders.
Similar bills have failed in past sessions, but Nelson is confident of the prospects for her bill in the 85th regular session, which begins Jan. 10.
"I am confident that my colleagues will agree that children in every city — whether home-rule or general law — deserve protection from sex offenders," Nelson said in an email to the Denton Record-Chronicle.
From: GRITS FOR BREAKFAST Click here
Most TDCJ sex assault victims housed in just a few units, most victimized by staff
Here are a few highlights from a recent report on sexual assault in TDCJ put out by the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault and the Prison Justice League.
Their report represents a significant bit of research. They examined federal Bureau of Justice Statistics data on sexual assault in Texas prisons and sent a voluntary, confidential survey to prisoners who had self-reported sexual assaults at some point during their incarceration. This research was supplemented by correspondence with inmates who responded to the survey.
A disproportionate number (41.2 percent) of inmate sexual assault victims self-identified as LGBTQ, the survey found, confirming a pattern where inmates deemed gay or even just effeminate may be more likely to become victims.
Survey respondents reported sexual assaults at 15 prison units across the state with the majority of reports coming from three units: Estelle (Huntsville), Robertson (Abilene), and Allred (Iowa Park). A whopping 58.9 percent of respondents said they were assaulted by a staff member, which jibes with past investigations into sexual assault at TDCJ. "In 2014, 766 allegations of staff-on-offender sexual abuse and sexual harassment incidents were reported to the PREA Ombudsman by unit-level TDCJ staff." They cited a 2015 Marshall Project report showing that, nearly half the time, local prosecutors refuse to pursue cases involving staff-on-inmate sexual abuse. When they do, "Of the 126 staff members convicted of sexual misconduct or assault, only nine were sentenced to serve time."
Just as there's an argument for creating a division at the Attorney General to prosecute police misconduct to take decisions out of the hands of local prosecutors, there's an equally good argument to be made for doing the same thing when prosecuting TDCJ guards. Elected, rural prosecutors understandably are reticent to go after workers at the largest employer in town, and may feel more in common with TDCJ staff than their victims. That's a recipe for justice denied.
The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act has created new tracking and record keeping to shine a light on prison rape, the report found, but the Ombudsman function is notably underdeveloped. TDCJ employs 152 people in its Safe Prisons/PREA management offices around the state, but only one Ombudsman and an assistant to process 1,041 allegations of inmate-on-inmate alleged sexual abuse incidents across 109 facilities in 2013, and 1,467 in 2014. That's simply not enough warm bodies to perform the job properly.
The report included the following recommendations:
Establish independent oversight to evaluate TDCJ facilities. (Paging Michele Deitch!)
Halt the practice of placing sexual assault victims in solitary confinement "without thoroughly exhausting alternative protective measures."
Increase resources to the PREA Ombudsman office.
Improve the offender grievance system with better training for staff and accountability for failing to respond to victims.
Involve outside agencies in assessing PREA compliance.
Quite frankly I can not believe there needs to be a law like this. Common decency, common seance, and just plan good morals should dictate that deaths should be reported. The police are not a foreign dictatorship; they are our friends, neighbors and family members; I learned this by being the son of a upstanding police officer. Signing this is the right thing to do:
Sign to tell Dept. of Justice: Law enforcement agencies must report all deaths of people in custody
Sign the petition to the Department of Justice: We will not back down until law enforcement agencies report all deaths of people in custody.
To: Department of Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the future attorneys general
Although we will never forget the names of Freddie Gray or Sandra Bland, we will never know the names of the vast majority of people who die while held by law enforcement agencies (LEAs). We don't even know how many there are. This is unacceptable and legally preventable.
LEAs need to report all deaths of people while in custody. Without this information it is impossible to demonstrate how pervasive the problem is. It's also difficult to pass legislation to help communities facing LEAs with no transparency or accountability.
To address this problem the American people are demanding that the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) and the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program be enforced to the full extent of the law immediately.
The data collected by these laws will a) remove the shroud of secrecy from deaths of people in custody, b) prevent people's deaths, and c) provide much-needed accountability and transparency to the public, especially people who have lost loved ones who've died during arrest or in custody.
Right now, law enforcement agencies that don't report deaths of people while in custody or during arrest are violating laws, which have existed since 2000. The Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) and the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program are simply not enforced.
Sign the petition to tell the Department of Justice loud and clear: DCRA and the ARD program must immediately be enforced to the full extent of the law.
These laws give the Attorney General the discretion to withhold law enforcement funding from states whose LEAs do not properly report all deaths during arrest or in custody. They could face lost funding for equipment and tactical resources; this should be a motivator to report people's deaths.
The data collected by mandatory reporting under DCRA and ARD will be instrumental in passing legislation that transforms the criminal justice system. It will mean fewer lost lives and justice for families who have lost loved ones.
Every Case Matters, a group of determined mothers, will visit the Department of Justice in January to demand justice for their children killed by police. They are demanding information and records regarding their children's deaths and they want the killers to be tried for murder.
One simple step the DOJ can take right now is enforcing existing DCRA and ARD laws. The data collected by these laws can remove the shroud of secrecy from deaths of people in custody and lead to the answers these mothers deserve.
Sign the petition: The Department of Justice must enforce DCRA and ARD to the full extent of the law.
In January, Every Case Matters, a group of mothers demanding justice for their children killed at the hands of LEAs, will deliver this petition with your signature to the DOJ, along with their own request that the DOJ investigate all deaths at the hands of police.
from: http://www.wxow.com/story/34278746/appeals-court-upholds-provisional-release-of-sex-offender#.WH7zEXhV5z0.facebook
January 18, 2017
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – The state Court of Appeals has upheld a judicial panel's decision to provisionally release a man from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program. ____ ____, formally known as ____ ____, pleaded guilty in 1976 to kidnapping and raping a woman in Ramsey County.
He was civilly committed and asked for a provisional discharge from the sex offender program in 2013. It was granted, but the state says the judicial appeal panel erred because it relied on a witness with inaccurate information.
from: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/lawsuit-contends-carolina-sex-offender-law-45011567
Lawsuit Contends N Carolina Sex Offender Law Goes Too Far
Registered Sex offenders are pushing back against North Carolina laws they contend deprive them of constitutional rights without protecting children.
Two anonymous registered sex offenders and a Raleigh-based national nonprofit that advocates for them filed a federal lawsuit on Monday challenging the state laws. It's part of an effort to trim sex registry laws that now require more than 800,000 registered sex offenders nationwide to register their names, addresses and photographs, perhaps for as long as they live.
The offenders contend that North Carolina's law violates the U.S. Constitution by imposing added penalties after conviction and sentencing, for example by extending the years an offender must register. The lawsuit says they are unconstitutionally banned from practicing their religion by being forbidden from entering churches, and from petitioning their government representatives by effectively being excluded from the General Assembly building.
The law also violates constitutional due process rights, by depicting all offenders as dangers to young children, and doesn't provide any way for offenders to challenge such a claim, the lawsuit said.
"In fact, the individual Plaintiffs in this case have already been found not to be a danger to children, yet they are subjected to a serious deprivation of liberty despite that determination," the lawsuit said.
Though most people would believe the registries are designed to protect the public against child molesters, states have expanded the registries to include sexually active teenagers and people arrested for public urination, said J.J. Prescott, a University of Michigan law professor who studies post-release sex offender laws.
Judges, meanwhile, have increasingly noted studies finding no public safety benefit many aspects of these registries, even as they cause collateral damage to the friends and family of offenders, he said.
"I think there has been a shift in the mood on these cases," Prescott said.
The two offenders asked the court to remain unidentified, citing fears that they and their families risk harassment and abuse.
"John Doe 1" was convicted in 2009 of two counts of misdemeanor sexual battery against a 30-year-old woman and is not on probation or subject to any court-ordered restrictions, the lawsuit said. "John Doe 2" was convicted in 2011 of misdemeanor sexual battery after sex with a 16-year old girl he had coached, the lawsuit said.
Similar lawsuits have been filed in the past two years in Illinois, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Alabama, Colorado, Nevada and Idaho.
In August, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that significant changes to Michigan's sex offender registry law cannot be applied retroactively, because doing so would unconstitutionally stiffen punishments after the offenders' convictions.
In December, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, overruled North Carolina's prohibitions against offenders going to places where minors gather for educational, recreational or social programs, or being within 300 feet of locations where children are supervised.
