So far, by the OP’s account, his roommate ‘screwing’ him seems to amount to trying to mooch money from him, keeping his security deposit (to which the landlord is perfectly entitled in some cases!), and putting his laundry in the same washer.
Some how this demands cruel revenge? And since when does being gay keep you out of prison over fear of rape? What?
The OP sounds like a teenager not an adult, to me. That’s some pretty poor power of reasoning, right there! (Of course attempts to compare J Duggar are equally are just as poorly reasoned, in my opinion!)
In my state it is expressly against the law to use someone’s Megan’s law status to harass them. Each state will have slightly different laws. So yes, in my state you would be breaking the law.
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Putting out flyers with publicly available information does not appear to me to rise to the level of harassment, but IANAL.
Lots of information is publicly available. There is a whole world of information at your fingertips. What if you found out through perfectly legal methods your neighbor had done time 20 years ago for theft. Would be harassment to send that information to your neighbors? What if your neighbor starred in a porno? Would it be harassment if you sent the information to your neighbors? It is not relevant if the information could be found if you searched for it. It is your actions that determine if you are committing harassment. It is harassment if the action is being done to alarm or seriously annoy another person. The OP has clearly stated his motives. It is to harass another person.
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I have stated my intention is to further humiliate him. I do not feel guilty about that. I was looking for objective opinion. Period.
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You can’t get clearer than that. Harassment.
This is the wording on the NJ Megan’s Law site:
Harassment is a disorderly persons offense (misdemeanor).
As always, laws differ from state to state. In NJ low risk (tier 1) offenders do not appear on the state website. Moderate (tier 2) and high risk (tier 3) offenders do. That is also different from state to state.
That’s what I am asking. Is it illegal harassment to disclose public information?
My actions, yes. My motives - I don’t think it is that clear.
Is the state harassing offenders by publishing their names on a website? That makes the information more publicly available than a neighborhood flyer.
I don’t think the OP is using the registry information to deny health insurance or housing or any of the rest of it.
Besides, from the wording of the law, it sounds as if a landlord couldn’t look up a prospective renter on the database and say ‘No, I won’t rent to you because you are a child molester’ rather than "I won’t rent to you because you are a deadbeat or a burglar’.
I suppose the OP made a tactical error in saying that she wanted to do this to humiliate rather than pretending it was a public service. But isn’t truth a successful defence? It’s not like she is following this pervert from city to city and calling everyone he meets to warn them that he is a kiddie-diddler.
I am not saying I think it is a good idea. I am asking if it is legal, and ISTM that it would be.
‘He is listed on the sex offender registry, but don’t make any special effort to publicize this.’ Why not (legally)?
The OP has stated that the sole purpose of the proposed act is to perform harassment. It’s legal for people to go look up the information. It’s illegal to tell people about it specifically to mess with them.
Would it be harassment to stand in your yard and yell “Democrat!” at your neighbor every time you see him? Even if he is in fact a democrat? Of course it is. You are doing it to annoy him.
Of course you use the first paragraph that I included for completeness even though it is not relevant to this case. It is the second paragraph that is.
The truth is not a defense. This is not a libel case. I think you are confusing it with civil libel. It is harassment if you do something to alarm or seriously annoy someone. You don’t have to lie to do that. So you find out by doing “research” on the internet that your neighbor who for some reason doesn’t want to have anything to do with you did a couple of pornographic videos. You mail out notice to the neighbors to warn them about someone with loose moral character in the area. It’s the truth right? How could there be anything wrong with the truth?
The fact that it is public information means that just the disclosure or distribution of the information is not a crime. Telling your neighbor “Guess what I found out about Bob” is not harassment. There may be some grey area beyond that. I am confident that the OP is no where near a grey area. He is describing text book harassment.
She doesn’t care about that. My God, man. He put HIS CLOTHES on top of hers in the washer! There’s no punishment too heavy for such an egregious offense.
I think distributing flyers is different from yelling in public. Would it be harassment if I printed up flyers mentioning that he is a Democrat? I kind of doubt it, even it was a heavily Republican district.
No offense, but this is kind of begging the question. Yes, it is illegal to use sex registry information to commit the crime of harassment. The question is whether or not publishing flyers is harassment.
I rather doubt that publishing flyers about someone’s criminal background is a cut-and-dried example of harassment.
Do you believe that such notice would constitute harassment?
Well, okay - do you have a cite for a case of someone convicted of harassment for publicizing someone’s sex offender status?
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The OP has stated that the sole purpose of the proposed act is to perform harassment. It’s legal for people to go look up the information. It’s illegal to tell people about it specifically to mess with them.
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Same question - do you have a cite making it illegal to reveal public information on someone to mess with them? Did the reporter who dug up George Bush’s DWI commit harassment? If someone outs a closeted gay, is that harassment?
I think people are getting carried away here. There is, at the very least, a gray area.
Definition doesn’t seem to give a fig whether the information is legally obtained, true or false. It’s about the reason why the act is performed, and in the case of the OP, it’s pretty clear:
I gave up the idea of trying to get my money back yesterday. All I was going to do was put 2 pages culled from the internet in envelopes and send them to each person in the condo association.
No comments from me at all on those pages. That information is fact as published by the state police, the courts and a network affiliate news station.
Re-publishing that info cannot be a crime. I was simply looking for affirmation of that.