“The Supreme Court’s Mixed Signals in Packingham” is the title of a thoughtful comment by Bidish Sarma analyzing the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Packingham v. North Carolina, recently published on the American Constitution Society website. (An early analysis of the Packingham decision by Wayne Logan appeared on this site on June 20.) Mr. Sarma proposes that “the time has come to ask whether society’s ‘war’ on sex offenders who have already completed criminal sentences has gone too far.” Full Article
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Great article!
It may be better to read the original article, as this “editorial” linked above just copies most of the original and sticks in a few lines of it’s own. Here is the original:
https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/the-supreme-court%E2%80%99s-mixed-signals-in-packingham
The article mimics what many of us have said here.
It is obvious SCOTUS wants a challenge to any restrictions imposed on someone after they are out of supervision. Of course, SCOTUS also hinted in the exact same way 15 years ago in Connecticut DPS V Doe 2003 that they wanted a Substantive Due Process claim against the registry but never got one or never accepted it if they did.
Here is my favorite part of the article that we’ve discussed a lot on here:
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Justice Kennedy’s opinion hints that the justices in fact harbor concerns. In a parenthetical note, the decision referred to “the troubling fact that the law imposes severe restrictions on persons who already have served their sentence and are no longer subject to the supervision of the criminal justice system,” and observed that this fact is “not an issue before the Court.”
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Its amazing how the right information is there and its being talked about all the time, yet SCOTUS seem to live in a vacuum and continue to use false information because a case hasn’t been brought to them specifically dealing with it. That’s like if someone was sawing at a limb with the person screaming but they continue to do so because no one filed official paperwork to directly tell them that that’s bad and the reason for the sawing is falls.
Wow! Thought provoking and interesting. I did not catch Justice Sotomayor’s thinking on the incorrect statistics initially, but she did use the word “inference”, which I can see being taken two ways, e.g. as in it is fact or the stat infers it is fact when actually has been disputed and is not fact. Our constitutional rights are under attack and people are finding ways to beat back the attacks.