The U.S. Supreme Court next month takes up a free-speech challenge to a North Carolina law banning sex offenders from using Facebook and other social networking sites minors can join.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 05 2017
I was contemplating this blog the other day. When I say all sex offenders are alike and categorize huge percentages; that may not be as accurate as I would like it to be. All I can say is how I see things; and I can tell they are real to me. I refuse to believe there are many people like me out there. I have read many arguments that agree with me. The difference with official research and this blog is I illustrate, the destroy all sex offenders craze, that plagues our country more boldly. The problem with many people is they do not educate themselves and refuse to come out of their shell rather than simple soaking it all in and figuring it all out; like they should. The facts are the facts; seeing so many human beings and their family's and their community's with no constitutional or human rights, suffering so needlessly should shake the very foundation of us all. If we continue on the road to ruin history dictates our eventual demise. That is why people who care should openly do so.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 05 2017
From: http://m.startribune.com/minnesota-sex-offenders-renew-legal-challenge-to-confinement/412461993/?section=nation
MINNEAPOLIS — Lawyers for over 700 people committed indefinitely to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program are asking the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a three-judge panel's ruling that the program is constitutional.
The appeals panel last month reversed a lower court's ruling that the program violates offenders' rights because hardly anyone is ever released.
Attorneys in the class-action lawsuit on Wednesday asked for a rehearing before the full appeals court. They argue that the panel applied the wrong legal standards, then erred in dismissing the offenders' claims entirely rather than sending the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.
Only seven offenders in the program are currently free on provisional releases, and only one has been permanently discharged, even though it's more than 20 years old.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 11 2017
February 10, 2017
PHOENIX — State laws that deny bail to people solely because they're accused of having sex with a minor are unconstitutional, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled today.
The justices acknowledged arguments by prosecutors that trial judges have the right to keep certain people behind bars while awaiting trial as a method of protecting the public. And they said that the crime of sexual conduct with a minor is a series charge.
But Justice Clint Bolick, writing for the unanimous court, said the seriousness of the charge, by itself, is insufficient to result in automatic denial of release. He said prosecutors have to prove that a defendant poses a specific threat and that there are no conditions that can be imposed that allow that person's release and protect the public. Full Article : http://tucson.com/news/local/crime/az-supreme-court-bail-denial-for-child-sex-offenses-is/article_7279e10c-eeef-11e6-a06f-d71c9fac3582.html
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 11 2017
I sent this letter to my reps:
Texas DPS Exploitation
See attached image called Capture_dps_exploitation_02_02_2017 for example of these unreal search results.
Every time I have emailed Austin, Texas, DPS I have gotten responses as if to say; why are you bothering me.
For over 15 years now I have protested DPS allowing search engines to post the DPS sex offender photos and info of me. I have stopped emailing them for about 6 years now.
I believe I am being targeted by Texas, DPS for practicing free speech by emails and here for instance: http://sexoffenderfaq.blogspot.com/p/sex-offenders-information-exploited-on.html
Pasted from here: http://sexoffenderfaq.blogspot.com/p/sex-offenders-information-exploited-on.html read more at this address.:
Texas DPS Breaks it's own Laws Everyday:
No offence Texas DPS; but I believe making sex offender registration public: especially to allow web crawlers like Google to access it by bypassing this page :
These are legal rules DPS has set forth itself. This a absolute abuse of that law passed by President Johnson.
They read:
TxDPS Sex Offender Registry
Effective immediately, the Texas Public Sex Offender Registry will no longer display a registrant's employer name, address or telephone number. This is in accordance with Senate Bill 369 passed during the 83rd Regular Legislative Session (2013). This amendment modified Article 62.005 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to make this information non-public.
Then I got this response from the Governor of Texas's office:
So I sent this email to Texas Department of Public Safety:
To: to email@example.com
I wrote the Governor and they sent me a PDF see attached
Please determine whether I qualify for removal from the sex offender registry.
I am very active and outspoken on the internet about politics and would like to sell my artwork someday. To avoid problems from trolls, cyberbullies and cyber stalkers; it would be in my best interest to be removed from the sex offender registration. Also; my offence has nothing to do with children and was consensual. My info has been available on the internet here since 2012: http://sexoffenderfaq.blogspot.com/p/my-story.html
Thank you very much for your time,
February 7, 2017
Then they called me that day. The woman on the phone seemed extremity indifferent almost robotic; despite my efforts to put her at ease. The first thing she said is you are not eligible to be removed from sex offender registration because you were convicted as a adult.
The fact is I was never convicted of my so called offence of which I have always maintained as consensual, even passing about 11 polygraphs to that effect. I received deferred adjudicated and that is not legally a conviction. I received deferred adjudicated because the family and the judge (nick named hang them all) said I should be eligible for deferred adjudicated! If the Department of Public Safety wants to obey the law they should recognize I was never convicted.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 16 2017
From: http://www.houstonpress.com/news/as-overheated-prisoners-die-texas-jailers-to-stand-trial-over-sweltering-conditions-9202520
A federal judge is putting the Texas prison system on trial over suffocating conditions of extreme heat due to lack of air conditioning in the summer.
Between 1998 and 2011, at least 21 inmates died of heat-related illnesses in prison, with ten of them dying in 2011 alone. And that count only includes inmates whose cause of death was specifically and solely due to the heat, not deaths in which heat was a contributing factor. In 2012, the family of a man who died of hyperthermia in the Hutchins State Jail sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, claiming top officials' indifference to the inhumane conditions of the prison led to Larry McCollum's death in 2011.
McCollum had been sentenced to serve 12 months in prison for the crime of writing a hot check — yet from the sounds of U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison's 83-page order, he might as well have been sentenced to serve time in the closest place on Earth to Hell.
McCollum arrived at the Hutchins unit on July 15, 2011, during one of Texas's hottest summers on record. Temperatures in the prison that week had been 109 to 112 degrees, with a heat index of roughly 150 degrees for at least four hours in a row on July 19 — which according to TDCJ's own "Heat and Humidity Matrix" meant heat stroke was "imminent." Inmates were supposed to receive ice water on a regular basis during this extreme heat, yet according to the judge's order the temperature of the water given to inmates was 75 to 80 degrees. McCollum did not even own a cup for water since he would need to purchase it from commissary, and new inmates could not access commissary for 30 to 45 days.
In the dorm home to 58 men including McCollum, there were only two ceiling fans and one on the floor, and inmates did not have access to personal fans because there were no electrical outlets. As for showers, TDCJ's executive director Brad Livingston claimed TDCJ had lowered the water temperature from 107 to 95 degrees. Judge Ellison also noted that the sealed windows only made things worse.
McCollum, who had a documented history of hyperthermia and had previously been on medication, was found convulsing on his top bunk on July 22. Almost an hour after jail staff discovered him, they finally called 911. Upon arrival at the hospital, his body temperature was found to be over 109 degrees. He died six days later.
He was the second of ten people to die that year of hyperthermia in a Texas prison. Six years later, the Hutchins Unit, and many others, still does not have air conditioning.
"Plaintiffs have adduced evidence that Larry McCollum's tragic death was not simply bad luck, but an entirely preventable consequence of inadequate policies," Ellison wrote. "These policies contributed to the deaths of eleven men before McCollum and ten men after him."
The plaintiffs, McCollum's widow and two adult children, allege that, since Livingston was aware of at least two heat-related deaths, he should have taken preventative measures — such as installing air conditioning. Only wardens' offices, correctional officers' stations, and regional directors' offices have such a luxury during Texas summers, according to the order. Livingston claimed that, after learning of two people who died of heat-related illness in 2007, he didn't think TDCJ's heat-mitigation policies were inadequate because he thought these two "lone" deaths occurred under "extremely unique circumstances."
Let's put this plainly: The heat that literally killed two human beings in one summer, let alone 19 others since 1998 including ten in 2011, doesn't seem horrible enough to Livingston to warrant installing pretty standard, modern-day appliances like air conditioning.
When asked what the holdup is, TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark first responded by citing a cost analysis. According to TDCJ, it would cost upwards of $79 million to retrofit Hutchins with air conditioning, and north of $100 million for others. (The Press has requested to see the actual cost-analysis study in order to determine how analysts arrived at these numbers.)
"Many of TDCJ's facilities were built before the time that air conditioning was commonly installed," he wrote in an email. "Prisons built in the eighties and nineties, which were specifically approved by the federal courts in the Ruiz case, didn't include air conditioning because of the added construction, maintenance and utility costs. Retrofitting facilities with air conditioning would be extremely expensive."
