Um, how about you draw a line between someone who was urinating in public and someone who was about to physically assault the child? Wouldn’t that be fairly logical? This argument you and Ghanima are making that it is some great legal impossibility to actually write a law that punishes those we want to punish and doesn’t punish those we don’t want to puzzles the hell out of me. You draw a distinction the same way you draw any other distinction in writing a law. This is not the huge issue you and she are pretending it is.
well, lack of motive, for example, or presence of controled substance in the driver’s system (making it criminal). However, in my example, I don’t see how you could.
some one about to pee and caught unawares will look exactly like some one who was about to physically assault the child.
Um, I’m not sure what possible relevance that has - and somehow I doubt it’s true anyway. I bet you I could look at a hundred photos of men with their dicks out and sort them into “peeing in public” and “assaulting a child” with no confusion whatsoever.
Besides, what’s your point? Do you imagine that a trial consists of snapping one camera photo and then letting twelve people examine it to decide what they think was happening? Are you aware that lots of information is normally gathered in a criminal trial? Matters of intent are considered all the time. I’m trying to imagine any possible scenario in which “guy takes a whiz in the alley” and “guy tries to sexually assault child” could possibly both be conceivable explanations.
You’re really reaching here, and I’m not sure what your point is. This is simply not a matter that poses some sort of substantial legal difficulty. It’s something that’s hard to persue politically, but the legal questions are simple, and the distinction between “public piss” and “waving his dick at a child” is a lot easier one than lots of matters of criminal law. Virtually every crime has to involve “mens rea” - that is, whether you committed a crime on purpose, or by accident (and if so, was the accident the result of depraved indifference?)
Minor issues of someone’s intent are at issue in criminal trials all the time. It seems to me that the issue of what the guy was actually doing and got arrested for is an even easier issue to deal with. There may be, one time in a thousand, genuine difficulty in determining whether some dude was peeing in an alley or waving his dick at a kid, but that doesn’t impose any inherent difficulty in writing the law anyway - it’s a problem for the lawyers to fight out in that one particular exceptional case; the statute just tells you what acts are crimes and how they are to be punished. It’s up to the trial to determine what act someone committed. Imaginary circumstances in which there might be confusion are not some serious difficulty when you’re talking, in general, about two very different acts.
I think that Ghanima is correct that it is probably not so easy to suss out who is a danger and who is not. The naked-in-his-own-house guy is a good example. I would respond* that not all sex offenders need to be on the registry. In fact not all sex offenders who may pose a danger to society in the future need to. After all, cruelty to animals can indicate a future serial killer (most of whom were sex criminals), but we don’t register them. We could just have a small class of offenses in the registry, and treat the rest of the offenders as normal criminals.
- Not only would I, but in fact I did.
And I bet you you’d be wrong in many cases - what then. Sucks to be you?
I’m actually quite aware of that. I’m also aware that L&O SUV aside, cops aren’t always very good at finding out reality. kids can be easily coached, even unintentionally. and easily confused. and easily swayed (by both sides).
and my experience tells me differently. I saw, through the headlines, a man’s reputation, career and nearly his life shot to hell 'cause of a botched CSC case. Kid involved (about 13) made accusations against her teacher. Case against him consisted of exactly:
- the kids statements
- a single letter he’d written obviously in response to a letter she’d written (much was made of it - the exact text appeared in the paper. in it, he thanked her for her letter, told her he was busy w/family activities that summer, hoped she’d have a good summer herself, made some comment about the subject matter she was in his class, and signed it 'love, Mr. so and so". Much was made of the word “love”)
ultimately he was found not guilty, but frankly, he had an excellent, tenacious attorney (he could afford). I know of many a defendant who didn’t. I know former prosecutors/defense attorneys all who have horror tales of bad juries, bad prosecutions, crappy defenses.
No shit intent is issue in criminal trials? really? gosh, I wish some one had told me about it.
what the fuck would you do if you were in jail awaiting trial, your court appointed attorney told you you were facing 20 to life in prison for something you didn’t do, but that if you pled out to this much lesser charge, you’d get 5 years probation (well, and had to register on the so registry), knowing that this guy was getting a flat fee for representing you? (ie he gets paid by the case, not by the hour- how zealously do you think he’d defend you if it was costing him $$$).
and, unfortunately that plea deal would be available to both the guy with evil intent and the unlucky one.
the system is fucked.
I believe that the police should know about folks. I don’t believe that the average citizen on the street is at all protected by these registries. and too many non dangerous people are on them.
if some one is actually dangerous - don’t release them. If they aren’t, dont’ make it impossible (or nearly so) for them to live. if they’re in that questionable area of you think they might be dangerous but aren;t sure, have them be on supervision (parole), have a registry that the police can know about.
