Really, we should just throw away the Cons ution.
That would make us Chuck Norris-style, not politically correct, tough as nails badasses.
Didn't Thomas write the opinion? Would that not mean that Scalia was agreeing with him?
Thomas is a bright legal mind who is qualified to be on the Court. I think that every justice there, regardless of whether I agree with them, is qualified to sit on the Court. The solicitor general is equally qualified.
on second thought, this is a very good point.
the country is allowing their fear and hatred of child molesters to throw away the cons ution of the united states.
to hold someone PAST their sentence is draconian, imo. this is ed up.
1. Yes, apparently Thomas wrote the dissent in this instance. I have read repeatedly that Scalia is the strongest (in terms of personality and force of arguments) justice on the court, and that Thomas is well known as a justice who rarely, if ever, asks a question during public hearings, and speaks little or not at all in private conferences between justices. Moreover, as indicated previously, he agrees with Scalia (the writer of the position is not necessarily the one who convinces the other...he/she may or may not be) over 90% of the time.
2. At what point did I ever indicate that I thought that Thomas should not have been voted onto the Court? I did not say that. Independent thinking is not a prerequisite for sitting on the Supreme Court.
3. I also think that most any president can name whomever they choose as long as said person is intellectually capable of understanding the issues and ruling reasonably.
4. You are, I believe, reading more into my comments about independent thought than is warranted.
perhaps each state should open sex offender places, where they could be transferred, from the prison to the place, and be supervised and still "locked up", but they arent in prison conditions anymore and they get treatment until the state decides they can be free.
keeping them in prison past their sentence seems wrong.
This. I'm not sure I understand the cons utionality of keeping a state or federal inmate in prison longer than their state or federal imposed prison sentence.
Well, they're muslims. And they might be radicals too. Why take a chance?
But think of the children!
They've been using sex offender legislation to wipe out the consitution for years now. You think this is a questionable law you should see what they did in Alaska a few years back. They upheld the ruling of the Alaska SC that you could go back and put SO's on lifetime registration even for those who's sentence was complete and they were no longer in the system, on parole, probation or incarceration. Alaska case was argued by the now sitting chief justice of the USSC, Roberts. All states now have that law and it is federal law.
We've effectively removed ex post facto, statute of limitations and double jeopardy via sex offender legislation.
And if you're not aware, the US legal system works on 'precedent' so if they can do it to SO's, they can do it for anything else. It just hasn't happened yet, but it will.
People really don't realize, and I guess it depends on how old you are, but this country has fundamentally changed in the last 15 years. I think it is because of technology and we don't really 'have it down' of how to balance the capabilities of technology with the BoR and the Cons ution. In my opinion, we keep making the wrong choices. But, when they roll out a new
child rape/murder every few months, it's easy to get people worked up, and they'll do anything, believing it will make them safer. This just in, somewhere in America, a child killer was born this year. Human nature won't change. As long as there are humans, there will be evil acts. You don't blow up the cons ution of the US because a child, or anyone else, died. Sorry. Life is harsh.
I guess the question is, why did we value ex post facto, double jeopardy, or have a statute of limitations to begin with? We could start by asking those questions.
man
1984 doesn't seem like fiction anymore, does it.
scary times ahead.
I gave up around 1990 or so, when I first started noticing things we were doing that were absolutely crazy. Oddly, about the time the cold war ended.
You'd think we'd have MORE freedom after that, but increasingly, we have less.
I have thoughts on that...but...ahhh.....
When the dike was leaking, there was no Hans Brinker to put his finger in the hole...now we're leaking all around.
Sad to watch for my old man, who is a WWII vet and jumped the Rhine with the 82nd Airborne and fought the Battle of the Bulge. I've literally seen him cry over things our country does these days...
As he once told me, 'People don't get it anymore....'
Last edited by word; 05-17-2010 at 10:52 PM.
This.