But, asked to clarify whether the high cost prevents air conditioning from being installed, Clark backtracked and said no. Apparently, air conditioning just isn't necessary.
"We have system wide protocols in place help reduce heat related illnesses and mitigate the impact of temperature extremes," he wrote.
A jury is expected to hear all the evidence, although TDCJ plans to appeal the judge's ruling to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
February 14, 2017
An Illinois appeals court ruled that a state law making it a crime for convicted sex offenders to set foot in public parks is unconstitutional because it can punish innocent conduct. Full Article: http://courthousenews.com/illinois-court-strikes-sex-offender-park-ban/
February 15, 2017
West Virginia's highest court has ruled that juveniles judged delinquents for sex offenses don't have to register as sex offenders when they turn 18.
The registration requirement applies to any person convicted of sex offenses. The court says under West Virginia law those delinquency adjudications are not convictions. Full Article: http://www.yourohiovalley.com/story/34504763/west-virginia-rejects-juvenile-sex-offender-registration
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 19 2017
This is nothing new. Everyone knows many Texas prison locations have no heat or air conditioning. I have heard of storys on both ends of the spectrum. I heard in one place the toilets where frozen solid it was so cold. As Texans ; lets not be in denial about this and do what we always do and be honest, own up to our short comings and work till the problem is fix.
I am sure this info is suppressed on the internet or just something people do not want to talk about. I barely managed to find this story from 1997:
Year: 1997
Disability Discrimination: Prisoners
Monthly Law Journal Article: Accommodation of Wheelchair-Bound Prisoners, 2009 (10) AELE Mo. L. J. 301.
Monthly Law Journal Article: Prisoners with HIV/AIDS. Part 2, 2014 (3) AELE Mo. L. J. 301.
Monthly Law Journal Article: Accommodation of Wheelchair-Bound Prisoners, 2009 (10) AELE Mo. L. J. 301.
Monthly Law Journal Article: Prisoners with HIV/AIDS. Part 2, 2014 (3) AELE Mo. L. J. 301.
"Death row inmates at a new prison that has no air conditioning claimed that the heat"
Texas should decarcerate before heat litigation spikes costs
The decision by a federal district judge to allow Texas' prison heat litigation go to trial places state officials in a bind. Grits has said for many years that the only way Texas will ever pay for heat mitigation beyond what it does now is if litigation succeeds. The state has been kicking the can down the road for many years whenever people complain or someone dies.
Now that a trial is imminent, however, there's a big risk taking the case to a jury. The cost of cooling prisons to the same levels required at county jails would be a budget buster - possibly as much as $100 million per facility, reported the Houston Press, though that figure sounds too high to this writer. Some units may need to close because they're too outdated to retrofit.
Will the state settle? I doubt it. But it might be the smart thing to do.
It should be mentioned that this is also an argument for implementing further decarceration reforms this session - perhaps reducing low-level drug penalties from a felony to a misdemeanor - since the state needn't pay to cool inmates whom they do not incarcerate. So even if the litigation isn't complete, that's something they can do to reduce baseline prison costs before the feds make them tack on an air conditioning bill If federal courts order TDCJ to perform heat mitigation, it will be a little late to start thinking about reducing prisoner numbers.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 20 2017:
If you call yourself a socially conscience person and believe in fair human rights, and constitutional rights, and you get upset that, this person or that person, did not get a stiff enough sentence, by the judge; than you are the enemy of human rights in every way. We have over two million people in prison in our country and you want more. The judge of any particular case knows allot more about that case than anyone else that might think they know more. So lets leave the police work to the police and the judging to the judges, or; please stop saying you stand for what is kind and caring to our fellow human beings. Fight it, do not give into the pressure to be judgmental; that is wrong especially to those of us who say; we care enough to stand against such things. I love the fact that I care enough to try to make our community little more compassionate. It is a part of my personality that causes me to sit and work on typing this way. There is something about being this way that makes my life on this earth have real meaning and purpose. I hope everyone that cares about everyone feels that same way everyday, because it is great.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 21 2017
February 20, 2017
More than 100 companies have announced that they are now willing to hire individuals previously convicted of a felony offense. The companies range from McDonald's to the New York Times and also include American Express, B F Goodrich, Dunkin Donuts, Hilton Hotels, the Salvation Army, Target and others.
It has been reported that some, but not all, of these companies are willing to hire individuals convicted of a sex offense. California law prohibits employers from discriminating against a registrant solely because he is required to register as a sex offender pursuant to Penal Code Section 290.
If enough sex offenders would just appeal enough times; every thing would change. I have no idea why they do not appeal so most cases lately that seem way to extreme in punishment.
February 23, 2017
In late 2016, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit's concluded in Does #1–5 v. Snyder that Michigan's sex offender registry and residency restriction law constituted an ex post facto punishment in violation of the constitution. In its decision, the Sixth Circuit engaged with scientific evidence that refutes moralized judgments about sex offenders, specifically that they pose a unique and substantial risk of recidivism. This Essay is intended to highlight the importance of Snyder as an example of the appropriate use of scientific studies in constitutional law. Full Article: http://bclawreview.org/e-supp/2017/05_hamilton/
PDF version: http://bclawreview.org/files/2017/02/05_hamilton.pdf
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 28 2017
Like my opinion matters? I honestly believe it means next to nothing. I consider my presence on the internet to be the next thing from being invisible. I still do this because I believe that all that will turn around do to the fact that the more modern our society becomes the more open minded people will become.
My opinion on this subject for the few on the internet that might read this is:
We as a nation have to decide whether we want to ignore history and all the nations that have fallen by oppressing it's own citizens like the Roman Empire and The Nazi Regime. For instance we can disobey our own laws and our constitution once again and ban so called sex offenders from having basic human rights or we can actually do the right thing for a change and let people use the, life essential Internet; however they please. Continuing to corrupt and pervert the law concerning sex offences will lead down one road and acting civilized and fare will lead down another.
From: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/us/politics/supreme-court-north-carolina-sex-offenders-social-media.html?_r=0 :
A Supreme Court argument on Monday about whether North Carolina may bar registered sex offenders from using Facebook, Twitter and similar services turned into a discussion of how thoroughly social media have transformed American civic discourse.
The justices' remarks, which indicated easy familiarity with the major social media services, suggested that they would strike down the North Carolina law under the First Amendment.
Justice Elena Kagan said that President Trump, every governor and every member of Congress has a Twitter account.
"So this has become a crucially important channel of political communication," she said. "And a person couldn't go onto those sites and find out what these members of our government are thinking or saying or doing."
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
The North Carolina law makes it a crime for registered sex offenders to use many commercial websites that allow the exchange of information and do not limit their membership to adults.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that social media sites had become, and in some ways had surpassed, the public square as a place for discussion and debate.
"The sites that Justice Kagan has described and their utility and the extent of their coverage are greater than the communication you could have ever had, even in the paradigm of public square," Justice Kennedy said.
The North Carolina law has economic consequences, too, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.
"Take something like LinkedIn, which many, many people in our society today are looking for jobs there, but high school students are permitted to look for jobs and to post their personal data on that site," she said.
Justice Kennedy mused that any number of free-speech doctrines doomed the law.
"Elizabeth Barrett Browning," he said, before quoting the poet: "Let me count the ways."
Justice Stephen G. Breyer told Robert C. Montgomery, a lawyer for the state, that it could have drafted a much narrower law to protect children from sexual predators. Justice Breyer sketched out his analysis.
"The state has a reason?" he asked. "Yeah, it does. Does it limit free speech? Dramatically. Are there other, less restrictive ways of doing it? We're not sure, but we think probably, as you've mentioned some. O.K. End of case, right?"
The law was challenged by Lester Packingham, who had pleaded guilty in 2002 to taking indecent liberties with a minor when he was a 21-year-old college student. He received a suspended sentence and two years' probation and was made to register as a sex offender.
Mr. Packingham came to the attention of the authorities in 2010, when he wrote on Facebook about having a traffic ticket dismissed. "God is good," he wrote.
A North Carolina appeals court ruled that the law "arbitrarily burdens all registered sex offenders by preventing a wide range of communication and expressive activity unrelated to achieving its purported goal" of protecting minors.
In a 4-to-2 ruling, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the appeals court's decision, saying that Mr. Packingham's Facebook post was not entitled to heightened First Amendment protection because it was conduct rather than speech.
