Civil Confinement Takes Hit
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- November
- 21
A federal judge has blocked enforcement of parts of a new state law that would have allowed for the civil confinement of sex offenders after they have fulfilled their jail terms.
The decision by Southern District Judge Gerard Lynch is a hit to the state’s long efforts to put sexual predators into mental institutions after they serve prison sentences rather than putting them back on the streets.
The judge didn’t toss the entire law, but found that parts of it violated a person’s due process—such as mandating civil detention as a person awaits a trial on whether to be committed.
The decision is a major blow to Gov. Eliot Spitzer after he got the state Legislature earlier this year to agree to the measure after they failed to do so under former Gov. George Pataki.
The state Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday it will review the case and decide its next course of action.
Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, was the first official to notify the new media about the ruling, saying the judge’s decision could have been avoided if Spitzer had adopted a stronger law.
“Regrettably, in the blink of an eye, a federal judge has weakened over a decade of our work and potentially moved New York backward,” Tedisco said. ”If this decision waters down New York’s civil confinement law, it has the potential to be an incredibly harmful ruling.”
Still, the New York Sun reported earlier this week that state courts have yet to involuntarily detain a single sex offender.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 5:00 pm by Joseph Spector.
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This is very horrible,I am glad Assemblyman Tedisco is on this. Where do are other Assemblypeople stand on this issue?
What is so terrible? Judge Lynch simply did his job. The provisions requiring confinement pending due process in the absence of habeas corpus were clearly unconstitutional from the get-go, and the members of the Legislature (and Spitzer, of course) knew that all along.
It is a sad reality of modern politics that legislatures all to often pass draconian legislation that they know to be unconstitutional. They do this for the sole purpose of squeezing a few votes out of citizens who are too stupid or uninformed to understand that the rights enshrined in our glorious Constitution are more important than any particular law, issue, or election.
In doing so, these politicians know (and probably even hope, if they have any respect at all for the Constitution) that the laws they enact will be at least partially overturned by the courts. But unlike legislators, federal judges don’t have to worry about getting re-elected; so the whores in the legislatures count on the courts to correct the constitutional violations.
Then once the court does its job, the politicians get back on their stumps and scream about how terrible the court’s decision was—even though it was exactly what they knew would happen all along.
It’s all part of the same show, folks. Nothing new here. The only thing that could ever change the script would be a Constitutional Amendment that would permanently bar politicians who sponsor laws that are ultimately found to be unconstitutional from ever serving in government again, and would strip them of their pension and benefits.
But until then, expect your elected officials to continue whoring for the ignorant masses by passing laws that even they know are idiotic and unconstitutional, and then counting on the courts to clean up the mess.
LL
Liberty Lover has it right. We can’t say that the Constitution doesn’t apply to people we don’t like, because that gives the government the right to selectively take rights away from anyone whose rights they decide don’t matter anymore. That’s how Hitler started. The first group whose rights he attacked weren’t Jews. They were homosexuals and other “sexual deviants.”
Also, I’m tired of the government passing retroactive laws. Many of these people committed their crimes decades ago. We can’t keep changing the rules after people have already been sentenced! If someone has served the time that a judge sentenced him to, then he has paid his debt to society and has the right to be left alone.
If the government is allowed to keep on changing the laws ex post facto (after the fact), then what makes us different from a dictatorship? It’s easy to say “Well, they are sex offenders, their rights don’t matter.” But who will be next?
Floyd B.
Liberty Lover & Floyd, you both have a point. I just hope one of these people do not live next to you or in your neighborhood. If you have any children, I hope for their safety I hope you are aware of your kids every move.
Parent,
Thank you for seeing it both ways.
My children are grown, but I do agree with what I believe is your point: that it is the job of parents, not government, to watch our children.
Long before pedophilia became the national obsession, back in a time when few people knew what the word even meant, we nonetheless knew who the questionable people in the neighborhood were—and we kept our kids away from them. We knew our childrens’ friends and their friends’ parents, and we took personal responsibility for their safety.
Not that I think that sex offender laws, mandatory treatment, and registries are necessarily a bad idea, mind you; but those ideas would have to be implemented in ways that do not run afoul of the Constitution and are sensible to satisfy me that they are worth the social cost and are constitutionally acceptable.
For example, requiring parents (or others) to physically present themselves at a police station and show identification in order to access this information would make it available for legitimate purposes, but would discourage the vigilantism that anonymous access via the Internet has led to time and time again. To post this sort of information on the Web knowing that it will lead to a certain number of vigilante killings every year is not only cruel and unusual, but makes the government (and all of us, we the people, by extension) an accessory before the fact to murder. Requiring an in-person visit and valid identification to access the registry would add accountability and discourage vigilantism.
There also should be a way for people who have rehabilitated themselves to rid themselves of that scarlet letter. For example, I would say that someone who has lived a law-abiding life for 10 years after their release has re-earned the right to be left alone. To deprive of his rights someone who has completed his sentence and hasn’t bothered anyone in a decade since his release cannot reasonably be justified by “safety” concerns.
