Thursday, November 5, 2009 3:29 AM
By James Nash
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Thousands of registered sex offenders would be subject to less-stringent reporting requirements if defense lawyers succeed in challenging parts of a 2007 state law intended to crack down on sexual criminals.
The attorneys told the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday that the get-tough law was applied illegally to more than 26,000 sex offenders who were sentenced before it took effect.
In addition, the lawyers said, the measure penalizes people who commit sex offenses before they turn 18 by requiring them to continue to register as sex offenders well into adulthood.
The state's highest court heard four cases yesterday challenging Senate Bill 10, which created a new system for classifying sex offenders based more on the severity of the crime than the likelihood of committing future offenses. More than half of the offenders were placed in the most-serious category -- sexual predators -- who are required to register every 90 days for life.
Jeffrey M. Gamso, a Toledo lawyer who argued one of the cases, said the law had more to do with securing federal funding under the Adam Walsh Act than protecting Ohioans.
"Is the sheriff really keeping tabs on all those people?" Gamso asked in an interview. "We know that some people will re-offend, and we want to be able to target those people.
"You want to find the needle in the haystack, and what this does is build a bigger haystack."
State Sen. Timothy J. Grendell, R-Chesterland, said the law makes it easier for the public to monitor the whereabouts of registered sex offenders on the Internet and through mandatory notices to neighbors. "The policy decision, from my perspective, was based on protecting public safety," Grendell said. "The timing was based on us being told we'd get an additional 10 percent (in Adam Walsh funding) if we did this by a certain time. We would not make public policy just to get money."
The four cases:
• Three adult sex offenders from Huron County who were classified as sexual predators under the 2007 law say it's unconstitutional to subject them to a "punitive" law that didn't exist when they were sentenced.
Gamso, who represented the men, said lawmakers can't step in and redo classifications for sex offenders that already were determined by judges.
David M. Lieberman, an assistant attorney general who represented the state, said lawmakers had no choice but to revise the state law to comply with the Adam Walsh Act.
• Roman Chojnacki, who was convicted of sex with a minor in Warren County in 2006, was reclassified from a low-risk sex offender under the old law to a medium-risk offender.
His attorney, Jason A. Macke, argued that Chojnacki and others who were reclassified should have had access to lawyers during that process.
Lieberman, who again represented the state, said defendants are entitled to legal representation only when they face the deprivation of liberty or fundamental rights such as privacy. That isn't the case here, he said.
• Darian J. Smith, who was convicted in Allen County of three counts of rape at age 14, contends that he shouldn't be subject to the same registration requirements as adult sex offenders.
Brooke M. Burns, his attorney, said studies have shown that there's a better chance of rehabilitating youthful sex offenders than adults.
Christina L. Steffan, the attorney for the Allen County prosecutor's office, said juvenile offenders are given adult legal protections -- such as the right to lawyers and a jury trial -- before their names are added to the sex-offender database.
• A juvenile sex offender known only as Adrian R. was classified as a sexual predator and must report to authorities into adulthood even though he has responded very well to treatment, said Burns, who also represented Adrian.
She said the rigid classifications "disincentivize children from doing well in treatment."
Assistant Licking County Prosecutor Alice L. Bond said the current sex-offender law allows people convicted as juveniles to petition a judge to be declassified as sex offenders in three years.
jnash@dispatch.com
Showing posts with label Ohio lawyer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ohio lawyer. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Should parents who accidently cause the death of their children be criminally charged?
The 'Rollover' Conundrum: To Charge or Not to Charge?
By Ashby Jones
WSJ Law Blog
What to do about “rollover” deaths? That question is plaguing some prosecutors around the country, who don’t exactly know best how to handle situations in which a slumbering adult accidentally “rolls over” and suffocates to death a sleeping infant. Is it manslaughter? Criminal negligence? Or is it simply an accident that shouldn’t be punished?
The WSJ’s Chris Herring tackles the issue in the Journal’s weekly Law Journal column. He opens with the following pair of cases:
In March, a slumbering Indiana father accidentally suffocated his six-month-old son to death while both were sleeping on a sofa. Law-enforcement officials later determined that the man had used methamphetamine and smoked marijuana before falling asleep that night.