Mr. Montgomery did not defend that reasoning at Monday's argument in the case, Packingham v. North Carolina, No. 15-1194. He argued instead that the state was entitled to limit Mr. Packingham's speech.
Some justices noted that criminal convictions can have lasting consequences. "Some states prohibit ex-felons from voting," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. "Some states and the federal government prohibit keeping and bearing arms. Those are constitutional rights."
David T. Goldberg, a lawyer for Mr. Packingham, said those restrictions had a basis in history and logic. They were nothing like "taking away people's First Amendment rights," he said.
Mr. Montgomery said the North Carolina law left sex offenders with plenty of other ways to exercise their First Amendment rights. "It's not the entire internet that is being taken away from these offenders," he said. "They can still have their own blog. They can read blogs. They can do podcasts. They can go to nytimes.com."
Four justices asked whether The New York Times's website would in fact be covered by the law, and the argument concluded without a clear answer.
"Even if The New York Times is not included," Justice Ginsburg said, "the point is that these people are being cut off from a very large part of the marketplace of ideas. And the First Amendment includes not only the right to speak, but the right to receive information."
Justice Kagan agreed. "Whether it's political community, whether it's religious community — I mean, these sites have become embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights," she said.
Justice Kagan added that the law had curious features. "Some of what's exempted by the law seems, I have to say, some of the most dangerous stuff," she said, mentioning exceptions for "any website that provides only a chat room or only photo sharing."
Mr. Montgomery said the state had tried to write the law narrowly and to address the danger of lurking predators quietly harvesting personal information about minors. But Justice Kagan said the distinctions it drew made no sense.
"So you mean that there's a constitutional right to use Snapchat, but not to use Twitter?" she asked.
Justice Breyer asked Mr. Montgomery for any First Amendment precedent that allowed such a broad suppression of speech. The lawyer cited a 1992 decision, Burson v. Freeman, in which the Supreme Court upheld a 100-foot buffer zone around polling places.
Justice Kennedy was not impressed. "I think that does not help you at all," he said, as the buffer zone was limited in size and applied to everyone. "You could have all the political speech in the world" outside the zone, he added.
Justice Kagan said a restriction on using social media was quite different. "How many people under 30 do you think don't use these sites to get all their information?" she asked. "Under 35? I mean, increasingly, this is the way people get all information."
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not seem ready to concede that. But, he said, "I know there are people who think that life is not possible without Twitter and Facebook."
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 28 2017
I still believe very strongly that female sex offence victims should be able to bypass chain of command to report sex offences against them. I believe this because I had to serve my country by being by my wife's side for the 7 years while she served our country in the US Army. But... I quote myself from this page:
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 20 2017:
If you call yourself a socially conscience person and believe in fair human rights, and constitutional rights, and you get upset that, this person or that person, did not get a stiff enough sentence, by the judge; than you are the enemy of human rights in every way. We have over two million people in prison in our country and you want more. The judge of any particular case knows allot more about that case than anyone else that might think they know more. So lets leave the police work to the police and the judging to the judges, or; please stop saying you stand for what is kind and caring to our fellow human beings. Fight it, do not give into the pressure to be judgmental; that is wrong especially to those of us who say; we care enough to stand against such things. I love the fact that I care enough to try to make our community little more compassionate. It is a part of my personality that causes me to sit and work on typing this way. There is something about being this way that makes my life on this earth have real meaning and purpose. I hope everyone that cares about everyone feels that same way everyday, because it is great.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 28 2017
We as a nation have to decide whether we want to ignore history and all the nations that have fallen by oppressing it's own citizens like the Roman Empire and The Nazi Regime. For instance we can disobey our own laws and our constitution once again and ban so called sex offenders from having basic human rights or we can actually do the right thing for a change and let people use the, life essential Internet; however they please. Continuing to corrupt and pervert the law concerning sex offences will lead down one road and acting civilized and fare will lead down another.
This is in response from this email I got:
Protect Our Defenders
This past Saturday, the Associated Press picked up a story by the San Antonio Express News, which reported on the sentence of Air Force Tech Sergeant Anthony Lizana who was convicted of sexually assaulting a subordinate, dereliction of duty, adultery, and assault consummated by battery. The charges stem from allegations made by eight women who worked directly for the sergeant. Most of the survivors were young, first-term Airmen right out of high school.
The newspaper reported that the "unwanted sexual misconduct [echoed] some of the worst cases that grew out of a scandal at Lackland" involving military training instructors. We had previously worked with the San Antonio Express News to expose the Lackland scandal and call for Congressional hearings.
After his convictions, TSgt Lizana was facing almost 39 years of confinement and despite the prosecutor's call that he be sentenced to nine years, the military jury only sentenced him to three months of confinement.
Sadly, such travesties of justice are nothing new for military trials. As I told the newspaper, "This is more the norm than the exception that we get shockingly light sentences for serious misconduct in the military... It reflects the military's inability to take sexual misconduct that strikes at the heart of good order and discipline seriously."
The Air Force Times also reported on the story.
Such a minimal confinement is what we expect a young Airman to receive for a one-time drug abuse rather than a sexual assault of a subordinate. The military justice system is long overdue for a major reform of its sentencing process. Sadly, Congress missed the opportunity last year to pass Department of Defense-sponsored legislation that would have established judge alone sentencing, mandatory minimums, and sentencing guidelines. Despite the fact that such reform would lead to convicted offenders finally being held responsible for their misconduct, Congress failed to pass the proposal.
Cases such as TSgt Lizana's, as well as scores of others with inappropriately light punishments for sexual assault, is why Protect Our Defenders is dedicated to securing much-needed reform of the sentencing process in the military. We will do everything in our powers to ensure survivors will no longer see their attacker escape a punishment that shows society respects what they have been through and reflects the seriousness of the crimes.
Don Christensen
Colonel, USAF (ret.)
President, Protect Our Defenders
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 28 2017
I don't know about you but I do not want to be in the slow lane! Sign this!
Our open Internet is under intense attack right now. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — the body that's supposed to protect the web, ensuring it's free and fair — is under new leadership.1 The new head, Ajit Pai, has Big Telecom's interests at heart, not yours.2
They have already rolled back key protections3, 4 that ensure the web doesn't become like cable TV — completely controlled by Big Telecom. But they want more, including the power to pick and choose winners and losers online by forcing some of your favorite websites into an Internet slow lane.
We have to say no to that vision of the Internet now. Tell Chairman Pai: "Keep the Internet open. Do not undo Net Neutrality."
New Blogs Part 6 Updated February 28 2017:
It seems the media is the enemy of anyone wanting to get a fair trial. With all these stories about people that did not get enough prison time; in the mass incarceration nation we have created. Is this journalism? You actually have people signing petitions to get people stricter sentences blasted at us in today's media. A petition to make people suffer more? This is what is being passed off as progressive media today? These stories seem to be bombarded upon us all through the media every day more and more. This is not free speech it is abuse of free speech. If this is true; does that mean the media is the enemy of the common people of our society? It seems the media does not care about life or death; the sad, sad fact is someday they will; and even sadder is it may be too late. I have always said on the internet; the one thing that should unit us all with even half a heart is the fact that we all will die someday. The social and human conscience of the media today seems almost gone and this has been the one constant stand of what is right in our country. We need to face the fact that the media is not our friend anymore, yet it is never to late to change. I have not watched a news broadcast in about 10 years now. My only good advice is to read the news only and learn to skip though most of it.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 14 2017
What is wrong with everyone? The only thing I see here is what I saw on all those talk shows in the 1990's; sex offenders that need to join the almost one million already marked, till death do it, inhumanly, part. I see 1,000 sex offenders; not 1,000 men that had sex with a 14 year old!
In the late 1980's and 1990's I was blown away by how out of touch talks shows were. Show after show featured themes like my twelve year old has sex with older men. I was so amazed the show did not have police officers making arrests of the older men having sex with those children.
In the late 1980's and 1990's I was blown away by how out of touch talks shows were. Show after show featured themes like my twelve year old has sex with older men. I was so amazed the show did not have police officers making arrests of the older men having sex with those children.
From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/14/forced-to-have-sex-with-1000-men-a-girl-is-now-suing-the-motel-that-she-says-let-it-happen/
The sex-trade is often pretty easy to spot. A teenage girl accompanies an older man at a motel front desk as he pays for a room in cash. Men come and go from the room for 30 minutes at a time. A scantily dressed girl wanders the hallways in the middle of the night.