And as Floyd mentioned, none of these laws should apply to people whose convictions predated the laws’ enactment. That is a direct violation of Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution. To start allowing ex post facto law could well represent the beginning of the end of our democracy.
I understand the need to protect children. But I also cherish the rights our glorious and sacred Constitution uniquely grants to us, and I believe that those rights need to be protected above all else.
Best,
LL
”...the courts have yet to involuntarily detain a single sex offender.” They only detain married sex offenders?
It is to me mystery that the USA which did liberate Europe from the fist of Hitler should now repeat his course. Out of love for America may I suggest it is advisable that America should read first of history before by mistake repeating it.
Han Jahnsen
Nederlands
Bravo! These are the most informed comments I have read on an online newspaper to date. I’m afraid that throughout much of our country similar forums are peppered with vile, ignorant and hateful fanatics who have not a whit of respect for our Constitution. I only wish that these responses were typical of my community in California where we have recently witnessed the slaughter of an elderly sex offender (gutted like a farm animal with a hunting knife), many years after his offense, for the sole reason that his name and picture appeared on “Megan’s” website. Comparisons with either the Salem witch hunts or Nazi Germany ARE NOT inappropriate; indeed, there are very many frightening similarities. “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin
Protecting our rights by taking others away, this seems unending. Yesterday it was sex offenders and D.U.I. offenders. Today it’s terrorists. Tomorrow it’s any felon. The day after it’s non-tax payers and child support slackers. Then people who don’t vote or anarchist, misdemeanor offenders of specific crimes. Which is the case now really, 90% of sex offenses were misdemeanors and many of which now consider you a “predator” with life long sentences,loss of rights, not to mention their families safety. Don’t pretend it’s not true, one innocent man was killed by a vigilante who went to the wrong house, let alone the wrong person. So if you think about it like this, how many more laws will be deemed “serious”? Think firearm offenders, intoxicated offenders, driving or vehicular offenders, monetary offenders, identity offenders, or even parental offenders. Right now Political offenders are secretly charged and sentenced and sent to “political prisons” for an undetermined limit of time with no rights to a lawyer or right to a trial, let alone a speedy trial. We’ve lost our right to privacy, “patriot act”, and soon the “patriot II”, for what, our protection!
Now they want to make this sex offender thing a medical issue! Don’t you realize what that means?! They can turn misdemeanors into a life long sentence, imprisoned inside a “mental hospital”. Now categorize all the mental issues and things that can be “mental issues”. Do you fall under any of those categories? Could you be labeled clinically depressed, stressed, delusional, or how about “alcoholic”, or any other? I bet they have a class for you.. How far should they take those charges and sentences?
What are the people so afraid of? I have been labeled a sex offender, status (predator). The charge “Corruption of a minor”, I have taken psychological tests, they said I was completely normal. I scored as low as you can on every test that was supposed to deem you a threat to society in any way even recidivism (re offending). I took a plea because it was my word against a (pretty) girls and the sentence was too great to trust a jury. I was then told I was not to get released until I pronounced guilt and then told if I said I was innocent following my release I would be charged with discrediting the victim and be sentenced again. My (public defender) told me that “since it’s election time I would be found guilty if I took it to trial, even if it was my word against hers ”. He said “they always believe the girl”. How do you prove it never happened? Where were you a year and a half ago on this whatever date, NOW PROVE IT, how? I couldn’t. I didn’t know where I was, how am I supposed to prove. All they had to say was “he did itâ€?.
I have tried to take this back to court completely unsuccessfully. I paid a real lawyer $1700 three years ago and he won’t do anything, and I mean nothing. I’ve tried to get other lawyers and they won’t hear my case, and the courts “accidentally” lost my transcripts. They charge me $100 a year to go through this. It has been almost ten years, my family and I have been forced into homelessness because of a new daycare, I can’t get a job or go to my son’s events at school, and EVERYBODY assumes I’m some monster.
The truth is YOU DON’T CARE do you? You don’t have to answer, I know you don’t. It has no bearing on your life, only my guilt does because you feel in control that way.
Tell Ya What
Do all the things you wish, like chemical castration, RFID chips, bracelets, lifetime imprisonment, murder me, place signs in my yard, come to my house, call me, go to all my neighbors, talk about me, put me in the news, stick up your flyers, strip me of my rights and dignity, steal all my happiness, mess with my car, break my windows, spray paint my house, evict me, assault me, take my job, stigmatize, ostracize, ban me from anything public you wish, humiliate me, joke about me, spit on me, throw thing at me, and even harass my family and children. I don’t care anymore, I have endured almost all of these things the past ten years, and I really don’t care anymore.
You know why, and this makes me truly content when I say this… You’re Next.
I can tell you this. You won’t believe me, or do anything about it. It’s so ironic.
It’s so funny to me, the circle of life, it’s a crazy thing. I’m probably no better than you since that makes me feel pleased but I sadly can’t help it. I only feel bad for the undeserving.