For crying out loud, she was TEN!! That’s the problem with the schizophrenic way these laws are being enforced – if we’re going to apply the doctrine of “informed consent” to all minors below the age of consent, it’s gotta be consistent. We can’t say that a 10-year-old is a victim in one circumstance (such as, having sex with a teacher), and a sexual predator if she fools around with her little brothers. That’s blatantly delusional.
For what it’s worth, your date doesn’t have to be underage for you to get targeted with date rape. Just ask Kobe Bryant. That’s really the message the Fundamentalist Christian conservatives want to get across, aided by the corporate-driven media: Sex Is Evil, Period. They currently focus on sex w/ kids (whether it’s with adults or other kids their age), because it’s squick. But in reality, the real conservative agenda is to eliminate ALL sex outside marriage, period. Perhaps not so far as the fundamentalist Islamic tradition of dressing women in beehive costumes, and stoning adulterers to death…but close.
The scariest thing is, the liberals can’t stop the witchhunt. They won’t – passing ultra-restrictive laws against sexual predators is an easy, cheap way to get votes and TV ratings. They don’t care about protecting children at all; heck, the way our society treats sex offenders, in my opinion, makes them much more likely to re-offend. But that’s not even the issue anymore…we’re putting kids in jail for the same sex crimes we supposedly protect them from, and that’s insanity. What really worries me, is what the next political target will be…men who “predate” on 18-25 year olds? Don’t laugh, it could happen!
I’m honestly not sure what point you’re trying to argue, wring. The arguments you’re using don’t seem to be specific to the idea of SO databases, but generally applicable to any attempt to prosecute someone for a sex crime. I’m not sure what you think is so hard about telling the difference between someone taking a leak, and someone committing sexual assault, but assuming this is a huge problem for law enforcement, getting rid of SO databases isn’t going to solve it: you’ll still have innocent micturators being prosecuted as sex offenders. I’m assuming your not arguing for the legalization of sexual assualt, so I’m not clear what you’re saying, here.
the issue was 'who should we include on SO registries". some one made the argument that certain acts should be included (where some level of physical touching had taken place) and others (like indecent exposure) shouldn’t be. My point was that there were cases in both sets where wrong people would be on the list. (ie some non dangerous folks would be on, yet some dangerous folks would be off).
so, yes, what I was posting would also be a problem for the prosecution of such cases, but the point I’m trying to show is that the lists themselves are problematic because of issues like these. Attempting to legislate certain cases on, certain cases off won’t cure the problem. the lists themselves are a problem.
In fact, the lists themselves become part of the plea deal. In MI, there’s an archaic law being utilized to attempt to divert certain folks from being on the list (the law is “seduction” -it’s against the law in MI to “seduce or debache an unmarried woman”. )
By that logic, prosecuting the crimes themselves is also a problem, and a much worse one, as the consequences of a mistaken verdict are much greater. How does your argument prove the need for ending SO databases without also proving the need to stop prosecuting people for sex crimes? Or crimes in general, for that matter? I’m not a fan of these lists, either, but simply pointing out that sometimes the wrong people end up on them isn’t a persuasive argument for ending them. That’s going to be true of any and all legal processes, wether the defendent ends up on a list or rotting in a jail cell. In a similar vein, Excalibre’s point about needing more clear deliniations between different levels of sexual offence remains pertinent, regardless of the exsistence of these databases: it’s stupid to treat a guy taking a whizz the same as a guy predating children, regardless of what punishment is meted out.
???
the SO registries place addiitonal and extroidinary restrictions on people post conviction and post completion of sentence.
Upon further research, I find that I was mistaken. The guy cited by me was William Elliot, and here’s his story.
He didn’t end up marrying the girl or having kids with her.
But he still paid a heavy price for being listed as a sex offender.
Which is a legitimate argument against them. However, unless I’ve missed it, you have not advanced that argument prior to this post.
Miller - I told you why I posted what I did.
a poster was advancing the argument that one could simply legislate some types of crimes to have this thing work effectively. I posted that everything they’d thought would be clear cut examples wouldn’t be, IRL.
they were not accepting of the concept that the list itself was the problem, they seemed to think that there was a simple legislative fix (their example was, essentially, something where some one was physically touched went on, some one who didn’t touch was off). I disagreed.
Hopefully by showing/ giving examples how wrong people could continue to be on the list and wrong people left off in the cases that that poster thought was an ‘easy fix’ for the list, that poster would then conclude that there was no legislative fix for getting the wrong people off and the right people on.
If this doesn’t make it clearer for you, then so be it. my essential opinion is that the lists do no good, are a waste of resources, have huge potential for errors, are diluted down to the point of absurdity, have huge potential for wrongful use, don’t protect anyone, but make certain people feel as if they’re ‘doing something’ to protect their children. I do not believe that such lists should be totally discontinued, law enforcement for example has a legitimate use for them. and I certainly don’t wish for the crimes to go unprosecuted/punished.