Motels and hotels across the country are facilitating sex trafficking, often cloaking the traffickers in anonymity and profiting from their business. The pimps and prostitutes are occasionally nabbed and criminally prosecuted. But rarely does anything happen to the hotel owners and staff that turn a blind eye.
Now a lawsuit brought by a 14-year-old girl in Philadelphia and her lawyer aims to change that. She is suing a motel widely known as the "local epicenter of human trafficking" for knowingly renting rooms to men who forced teenage girls to have sex. The target is the Roosevelt Inn, a roadside motel in northeast Philadelphia notorious for drug deals and violent crime as well as prostitution.
In this budget hotel, a lawsuit alleges, the girl was held for weeks and months at a time, barred from leaving, and was forced to have sex with as many as 1,000 men over the course of two years, Nadeem Bezar, a lawyer at the Kline & Specter law firm told The Washington Post.
All the while, the hotel's owners and staff continued to lease rooms to her traffickers, profiting off their abuse and doing nothing to stop it, the suit claims.
The allegations were laid out Friday in a suit filed in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against the hotel, its manager, and its parent company, UFVS Management Company, of Purchase, N.Y. It was filed by Kline & Specter on behalf of the girl, who is now 17 and was only identified in the suit as "M.B."
It is the first known civil suit brought under the Pennsylvania Human Trafficking Law of 2014, which allows for compensation for victims from those who profit directly or indirectly from human trafficking, Bezar said.
According to research by the Villanova Law School's Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation, it does not appear that a hotel has been held liable for an employee's participation in or facilitation of a human trafficking offense in part, perhaps, because victims of trafficking may not "self identify" as victims due to the trauma of their experience and even if they do, they may be unaware that they have any opportunity for redress.
The Philadelphia lawsuit seeks more than $50,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.
"People are policing the hallways, men and other johns are coming in and out of the hotel, and young girls walking up and down the hallways are scantily dressed," said Bezar said. "It's open and obvious, it's about as obvious as it gets."
The way the girl got roped into trafficking is a familiar story. After a falling out with her parents, she left home and moved from place to place. Desperate to avoid homelessness, she began spending time with the "wrong group of people," Bezar said. She was sold into sex slavery and forced to perform sexual acts on men more than twice or three times her age, the lawsuit alleges.
Though the girl's abusers have already been convicted and sent to prison, her family and lawyers now hope to hold the motel owner responsible for "allowing this to happen," Bezar said. The girl's lawyers declined to identify her abusers, saying they feared exposing her to retaliation.
The staff at the motel — which prosecutors have called the "local epicenter of human trafficking" — knew or had "constructive knowledge" that the girl was being sexually exploited, according to the lawsuit, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Her traffickers lured customers to the motel through Internet advertisements, had men call a number to negotiate a price for sex, then had the men go to the motel's front desk.
An employee would then direct them to the room where the girl was forced to work as a prostitute. Condoms and condom wrappers were strewn about, and the room often smelled like marijuana, according to the suit.
A hotel clerk named "Abdul" was made fully aware that the girl "and other underage children were compelled to perform sex for money," the suit says. The girl was dressed in sexually explicit clothing and "visibly treated in an aggressive manner" by traffickers, according to the lawsuit.
"If she tried to leave there was someone at the bottom of the staircase that prevented her from doing so," Bezar said.
The teenage girl has since reconnected with her family, and is now receiving therapy and additional services from city and private agencies, Bezar said.
Since the lawsuit was filed, several other victims have come forward to the lawyers to tell them about their own experiences with sex trafficking, Bezar said. Some were young women, but all were involved with sex trafficking at the same hotel under separate circumstances, he said.
The hotel's manager, Yagna Patel, 72, told the Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday he had not seen the lawsuit and was not aware of any minors allegedly being victimized in the motel. "We just rent the room and that's all we can do," he said.
Patel, who said he has managed the inn for 30 years, said he has a close relationship with the police and that if there was any inappropriate behavior in a room, the motel guests would be told to leave.
"It's hard to control anybody," Patel said. "If we think a lot of people are having a party in the room, we kick them out."
"The motel has a history of illicit activities, from drugs to several incidents surrounding trafficking and prostitution," Bezar said. Several people have been convicted over the last few years on charges of using the motel for prostitution, Assistant District Attorney Erin O'Brien told the Inquirer.
"Almost every trafficking investigation we have, we see the victim is at Roosevelt Inn," O'Brien said. "I know our vice officers are out there on a regular basis."
Reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor call the 107-room, two-story motel a "drug infested, crime ridden, prostitution laced" place where the check-in desk contained bulletproof glass "an inch thick."
"One thing which made us very uncomfortable was that a lot of "girls" were coming in and out all the time," one guest wrote.
Another reviewer said: "No security at all, these girls are letting their jons in through side doors that are UN-LOCKED. The smell of marijuana through out the place is disgusting," and added that the "working girls" and their pimps "run a muck half naked through the hallways."
A different guest said: "Do not bring your kids here please."
In March 2014, security footage from the Roosevelt Inn circulated on YouTube showing a dramatic gunfight in the motel. The men ran through the hallways, down a stairwell and into the lobby as they fired shots at each other.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 1,424 cases of human trafficking in hotels and motels were reported between 2007 and 2015, involving 1,867 victims. In 2016 alone, 7,572 human trafficking cases were reported nationwide, including 151 in Pennsylvania.
Bezar said he hopes this lawsuit sends a message to the hotel and motel industry as a whole: "You better pay attention to what's going on in your hallways."
If the lawyers can get "some compliance" with the hotel and motel industry, Bezar said, "perhaps we can start to stamp out what's happening here."
"If you're going to run a business, you better be aware of what's going on," Bezar said. "You just can't continue to exploit children."
This story is so acceptical to the despicable media, in other words; the internet divergent lynch mob. :
Definition of acceptable. 1 : capable or worthy of being accepted an acceptable noise level socially acceptable behavior a compromise that is acceptable to both sides. 2a : welcome, pleasing Compliments are always acceptable.b : barely satisfactory or adequate The performances varied from excellent to acceptable.
Acceptable | Definition of Acceptable by Merriam-Webster
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 17 2017
from: https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/17/man-wrongly-convicted-of-murder-released-from-prison-after-32-ye/21901845/
Man wrongly-convicted of murder released from prison after 32 years
Mar 17th 2017 2:26PM
Andrew Leander Wilson is finally free.
The California man spent 32 years behind bars for the 1984 murder of 21-year-old Christopher Hanson, which he did not commit.
According to INSIDE EDITION, Hanson has long maintained his innocence in the stabbing death of Hanson, who was killed during a late night attack in Los Angeles.
With the help of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent, the 62-year-old and Deputy District Attorney Erika Jerez were able to prove there were errors in the case.
Judge Laura Priver expressed her gratitude to the DA's office for their work, then Wilson repeatedly thanked the judge for his release.
He was reunited with his family the following day as a free man. He hugged and kissed his relatives, and news crews captured the precious moment.
"Those are my sisters right there," WIlson said, according to INSIDE EDITION. "I've got a lot of sisters and brothers."
The Associated Press reports Wilson is headed to St. Louis to spend time with his 96-year-old mother, Margie Davis. She spent decades working to overturn his wrongful conviction.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 20 2017
As I have said on the internet many times;
I blame religion for the inhuman unconstitutional non stop torture and anti sex mob mentality that takes all human rights away from those who commit sex crimes. Religion replaces all human rights with death stalking Nazi, feeding to the lions, genocide to them accused of committing sex crimes. Politicians and the media take advantage of religion's sex hang ups; to use fear mongering, to get votes and higher ratings.
Check this out and draw your own conclusions:
"Aside from the foregoing exceptions, the Satanist would not intentionally hurt others by violating their sexual rights. If you attempt to impose your sexual desires upon others who do not welcome your advances, you are infringing upon their sexual freedom. Therefore, Satanism does not advocate rape, child molesting, sexual defilement of animals, or any other form of sexual activity which entails the participation of those who are unwilling or whose innocence or naïveté would allow them to be intimidated or misguided into doing something against their wishes."
This is a quote from the Santanic Bible. Author
Anton LaVey. Publication date 1969.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 22 2017
I hereby challenge the Lord God Almighty from Genesis to this day; if the media and the politicians of this country have made up the demon of the registered sex offender as the ultimate threat to human kind; to distract from the physical assaults and killing's taking place everyday as a means to their end.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 24 2017
Back around 2004 I did research and found that 20 percent of all sex offenders commit suicide. Finding links on this subject are not as easy to find these days. The point I am trying to make is; if you have your name exploited for the sake of media ratings and votes for politicians, the chances you do not live, are not good.