The term "violent sexual offenders" is used for a reason, these aren't the normal sexual assault criminals...these are the real bad ups that WE as a society shouldn't have to worry about treating good or bad. I'm a pretty forgiving person, that strives to understand the motives and benefits of every action - and I don't think violent sexual offenders (child molestors spending all day carving doll houses, those convicted of rape with little remorse, etc) deserve a second chance. Their victims don't get a second chance at life without memories of trauma.
Some people are just bad apples, why can't we all agree that no written do ent (i.e. the Cons ution) will account for all the situations we encounter? We need to use common sense and say "nah, , you done ed up big time and now you gonna pay!" I shed no tears for those that find pleasure in the tears of others.
Patty Wetterling: The harm in sex-offender laws
By Patty Wetterling
Published in the Sacramento Bee, September 14, 2007
ST. JOSEPH, Minn. -- My son Jacob was kidnapped on Oct. 22, 1989. Neither his brother nor his friend saw the man's face. He was masked, he had a gun and he ordered them to run to the woods. By the time they looked back, Jacob was gone and so was the man. Since that day, I have been on a journey to find him and to stop this from ever happening to another child, another family.
But I'm worried that we're focusing so much energy on naming and shaming convicted sex offenders that we're not doing as much as we should to protect our children from other real threats.
Many states make former offenders register for life, restrict where they can live, and make their details known to the public. And yet the evidence suggests these laws may do more harm than good.
Jacob's Law was the first federal attempt to prevent convicted sex offenders from repeating their crimes after release. It was the outcome of my unwanted education in sexual violence against children.
Soon after Jacob was taken, I learned that sexual motives are usually behind child kidnapping. That was a thought totally out of my realm of consciousness. Who would do that? Who would sexually harm a child? As the search for Jacob went on, I asked law enforcement, what do you need? An investigator told me: A ready list of potential suspects, a central database of offenders convicted of sexual violence against children.
The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children Sex Offender Registration Act was part of the 1994 Crime Bill signed by President Bill Clinton. Our goal was to give law enforcement a tool to help build safer communities. Back in 1990, when we first recommended registering convicted sex offenders, we were met with resistance: "You can't do that. These people have rights!" How times have changed. Few people today are concerned about the rights of sex offenders. Most now complain our laws are not tough enough.
But they might be missing some basic facts. First, in most states "sex offender" covers anyone, including juveniles, convicted of any sexual offense, including consensual teenage sex, public urination and other non-violent crimes. Second, Jacob was the exception, not the rule: more than 90 percent of sexual violence is committed by someone the child knows. And third, most shocking to me, sex offenders are less likely to re-offend than commonly thought. A Department of Justice study suggested ex-offenders have a recidivism rate of 3 percent to 5 percent within the first three years after release.
Another study found that, after 15 years, three out of four do not re-offend.
Shortly before Jacob's Law was passed, Megan Kanka was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Her parents felt it wasn't enough for law enforcement to know where sex offenders were: they thought we should all know. Maybe, if they'd known that there was a convicted sex offender living next door, their child would be alive today. Megan's Law was created to let people know when a violent offender was released into their community, so they could talk to their children and perhaps save another child from sexual violence. But the law has been expanded so that now anyone with an Internet connection can download details about almost any offender, whether or not they pose a risk, and whether or not they live nearby.
Are these policies working? Are our "get tough on sex offenders" laws having the desired effect? Human Rights Watch has taken on the challenge of looking at sex offender policy to see what parts are working and what aren't.
This week it published a 143-page report, "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States." The researchers examined whether we are building safer communities with these laws, and what issues policy-makers should consider. HRW found that many laws may not prevent sexual attacks on children, but do lead to harassment, ostracism and even violence against former offenders. That makes it nearly impossible to rehabilitate those people and reintegrate them safely into their communities -- and that may actually increase the risk that they'll repeat their crime.
