I sometimes see people question the efficacy and fairness of the sex offender registry by claiming you can be convicted of indecent exposure and required to register merely for being caught urinating in public. If true, this would be a gross miscarriage of justice, but I doubt this happens often if at all.
But I’ve done some research and I’ve never been able to find a news story where someone even claimed they were charged with indecent exposure for urinating in public. The only results I get are the websites of legal practitioners mentioning that this COULD happen, but they never cite a case where it DID happen. In other words, it’s in the realm of possibility, and obviously something a lawyer would bring up in legal proceedings as a possible defense.
Is there any evidence that this has ever happened?
Well, FWIW the question has been brought up several times before in this venue including no less than three threads specifically directed about it
And the factual answer seems to be…, as in your case, that we cannot nail it down hard and fast: it depends on the specific circumstances of the incident, and on the jurisdiction you are under, and there have been situations that incorporate this but when you dig deeper you find out most ofthen there are complicating factors that make it not so simple.
Yes, it has been talked about it extensively. The short answer is “no,” urinating in public is not a crime in any jurisdiction for which someone is eligible to be placed on the sex offender registry. However, many people who expose themselves in public to children and other circumstances which would make them eligible to the registry typically claim that they were “only” urinating in public and therefore are innocent of the charge.
So that is where the confusion comes from. People will claim that they are required to register for urinating in public when the full story is that they were convicted of some sort of sexual exposure crime and claim that they were only urinating.
Yes I asked this question before and there have been exactly two firm cases of this.
One man got put on the sex offenders list for public urination but it was EXTREMELY hazy what exactly happened initially as the public urination charge was part of a plea deal.
Another man was deported for being a sex offender for the crime of public urination but he had been here illegally so it seems like that was the courts throwing the book at him to ensure a speedy deportation.