The only info I could find now is this:
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 25 2017
The reason I started this subject is because I refereed to the life expectancy of a registered sex offender to be very short on my other blog. I do not nor ever have condoned suicide and have always maintained that on the internet for about 17 years now. Suicide is murder. The fact that the numbers are so high concerning registered sex offenders, committing suicide in our country; is reality. This fact can not be ignored.
You have to understand though that sex offenders in our country do not actually live in our country in a symbolic way. They live under a Nazi like regime where they are forced to unspeakable horrors. Ruled over by the rest of society; that are not sex offenders. Subject to a paranoid portion of society, of insecure mentally impaired people; needing do point their finger at others to make them selves feel better. Now that drug busts become less and less prevalent sex offenders have been selected to try to keep our prison for profit system going. The world sex offenders, can also be compared to: a communist dictator ship. What ever country registered sex offenders live in; it is not America and would make of forefathers roll over in their grave. See here for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state
Our Nazi like, anti sex offender rights, media; chose to ignore the statistics of how many sex offenders commit suicide and are killed. Hence this info is very hard to find.
I would suggest putting "sex offender" "suicide" in Google news, I found a few:
Sex offender suicide in shootout with deputies in sheriff's Temple ...
MyNewsLA.com-Mar 20, 2017
A shootout in the parking lot of the sheriff's Temple Station Monday between deputies and a convicted sex offender wanted on a warrant in ...
Patient at controversial mental health facility for sex offenders ...
STLtoday.com-Mar 17, 2017
Patient at controversial mental health facility for sex offenders commits suicide ... or Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services, in Farmington, Mo., has ...
GM employee accused of child-porn possession found dead at home
The Morning Sun-Feb 22, 2017
A General Motors Tech Center employee charged with child pornography possession last week was found dead Monday at his home from a possible suicide, ...
What about all those accused of a sex offence and kill themselves before the police can place them in custody? What about all those that kill themselves before they are convicted in court, too?
From Google News:
on March 21, 2017 at 8:12 PM, updated March 22, 2017 at 8:31 AM
TRENTON -- New Jersey's highest court on Tuesday threw out a state-sanctioned ban on internet use for a convicted sex offender, finding it was an arbitrary infringement on the man's rights.
In a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court found the state Parole Board had improperly issued a "near-total" internet ban for the man, identified only by the initials J.I., who was subject to lifetime supervision after pleading guilty to charges he sexually abused his three daughters.
Calling internet access a "basic need" of modern life, the justices ruled that state authorities could only revoke it after holding a formal hearing to determine if there was a legitimate public safety reason to do so.
|I made a new flag for the paranoid portion of society, of
insecure mentally impaired people; needing do point their
finger at others to make them selves feel better.
Click the Text To Do What Is Right and Get the Low Down!
As calls to boycott North Carolina rise, here's what well-known brands ...http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/24/1611734/-As-calls-to-boycott-North-Carolina-rise-here-s-what-well-known-brands-stand-to-lose-or-win
Dec 24, 2016 - Just as the 50 states are frequently referred to by Republicans as "America's laboratories of democracy," so today one state in particular.
Boycott North Carolina | Facebook
Boycott North Carolina. 1048 likes · 1907 talking about this. March 2016.. North Carolina has outlawed Protections for LGBT People Don't do business...
Boycott North Carolina. 1048 likes · 1907 talking about this. March 2016.. North Carolina has outlawed Protections for LGBT People Don't do business...
NCAA Warns North Carolina With Championship Boycott Over HB2 ...
Feb 10, 2017 - The NCAA has threatened to withdraw North Carolina from hosting any championship events through 2022 over the state's controversial "bathroom bill." ... The NCAA has threatened to disallow North Carolina from hosting any championship events through 2022 following the state's ...
Boycott NC (@BoycottNC) | Twitter
The latest Tweets from Boycott NC (@BoycottNC). The State of North Carolina has enacted discriminatory laws that oppress racial minorities and #LGBT people.
A Call For The Economic Boycott Of North Carolina | The Huffington Post
Dec 29, 2016 - In recent years, the Republican leadership in the state of North Carolina has built a worldwide reputation for intolerance and bigoted ...
Guess How Much That Anti-LGBTQ Law Is Costing North Carolina
The Grand Total:
Adding all that up, the total cost to North Carolinians so far from HB2 protests is slightly more than $395 million. That's more than the GDP of Micronesia. And the bulk of it is from sporting organizations, who even five years ago would likely not have waded into political territory like this. But experts aren't that surprised that the NBA, NCAA, and ACC have taken this step now. "They're not out on a limb here," Durso says. "They're in line with their base." The near unanimous outcry against HB2 and in support of the NCAA and ACC confirms that. Legislating discrimination has become an expensive bad habit.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 26 2017
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teen-who-claimed-she-was-abducted-raped-by-3-black-men-admits-she-lied_us_58d3f486e4b0b22b0d1aa56a
This is unspeakably wrong. But I predicted this goes on all the time in my comic I drew in 1999:
Denison, Texas is not far from where I live. Denison, Texas is a very great town here in North Texas. They have some of the most awesome people we have to offer around these here parts.
The whole thing was staged and her injuries were self-inflicted.
A teenager in Denison, Texas, who made widely publicized claims that she was kidnapped and raped by three black men in ski masks admitted to police Tuesday that it was all a lie.
The Denison Police Department posted a statement to Facebook on Wednesday describing the case in detail and said 18-year-old Breana Talbott, who is white, confessed to the hoax and has been charged with making a false report.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 26 2017
This would explain the weird weather. I suspect maybe; not believe, that our government and the world governments may be hiding that global warming is a serious problem. I think maybe; they may be doing this to keep wide spread panic from taking place.
From: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3/23/1646489/-Arctic-Antarctic-clock-record-lows-in-sea-ice-extent-We-re-in-uncharted-territory-scientist-says
Arctic sea ice dips to record low for winter
WASHINGTON (AP) — The frigid top of the Earth just set yet another record for low levels of sea ice in what scientists say is a signal of an overheating world.
The extent of floating ice in the Arctic hit a new low for winter: 5.57 million square miles (14.42 million square kilometers). That's about 35,000 square miles (97,000 square kilometers) — an area about the size of Maine — below 2015's record. Last year had a shade more than 2015, but nearly a tied record.
This puts the Arctic in a "deep hole" as the crucial spring and summer melt season starts and more regions will likely be ice-free, said Mark Serreze , director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, which released the findings Wednesday.
"It's a key part of the Earth's climate system and we're losing it," he said. "We're losing the ice in all seasons now."
At the other end of the world, Antarctica, where sea ice reaches its lowest point of the year in March, also hit a record low mark. Antarctic sea ice varies widely unlike Arctic sea ice, which has steadily decreased.
The ice data center measures how wide sea ice extends based on satellite imagery. It's harder to measure the thickness and overall volume, but data from the University of Washington show that as of late last month ice volume levels were down 42 percent from 1979, said polar science center chief Axel Schweiger .
Several scientists called the sea ice loss disturbing.
"It's evidence that the climate at the top of the world continues to change faster than anywhere else on Earth with impacts to us that are still frankly unknown," Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor and retired admiral David W. Titley , said in an email.
Scientists blame a combination of natural random weather and man-made global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas. The winter of 2016-2017 was unusually toasty and the Arctic saw three "extreme heat waves," Serreze said.
A new study earlier this month in the journal Nature Climate Change found that natural causes can explain between 30 and 50 percent of plunging September sea ice lows, while Serezze and others give climate change an even bigger role in sea ice loss.
A relatively new idea — that still divides meteorologists — links the shriveling ice cap at the North Pole to a weaker polar vortex and weak and ambling jet stream, which can mean more extreme weather for a good part of the rest of the world.
"Recent cold spells and big snowstorms that we have experienced over the past few winters have occurred when the polar vortex is weak," top winter weather forecaster Judah Cohen , of the private Atmospheric Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, said in an email.
It's not just the weather.
As more regions become free of ice, shipping lanes will open in the Arctic, there will be more drilling for oil and gas and more overall economic activity. And that may mean rising tensions between countries over newly available resources, Serreze said.
"The Arctic is the canary in the climate's coal mine," said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. This entire planet is interconnected."