A month later, in Milwaukee, a one-month-old infant died while in bed with his parents and brother, possibly due to suffocation. Before coming home to sleep that night, the baby’s mother had had three drinks at a nearby bar.
The tragedies are similar, but the way law-enforcement officials handled them is not. In the pending Indiana case, the father, Darik Morell, was charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death, a felony that carries a 20- to 50-year prison sentence. . . .
No charges, in contrast, were filed in the Milwaukee case, or in two other bed-sharing deaths in the area since March. The main question, writes Herring: At what point does carelessness, absent malicious intent, become punishable by criminal law?
Experts say that often, there is no right answer. “Prosecutors have enormous discretion in these sorts of things,” says Dan Blinka, a criminal-law professor at Marquette University. “They can choose to see these as simply tragic accidents, or they can see them as homicides.”
Prosecutors are divided on how to apply the standard to bed-sharing cases or other accidental deaths, such as those that stem from auto accidents caused by fatigued drivers. (Click here, for instance, for a recent Washington Post story on a similar issue: What to do to the parents when a child dies in the backseat of a hot, parked car?)
Mike Dugan, a district attorney in Oregon’s Deschutes County who charged two parents with criminally negligent homicide, has drawn a fairly hard line on bed-sharing death cases: He will prosecute them when they involve alcohol or drugs. “I’m not telling people not to sleep with their kids,” he says. “But I am telling them that if you do it while you’re drunk or high and it results in a death, chances are we’re going to charge you.”
LB readers, this is an interesting one. Do you think prosecutors should go after all of these cases? None of them? Should they draw the line, as Dugan has, when drugs or alcohol are involved?
By Ashby Jones
WSJ Law Blog
What to do about “rollover” deaths? That question is plaguing some prosecutors around the country, who don’t exactly know best how to handle situations in which a slumbering adult accidentally “rolls over” and suffocates to death a sleeping infant. Is it manslaughter? Criminal negligence? Or is it simply an accident that shouldn’t be punished?
The WSJ’s Chris Herring tackles the issue in the Journal’s weekly Law Journal column. He opens with the following pair of cases:
In March, a slumbering Indiana father accidentally suffocated his six-month-old son to death while both were sleeping on a sofa. Law-enforcement officials later determined that the man had used methamphetamine and smoked marijuana before falling asleep that night.
A month later, in Milwaukee, a one-month-old infant died while in bed with his parents and brother, possibly due to suffocation. Before coming home to sleep that night, the baby’s mother had had three drinks at a nearby bar.
The tragedies are similar, but the way law-enforcement officials handled them is not. In the pending Indiana case, the father, Darik Morell, was charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death, a felony that carries a 20- to 50-year prison sentence. . . .
No charges, in contrast, were filed in the Milwaukee case, or in two other bed-sharing deaths in the area since March. The main question, writes Herring: At what point does carelessness, absent malicious intent, become punishable by criminal law?
Experts say that often, there is no right answer. “Prosecutors have enormous discretion in these sorts of things,” says Dan Blinka, a criminal-law professor at Marquette University. “They can choose to see these as simply tragic accidents, or they can see them as homicides.”
Prosecutors are divided on how to apply the standard to bed-sharing cases or other accidental deaths, such as those that stem from auto accidents caused by fatigued drivers. (Click here, for instance, for a recent Washington Post story on a similar issue: What to do to the parents when a child dies in the backseat of a hot, parked car?)
Mike Dugan, a district attorney in Oregon’s Deschutes County who charged two parents with criminally negligent homicide, has drawn a fairly hard line on bed-sharing death cases: He will prosecute them when they involve alcohol or drugs. “I’m not telling people not to sleep with their kids,” he says. “But I am telling them that if you do it while you’re drunk or high and it results in a death, chances are we’re going to charge you.”
LB readers, this is an interesting one. Do you think prosecutors should go after all of these cases? None of them? Should they draw the line, as Dugan has, when drugs or alcohol are involved?
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