The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) is dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families. In order to achieve that objective, ACSOL will educate and litigate as well as support or oppose legislation.
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Janice's Journal
General News Feed
11
Feb
2014
It is estimated that one in five women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there — one in five,” President Obama said on Wednesday. The occasion for this lecture: He was announcing the creation of a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. It’s a startlingly high number that figured prominently in the leads of media reports on...
11
Feb
2014
Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush on Monday ordered former Stafford County teen ____ ____’s name removed from the state’s Sex Offender Registry and vacated the convictions that put him there. The order resulted from Roush’s ruling that court-appointed attorney Denise Rafferty failed to provide effective assistance of counsel to Coker in 2007 as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Since January 2009, a team of attorneys...
At US military bases in Japan, most service members found culpable in sex crimes in recent years did not go to prison, according to internal Department of Defence documents. Instead, in a review of hundreds of cases filed in America’s largest overseas military installation, offenders were fined, demoted, restricted to their bases or removed from the military. Full Article
10
Feb
2014
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told law students at the University of Hawaii on Monday that the nation's highest court was wrong to uphold the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, but he wouldn't be surprised if the court issued a similar ruling during a future conflict. Scalia was responding to a question about the court's 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United...
10
Feb
2014
I am a sex offender. I know well the tremendous power of those words. In 2007, I pled guilty to possession of child pornography. Nothing here is meant to defend what I did or to minimize the gravity of my actions. I had a major problem with pornography, and I was far too deep in denial and too scared to reach out to anyone. Full...
10
Feb
2014
ELKO — Between food, services, housing and utilities, taxpayers are footing a bill of about $85 per day for each inmate locked in the Elko County Jail, according to Sheriff Jim Pitts. With a jail population that’s almost constantly at the facility’s 120 inmate capacity, lock-up expenses add up to more than $10,000 per day and millions of dollars each year, according to Pitts’ estimation....
10
Feb
2014
This week, the National Registry of Exonerations, housed at the University of Michigan Law School, released new data showing that 2013 was the high-water mark year for exonerations to date , with 87 prisoners freed. This led some legal media, like our colleagues over at Above the Law, to write headlines like “Instance of Known Prosecutor FAILS are on the Rise.” In their words, “More exonerations suggest that more...
I've previously written about the cognitive bias problem in state crime labs. This is the bias that can creep into the work of crime lab analysts when they report to, say, a state police agency, or the state attorney general. If they're considered part of the state's "team" -- if performance reviews and job assessments are done by police or prosecutors -- even the...
A Reaction to the Woody Allen Story I’ve been working on an article about caring for the bad dad, the man who molested my sister and tore my family apart, and what it has been to sift through the wake of my father’s life in photos, scrapbooks, and letters. After he suffered a stroke early in 2013, he couldn’t care for himself and I...
YAKIMA, Wash. — The names of Yakima County’s low-level sex offenders will remain out of public view while a judge reviews arguments on whether they should be released. Yakima County Superior Court Judge Blaine Gibson put off making a decision Thursday in order to read an amended legal brief arguing against releasing the names that was handed to him just before court convened. Also, he...
08
Feb
2014
There have been many comments / stories on recent travel to Mexico. This post is dedicated to Travel to Mexico. Some Mexico specific comments have been moved here for further discussion. Also see: Living with 290 - Traveling to Cabo San Lucas International Travel Sharing More Information Will Enable Federal Agencies to Improve Notifications of Sex Offenders’ International Travel - United States Government Accountability Office, February...
08
Feb
2014
If you have a loved one in a nursing home, they may be living under the same roof as a sex offender -- and have no idea that they do. An exclusive Channel 3 investigation found 29 sex offenders living in 16 nursing homes in Northeast Ohio. Two of those nursing homes -- one in a small village in Summit County -- had up to...
UPDATE: Kentucky court rejects sex-offender bar exam (3/20/2014) The Kentucky Supreme Court has turned away a request from a convicted sex offender to reconsider his bid to take the bar exam and become a practicing lawyer. The seven justices on Thursday unanimously rejected a rehearing in the case. Full Article --- A University of Kentucky law school graduate who finished in the top third of his...
A 16-year-old Virginia girl is facing child pornography charges, after police say she posted photos of herself naked on Twitter. Authorities received an anonymous tip describing the photos, which were posted to Twitter around Jan. 30. The girl, a student in James City County, admitted to posting "multiple" lewd photos of herself to the social networking website last week, according to police. Full Article
05
Feb
2014
Through our elected representatives efforts, they have legally created a class of people and that class is registered citizens. What does this mean as far as our judicial system is concerned. It means that this group of people are now able to stand on the same ground to fight their battles as anyone else, that is been discriminated against because of race, color, creed,...
The City of Cypress, located in Orange County, has agreed not to enforce most of its residency restrictions and all of its presence restrictions as terms of two settlement agreements reached on January 31. The City of Cypress also agreed to pay attorney's fees and costs for the lawsuits filed against them in federal and state courts. In exchange, the plaintiffs in those cases...
In 2012 a law was passed that prohibited registered sex offenders from entering areas where children would likely be present. This in includes parks, playgrounds and beaches. However, according to ABC News the law was overturned in an appeals court in January 2014 because it was said to violate California’s state law. It is clear the state of California and its cities are not...
LAS VEGAS -- The Nevada Supreme Court has delayed the start of the sexual offender registry law, also known as the Adam Walsh Act. The new law, which was to go into effect Feb. 1, would make the names of more sex offenders publicly accessible. The law says a sex offender, as young as 14 years old, must now publicly register. The Nevada Department of Public Safety expressed concerns about...
During a trial for any offense against a person, and most definitely when the charge is of a sexual nature, the testimony from the victim is the strongest factor in conviction. At sentencing, much credence is given to victim impact statements. When an inmate is eligible for parole, statements from the victim can make the difference between parole being granted or not. But how...
Some sex offenders could be subject to mandatory life sentences without parole — a sentence currently reserved exclusively for murderers — under a bill introduced by Senate President Peter Courtney. Senate Bill 1517 wasn’t the product of lobbying by law enforcement, parent groups or the Department of Corrections, Courtney said. It was his idea and bubbled up from an experience he had years ago, serving...