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 28 2017
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 30 2017
Come on, really? This is funny. :
from: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/30/1648673/-Midday-open-thread-Dems-ask-Trump-regime-for-info-get-no-replies-Chelsea-is-not-running
Midday open thread: Dems ask Trump regime for info, get no replies; Chelsea is not running
Trump regime? Trump regime? That is really funny. I don't know about you but I am having trouble finding a difference between democrats and republicans thees days.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated March 30 2017
from: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/28/man-exonerated-for-attempted-murder-free-after-20-years.html
LOS ANGELES – A man whose attempted-murder conviction was tossed by a California judge walked free Tuesday after 20 years in prison.
Marco Contreras, now 41, was embraced by his mother as his lawyers cheered following a Los Angeles court hearing during which he was declared factually innocent.
"I just had to be patient, and wait," said Contreras, telling KCAL-TV he always knew he would be exonerated.
Loyola Law School's Project for the Innocent, which fought for his release, pointed to a combination of factors that resulted in the conviction for a shooting and robbery at a Compton gas station in 1996.
Contreras' vehicle, which he had lent to someone else, was in the vicinity. An eyewitness wrongly identified him as the shooter, despite the fact that he was at home sleeping at the time.
A probe by the Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's office not only determined that Contreras was innocent, but led to the arrest of another suspect in the case.
The law school project and prosecutors jointly petitioned Superior Court Judge William Ryan to release him.
Contreras, who served two decades of a life-plus-seven-years sentence, said his spirituality helped him suppress anger during his time behind bars. He steadfastly maintained his innocence and fought to have his case re-investigated.
Paula Mitchell, Loyola's legal director, said before the hearing that erroneous eyewitness identifications account for about 75 percent of all wrongful convictions in the U.S.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 04 2017
Human Rights Campaign is amazing. I have always admired their graphic art and production. These people are tighter than the most successful corporation that ever existed.
Just got this cool email: March Madness ends tonight when North Carolina plays in the NCAA men's championship. But the state's shameful HB2 madness is far from over.
That's why I asked you to oppose HB2.0 last week by emailing NCAA President Mark Emmert or texting "NCAA" to 30644 to be connected to the NCAA office and urge them to keep pressure on the state. Since then, more than 15,000 advocates of LGBTQ equality took action.
We know this HB2 round two is simply not a full repeal. It fails to protect LGBTQ rights, promote equality or preserve our core values. As North Carolina prepares for the championship and the NCAA prepares to decide where they stand on HB2.0, we must make our voices heard.
We've made it easy to join us – text "NCAA" to 30644 to call their office or click here before tonight's tip-off and you'll be able to send an email to NCAA President Mark Emmert telling him to keep the pressure on North Carolina.
Let's make sure equality wins. Go here and send that email: https://act.hrc.org/page/7573/action/1
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 04 2017
The Salt Lake Tribune
Poor management and "one-size-fits-all" approach result in longer prison stay at state taxpayers' expense.
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Sex offenders in Utah often stay in prison months beyond their parole eligibility date because of a backlog of inmates awaiting treatment overseen by the Utah Department of Corrections, according to a state audit released Monday.
And when those inmates do receive therapy, the program is a "one-size-fits-all" model with an outdated curriculum and little risk assessment. Management and staff, too, lack oversight and accountability, auditors found, limiting the number of inmates who can receive care due to rampant inefficiency.
"The shortcomings are quite extensive," said Legislative Auditor General John Schaff. That adds up to a big problem when up to one-third of inmates are serving time for sexual offenses.
The proposed solution? To reduce the waiting list, low-risk sex offenders should seek treatment outside of prison as a condition of parole after serving their terms.
"These are offenders who really haven't violated anyone," Schaff said. "They've had [a conviction for] probably looking at child porn or something."
The treatment on parole recommendation was one of several offered to fix the ailing program, which spent $678,000 in fiscal 2016 to house inmates with extended incarcerations because of the delays in treatment. That is estimated to rise to $780,000 for 2017.
I keep seeing this virtuous woman in the news. I like her. We all need more like her in our country. With more like her we may avoid our destiny of self destruction. She reminds me of Benjamin Franklin and Tomas Jefferson. :
from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/04/03/florida-governor-reassigns-21-more-murder-cases-as-part-of-death-penalty-dispute-with-prosecutor/
Florida governor reassigns 21 more murder cases as part of death-penalty dispute with prosecutor
Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday that he was removing a state attorney from about two dozen murder cases, escalating a dispute between the two officials over the death penalty in one of the country's most active capital-punishment states.
The announcement from Scott, a Republican, came a little more than two weeks after Aramis D. Ayala, a Democratic state attorney elected last year, announced that she would no longer seek the death penalty in cases. In response, Scott swiftly said he was removing Ayala from the prosecution of a man charged with killing an Orlando police officer, the most high-profile case under her jurisdiction.
The dispute has reverberated far beyond the central Florida region where Ayala is the state attorney, drawing praise from advocates for criminal justice changes and prompting outrage from elected officials and a state police union. The feud has hinged on the killing of the police officer and on broader questions about the death penalty, which has been in limbo for more than a year in Florida after being twice struck down by courts as unconstitutional.
[Republicans target Florida prosecutor who refuses to seek death penalty in fatal shooting of police officer]
On Monday, Scott expanded on his earlier decision to remove Ayala from the prosecution of Markeith D. Loyd, who is accused of fatally shooting Debra Clayton, an Orlando police officer, after killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon. Scott declared that he was issuing executive orders reassigning 21 first-degree murder cases in Ayala's region to Brad King, the longtime state attorney for a neighboring judicial circuit.
"Each of these cases I am reassigning represents a horrific loss of life," Scott said in a statement announcing his executive orders. "The families who tragically lost someone deserve a state attorney who will take the time to review every individual fact and circumstance before making such an impactful decision."
Scott said that his office would "do all we can to aggressively fight for justice" and that Ayala was not doing the same.
"State Attorney Ayala's complete refusal to consider capital punishment for the entirety of her term sends an unacceptable message that she is not interested in considering every available option in the fight for justice," he said.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 05 2017
From: http://www.decaturdaily.com/news/morgan_county/hearings-today-on-teacher-student-sex-law-constitutionality/article_45536187-2260-51bb-8c2a-c016944f2c27.html
Attorneys for two local teachers charged with having sex with a student are scheduled to be in Morgan County court today to argue that the 2010 law is unconstitutional.
Hearings on motions by Carrie Witt and David Solomon, who are charged in separate cases, to ask Judge Glenn Thompson to find the law unconstitutional are set for 1:30 p.m.
The hearings were postponed Monday on a request by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall because of potential hazardous travel conditions between Montgomery and Decatur for two assistant attorneys general.
Witt, 43, a Decatur High School teacher, was arrested March 21, 2016. Solomon, 26, a contract teacher at Falkville High School, was arrested on the charge March 29, 2016.
The law makes it illegal for a teacher to have consensual sex with a student younger than age 19. Before it was enacted, it was not a crime as long as the student had reached the age of consent, which is 16 in Alabama.
Witt, of Decatur, is accused of having sex with a student who was 17 the first time they had sex, and another who was 18 when he had sex with Witt, according to Decatur police.
Solomon, of Huntsville, is accused of have sex with a 17-year-old student while he was working at Falkville, police said. A contract aide employed by Appleton Learning of Huntsville, Solomon began his relationship with the student after communicating with her on Facebook, police said.
The law is a Class B felony, punishable by two to 20 years in prison. Anyone convicted of the crime must register as a sex offender.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 06 2017:
Is this the same governor that had RSO's fleeing the state like refugees? How many times have I said it; when you point your finger at someone 3 more are pointing right back at you. The more we persecute RSO's the closer we come to our doom; foretold in the book of Revelations. America is not mentioned in the end times; after all.
I am not talking about; lets all feel sorry for those that break the law. I am talking about oppressing human beings like a Nazi Regime. I am talking about abusing and disobeying the law to torture a particular crime for votes and media ratings. I am talking about the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
I have a idea. Why don't we make sex and the thought of sex: against the law?
from: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-governor-robert-bentley-could-face-charges-in-sex-tinged-scandal/
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley could face criminal prosecution after a state ethics panel found probable cause that he broke ethics and campaign finance laws in a sex-tinged scandal that has engulfed him for more than a year.