We need to keep sight of the goal: no more victims. We need to be realistic. Not all sex offenders are the same. Not all sex offenses are the same. We need to ask tougher questions: What can we do to help those who have offended so that they will not do it again? What are the social factors contributing to sexual violence and how can we turn things around? None of us want our loved ones to be victims of sexual violence. None of us want to be the parent or sibling or child of a sex offender. But since the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the family, sexual violence becomes personal very quickly. It affects all of us.
We need better answers. We need to fund prevention programs that stop sexual violence before it happens. We need to look at what can help those released from prison to succeed so that they don't victimize again -- and that probably means housing and jobs and treatment and community support. Given that current laws are extremely popular, taking truly effective measures may exact a high political price. But that's surely not too much to pay to prevent the kidnap, rape or murder of another child.
-----
It should be noted that Polly Klaus's father, Mark Klaus, has spoken out about sex offender laws.
They both lost their children and have federal laws named after them yet THEY don't like what is going on.
Is that not worth a listen to ?
double post
this is less about sex offenders and more about what happens to the rest of us if we allow sex offenders cons utional rights to be trampled on.
it sets a legal precedent. that's not ok. it's not about the criminals, it's about the cons ution.
Give it up. It's just a goddamned piece of paper.
git 'ir done.
Of course it is. There's a lot of ed up laws and requirements for public urination and consensual teenage sex (there was a terrible case about oral sex at a party a few years back). However, I'm not afraid of this judicial ruling because I'd rather keep a violent sex offender in prison than take a chance they go out into the world and put a family in prison and potentally a life (young or old) in the ground. I don't think it's any mystery that sex offenders get raped in prison, and since a good number are shown to be abused as kids themselves which led to them abusing others, who is to say all the pent up agression won't come out when they get back on the outside where they have a little more power? That's not even taking into account the drunks that manhandle women, but that's probably something we can work on rehabilitating...although that costs money, money that can be used for other things.
I know it can be hard to have faith that judges are smart, but you need to have that faith because without it this country just cannot work. From the Surpreme Court down, mistakes are made, but I'd rather make a mistake against a person that has done wrong than a community that has no idea who/what is living next door.
Violent sex offender rights are not worth the tears of an innocent family.
Let me get this straight. Because of 105 maniacs, the rest of the country now has to live with a weakened cons utional standard that could easily be extended beyond violent sexual offenders, and you think this is ok?
This is a very bad precedent, one that will almost surely be extended someday to other classes of "un-rehabilitated" convicts. A sentence is a determinate penalty; extending it at discretion when it is complete because of the type of crime involved is chicken .
It's like waking up in Bizarro-USA. Safety trumps everything it used to mean to be American. It's ing pathetic.
We have a new set of terror laws that extend far beyond actual "terrorist activity" as we've come to define it. If no one is going to put up a fight against those broad, overreaching laws - I think protecting "the rights of violent sex offenders" is the last thing we should be concerned about.
You need to trust the system, it's the only way this country works. If you don't trust the system, this precedent is NOTHING compared to the that came before it and we currently live under. People say this sets things into motion, but it's nothing new. Actually, it is kind of new, in the sense that it makes us safer than any of the other crap that's been done in the name of "Security."
Ok, I don't think you will find a single arguement here, so get to work pushing for longer (or life) sentences for these criminals. Don't give a sentence, then for whatever reason (warden doesn't like you, etc), you are not released when you finish your sentence. Once again, this ruling creates legal precendent and can now be used to justify doing the same for ANY criminal. That is how the US legal system works: statutes and case law. Case law is the more influential.
I agree with you emotionally and do think that sentencing for sex offenders needs to be harsher. At the same time, the notion that government knows best seems complacent and, in it's own way, un-American (Not to say "SB hates Amurrcah!" as much as that our system is designed to be argued over at every step, not accepted blindly).
I also think that defending this law's shortcomings by citing the Patriot Act's greater shortcomings is a dangerous road to travel. Our rights as citizens are finite. Pruning them back further and further will ultimately hurt the US more than releasing all sex offenders with a box of chocolates and a scrip for Viagra.
Your mastery of the groupthink is amazing.
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