Again, that’s not an argument against the databases, it’s an argument against criminalizing sex crimes. If you want to argue against the database, you need to come up with flaws that apply to the databases and only to the databases. “It’s hard to tell the difference between legal and illegal activity,” not only fails to be specific to the databases, but is in fact applicable to the entire legal system as a whole.
I do not get the impression that Excalibre (that’s who you’re talking about, right?) holds the position you attribute to him here. You seem to be taking this from one post in which he argued against the idea that it would be too difficult to change the criteria for what gets you put on the list. I don’t see anywhere in this thread where he has expressed any support for the sex offenders database as a concept.
By that same token, neither is there any legislative fix for putting the right people in prison and letting the wrong people go free. In any sort of judicial system, mistakes are going to be made. Your examples don’t prove anything about the usability or fairness of these lists: all of them apply equally to traditional judicial remedies as they do to public online databases. I mean, your example of the teacher who was falsely accused and had his life basically ruined: how would taking down the databases have improved his situation? Had he retained a less skilled lawyer, he’d still be in jail because of the false accusation. This is an excellent argument against the witch-hunt hysteria surrounded accusation of child molestation, but it in no way is unique to on-line databases.
The problem you’re pointing out is, in fact, not a problem with databases at all, but with the criminal justice system in which the databases are being compiled. The injustice here isn’t that pissing in public gets you put on a sex offender’s database, the injustice is that pissing in public is considered a sexual offence in the first place. Putting it in the same category as flashing children is an injustice no matter what the penalty is.
If you don’t think the lists should be totally discontinued, then Excalibre’s suggestions about how to more narrowly define sex crimes is entirely appropriate: whatever form the list takes, and whoever has access to it, it’s in society’s best interest to make sure the lists are as accurate and specific as possible. If you want to argue against the lists on those other grounds,
How in the Helen Gurley Brown does a ten-year-old “groom” someone?
no. Miller, it was this post/poster. not Excalibre’s
I’m not sure who you’re even trying to argue with here, since this thread hasn’t addressed the actual legitimacy of sex offender registries at all. For the record, I’m against them, on the same basic grounds that you are: I think there’s a serious moral problem with punishing someone for their crime and continuing their punishment afterwards, particularly in a form that results in vigilanteism and the inherent ineffectiveness of relying on the public to make determinations about a person’s danger to children rather than on people with expertise in the area.
But that wasn’t the topic of discussion. Even though I’m opposed to the basic concept of sex offender registries, it doesn’t mean that it’s somehow impossible to limit them to crimes that actually merit inclusion. Statutes already make a distinction between offenses like public urination and rape; it’s nonsense to claim that there’s some inherent impossibility of making that distinction when we do it already. The fact that sometimes criminals are punished unfairly or irrationally is a problem; there’s no denying that. But while the sex offender registries may be yet one more injustice heaped unfairly upon people, the basic problem you describe has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the nature of the criminal justice system. Getting rid of sex offender registries wouldn’t fix anything; if your line of argument is that people are frequently convicted wrongly of sex offenses, I don’t know why you’re worried about sex offender registries at all because the wrongful convictions are the basis of the problem.
Not convincingly, though. I’m not pretending that the law is always fair, but I’m quite willing to say that there’s not some basic logical problem in trying to distinguish between public urination and rape. I have no idea why you keep insisting that there’s no way to tell those things apart, when they’re completely different actions. I have no idea why you brought it up in this context - at least without specifying that you were not discussing sex offender registries at all. And I have no idea what you’re suggesting be done about it. As Miller says, your argument that it’s somehow impossible to distinguish between whizzing on a lamppost and touching children doesn’t make sense, and the only reasonable conclusion to what you’re claiming is that we shouldn’t be trying to punish real sexual offenses (since, after all, we can’t tell them apart from innocent activities.) That conclusion is so ridiculous that it should have been a warning sign to you that your argument wasn’t a meaningful one.
Oh, and fuck you for refusing to specify who you were talking with. I don’t believe for an instant that you were actually addressing DrDeth, since he has hardly put in an appearance in this thread, so you knew perfectly well that no one would assume you were addressing him. And he hasn’t been making the statements you’ve been arguing against either.
Thank you.
you don’t believe I was responding to that post? look back asshole, at page one, posts 35 and 36 I think. I quoted exacttly that post in my original answer. it should have been obvious to whom I was responding. IT’s not my fault that you and Miller didn’t notice it.
So you responded to his post once, and then when you seemed to be continuing a discussion with me, you were actually talking with the absent DrDeth? Even in posts where you quoted me? I think you’re not quite understanding the concept of message boards here, sweetums, since the two-way conversation you think you were having didn’t exist. And it doesn’t really explain your coy references to “that poster”. Nice try, though. It’s always fun when someone tries to cook up some nonsensical explanation rather than admitting when they’re wrong.