The Alabama Ethics Commission, after an all-day meeting, voted to refer four issues to the district attorney's office, which will decide whether to pursue charges. The commission found probable cause that Bentley misused state resources and campaign funds, improperly accepted a campaign donation outside an allowed fundraising window and loaned himself campaign money when he wasn't a candidate.
The commission vote was 3 to 1 with one abstention, reports CBS Montgomery affiliate WAKA-TV.
Corrections officer Stacy George, who ran against Bentley for governor, told CBS Mobile, Alabama affiliate WKRG-TV, "He needs to go out of office immediately. … He has to leave; they have to impeach."
The panel's actions could give political ammunition to lawmakers who want to impeach Bentley. Twenty-three lawmakers last year filed impeachment articles against the governor accusing him of corruption and neglect of duty. The special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting the impeachment investigation, tentatively plans to release his report Friday.
Ross Garber, the lawyer representing Bentley in the impeachment investigation, has urged lawmakers to be cautious, saying only the most egregious conduct merits removal. Garber, who also represented South Carolina and Connecticut governors during impeachment probes, said only two governors have been removed in modern times and both were facing criminal indictment.
The ethics panel's decision was a legal and political blow to the Republican who has been dogged by accusations and questions after recordings surfaced in 2016 of him making suggestive remarks to a female aide before his divorce. Bentley has acknowledged making personal mistakes but maintained he did nothing wrong.
Bentley attorney Bill Athanas said Wednesday that the governor maintains his innocence.
"We disagree strongly with the result, but I think it is important to keep in mind that it is a finding of probable cause, not finding of a violation. ... The battle goes on," Athanas said. Athanas said he plans to talk to prosecutors and said there is no basis for charges.
State Auditor Jim Zeigler filed an ethics complaint against Bentley accusing him of using state resources to pursue a relationship with Rebekah Caldwell Mason, who resigned shortly after the recordings became public.
Zeigler praised the decision, but also emphasized it was "only the first step."
"I am pleased that the governor is going to finally face accountability and sad for the state of Alabama that we've had to go through this the last year-and-a-half," he said.
Bentley was photographed by the Montgomery Advertiser leaving the Ethics Commission building several hours into the high-stakes hearing. Athanas declined to say whether he testified.
The commission did not give much detail about the accusations against Bentley. On the ethics complaint, the commission found there was probable cause that he used public resources, including "subordinate personnel, equipment and time all under his discretion or control to further his personal interests." It did not elaborate.
The other witnesses before the commission were expected to include Spencer Collier, the governor's former law enforcement secretary and the first person to publicly raise concerns about the relationship; Ray Lewis, Bentley's former bodyguard; and Secretary of State John Merrill.
Merrill had raised concerns about Bentley using nearly $9,000 in campaign funds to pay a lawyer representing Mason, saying that was not a permissible use of campaign funds under state law.
The governor, who by law cannot seek re-election, last year also reported lending his campaign $50,000 as he emptied his campaign account to pay legal bills.
The scandal has tarnished the reputation of the 74-year-old governor, a mild-mannered dermatologist and former Baptist deacon who attracted voters to his longshot Republican primary campaign in 2010 with his nice-guy image and promises not to accept a gubernatorial salary. While Bentley won re-election in 2014 by an overwhelming margin, his popularity has plummeted after the accusations.
The Ethics Commission action came 12 months after the emergence of the scandal in which Bentley could be heard in a 2014 recording telling a woman, "I worry about loving you so much," and talking about touching her breasts.
In a news conference after the tape's release, the governor assured voters he had done nothing legally wrong but said he had erred in his personal life and apologized to the state and his family.
"I made a mistake. Two years ago, I made a mistake," Bentley said last year.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 07 2017
I have been a ACLU member since 2005 and proud of it! I will quit the ACLU in one second; if I even think they gave up on RSO's rights. It seems like the whole RSO right's movement is imploding; and it sickens me. I have never been officially affiliated with anyone and now I see why. I am not changing; and as far as I can see into my future and my resolve, I am not changing.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 07 2017
From: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ex-prisoner-400g-brutal-attack-correction-officers-article-1.3031697
Sultan Malik was awarded $400,000 for his injuries sustained in a brutal attack by correction officers during a prison transfer.
Friday, April 7, 2017, 7:40 PM
A federal jury Friday awarded a former prisoner $400,000 for injuries he suffered after a group of state correction officers beat him bloody while he was restrained.
Sultan Malik, 37, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he was repeatedly kicked in the head by three officers inside a van set to take him from Southport Correctional Facility to Attica on July 2, 2008.
The officers were upset that Malik had filed a grievance against one of their colleagues, the lawsuit alleges.
"It just escalated from there," Malik recalled. "They put me in a cell encased in Plexiglas without water and electricity. I couldn't use the toilet."
NYC correction officer busted for stealing her boyfriend's phone
Before the transfer, the three officers pulled him outside of the van by his ankle restraints, said Malik after the verdict.
"They all stomped and kicked me," he said.
The attack was initiated by Correction Officers Timothy Hable and Sean Davis, according to the suit.
When he was tossed back into the van, Hable, who was the driver, continued to taunt Malik, the lawsuit said.
Undercover prostitution sting nets Correction Department officer
Hable sarcastically asked if he had enough, according to Malik's court testimony.
"You're a f-----g coward!" Malik replied.
Hable then jumped into the back seat and began to punch Malik in the face, the suit alleged.
Malik, with another state prisoner, Coss Marte, have opened a widely successful gym, called ConBody, located in lower Manhattan.
At the same time, Davis wrapped the seatbelt around Malik's throat and almost chocked him unconscious, according to the testimony.
When they arrived at Attica, Hable tried to cover up what had happened by pretending that he was being attacked by Malik, the lawsuit said.
"He tried to kill me," Malik recalled.
The all-white jury in Rochester didn't buy it. They awarded $100,000 for pain and suffering, and $150,000 in punitive damages against Hable and Davis each.
Hable and Davis are still active correction officers working in Southport, records show.
"That doesn't make any sense," Malik said. "This is not the first case to go against them. Meanwhile, the taxpayers are the ones paying for these suits."
The Correction Department is reviewing the verdict and considering its options, a department spokesman said.
Malik's lawyer hailed the verdict.
"I'm proud of the jury for focusing on the facts and not being distracted by collateral things, such as the fact that Mr. Malik was a felon," said Malik's attorney, Glenn Miller. "They clearly focused in on the credible evidence, and they clearly felt that all four officers did not tell the truth."
Malik, with another state prisoner, Coss Marte, have opened a widely successful gym, called ConBody, located in lower Manhattan. The place has over 1,000 members and another location is in the works.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 08 2017
Found a new RSO rights website, added it to links.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 09 2017
Someone needs to make a statistic about how many republicans are in prison for trumped up sex offender charges. I guaranty that more republicans are in prison for false sex offences that democrats. In the last days rape may not even be a crime according to the bible.
When I say; that according to the bible not mentioning our great country; that I love, in the last times, in the book of revelation. I mean if our country continues to torture 2 million people in prisons; we are not a democracy. Every government that has tortured it's citizens publicly; have fallen. History has proven this. If we continue publicly shaming our citizens through the SOR; we will have to pay the price;all the government's that have fallen have paid.
Just wanted to make that clear. I am not saying crime should not be punished. I am a police officer's son. I believe crime should be punished righteously. I do not believe in cruel and unusual punishment; and that is exactly what we have done, and are doing to well over 1 million people on the SOR; that is counting the estimated 20% that have committed suicide, because of the SOR. That plus the 2 million people we have imprisoned.
New Blogs Part 6 Updated April 10 2017
I am posting this so you can get on this awesome email list.:
Paltry Grits posting rate masks busy time at #txlege
For readers disappointed with the paltry recent posting rate here on Grits, I should mention that most of my writing these days is happening on Just Liberty emails and action alerts. If you haven't signed on to our advocacy list, please do so. Otherwise, here are a few odds and ends which merit readers' attention.
Oh yeah read this small paragraph and sign this great petition too.
These words say it all.:
I demand a return to the rights granted by the Constitution: privacy, property and freedom from government intrusion. We can spend our tax dollars more effectively for both liberty and safety.
I posted this 1st amendment comment on the Grits page.
I suspect my online activity is manipulated constantly. Also people have told me my websites are blocked by security programs. The only reason that security programs block me; can only be because I am controversial to some. Recently I had a two family members tell me security programs block access to my YouTube videos of my wife and I. This is impossible if YouTube was blocked the internet would break.
Constitution of United States of America 1789 (rev. 1992)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.