California appeals court upholds as-applied challenge to sex offender residency restriction of Jessica's Law

9-13-2012 California:

From Sentencing Law and Policy:

As reported in this local article, headlined "San Diego Sex Offenders Upset Residency Limit," there mas a notable ruling earlier this week concerning California's sex offender residency restrictions. Here are the basics from the press report:

It is "unreasonable" and "oppressive" to forbid registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, a California appeals court ruled. California voters adopted Proposition 83, also known as Jessica's Law, in 2006 to impose strict regulations on registered sex offenders. One provision in particular prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any school or park.

In 2010, the California Supreme Court ruled that the housing restriction applies to all paroled sex offenders, regardless of when they committed their crime, but the court said it did not have enough evidence to rule on law's constitutionality.
Following this ruling, William Taylor, Jeffrey Glynn, Julie Briley and Stephen Todd, all registered sex offenders living in San Diego County, challenged the residency restriction in Superior Court. All four parolees were unable to find housing after their release: Taylor and Briley lived in an alley behind the parole office on the advice of their parole agents, Todd lived in the San Diego riverbed with other registered sex offenders who had no place to live, and Glynn lived in his van.

In 2011, Judge Michael Wellington held an eight-day evidentiary hearing in which experts testified that 24.5 percent of San Diego residential properties comply with the Jessica's Law residency requirement, but most of these dwellings are single-family homes. Less than 3 percent of multifamily housing meets the requirement.

Wellington subsequently ruled that the parole condition was "unconstitutionally 'unreasonable'" because it "violated petitioners' right to intrastate travel, their right to establish a home and their right to privacy and was not narrowly drawn and specifically tailored to the individual circumstances of each sex offender parolee."
California's Fourth Appellate District affirmed Tuesday, finding that the law's "blanket enforcement as a parole condition in San Diego County has been unreasonable and constitutes arbitrary and oppressive official action."

The full 37-page appellate panel ruling is available at this link, and here are the final two substantive paragraphs:

Glynn and Taylor are registered sex offenders because each of them committed a sex crime against an adult; there is no hint of pedophilia in their histories.  The exclusion of parolees with backgrounds similar to Glynn and Taylor from living near schools and parks does not substantially protect children, but as the record here shows, it has tremendous impact on such parolees' rights and liberty without bearing a substantial relation to their crimes.  As in the cases of Glynn and Taylor, it prevented them from living with family members.  In Taylor's case, it also decreased his proximity to needed services and treatment.  By banning all sex offenders, the absolute residency restriction of Jessica's Law, when enforced as a parole condition, imposes a substantially more burdensome infringement on constitutional rights than is necessary to protect children from sex crimes.  As such, the blanket enforcement of section 3303.5(b) as a parole condition in San Diego County has been unreasonable and constitutes arbitrary and oppressive official action.

As noted by the trial court, its orders do not prohibit CDCR from individually enforcing the residency restriction of Jessica's Law as a parole condition for registered sex offender parolees in San Diego County.  The orders merely disallow CDCR from blanket enforcement of the residency restriction. Parole agents retain the discretion to regulate aspects of a parolee's life, such as where and with whom he or she can live. (§§ 3052, 3053, subd. (a).) Agents may, after consideration of a parolee's particularized circumstances, impose a special parole condition that mirrors section 3303.5(b) or one that is more or less restrictive. It is only the blanket enforcement — that is, to all registered sex offender parolees without consideration of the individual case — that the trial court prohibited and we uphold.

See Also: COURT: LAW’S RESTRICTIONS ON SEX OFFENDERS UNREASONABLE

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Not Just Residency Restrictions, But Walking Restrictions Too

2-16-2012 West Virginia:

Hurricane, West Virginia City Council has passed an ordinance that bans people convicted of a sex offense from entering Child Safety Zones, which include daycare centers, parks, playgrounds, recreational areas and schools. If a sex offender violates the ordinance, he or she will be asked to leave. If someone is found in a Child Safety Zone a second time, he or she could be punished with up to 30 days in prison or a $2,000 fine.

The news story did not address what these means for people who have been convicted of a sex offense who have children.

Some things are worth noting, which seem to be forgotten with these efforts:

-More than 90% of children who are sexually abused know their perpetrators.

-The recidivism rate for sex offenders is 5.3%, which means the vast majority do not reoffend.

- Treatment can work.

- Jill Levenson, who has studied sex offenders and is an associate professor of psychology at Lynn University writes: “Diminishing access to potential victims is an appropriate component of sex crime prevention, but should be tailored to the offender’s risk, offense patterns and victim preferences. Broadly restrictive legislation is unlikely to be effective in preventing sexual assault and interferes with reintegration (housing stability, employment and social support) which may inadvertently increase risk.” ..Source.. by Tumblr

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Court to Study Why Pedophile Should Be Kept From Kids

You must read the entire case to understand "How the court will study residency issues."

11-23-2011 National:

(CN) - A former government contractor convicted of having sex with young boys while stationed in Bangladesh may get to reside near schools, parks and playgrounds in the United States when he gets out of prison, after the 9th Circuit removed court-imposed residency restrictions on the offender Wednesday.

William Newton Rudd, a former contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Bangladesh, pleaded guilty in 2009 to one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places.

The Bangladesh National Police arrested Rudd in 2004 after the investigation of tip showed he had "engaged in sexual conduct with four primary school-age boys between 2002 and 2004," according to the ruling.

U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler in Santa Ana, Calif., sentenced Rudd to 6 1/2 years in prison and 10 years of supervised release. As is common in sex-offender cases, the sentence came with several special conditions, including a residency restriction barring Rudd from living "within 2,000 feet of school yards, parks, public swimming pools, playgrounds, youth centers, video arcade facilities, or other places primarily used by persons under the age of 18."

The federal appeals court in Pasadena vacated that restriction on Wednesday based on a "procedural error."

Stotler should have explained why she imposed the 2,000-foot restriction suggested by a probation officer rather than a lesser restriction worked out as part of Rudd's plea agreement, the court ruled.

"The nature and circumstances of Rudd's offenses demonstrate that Rudd poses a serious danger to children," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the three-judge panel. "It is evident that a condition minimizing his temptation and ability to prey upon children is supported by the record. What is not evident from the record is why forbidding residence within direct view of places primarily used by persons under the age of 18 is insufficient to deter Rudd from further contact with minors, or how the 2,000 foot requirement suggested by the probation office and adopted by the court would further reduce the risk of such conduct upon Rudd's release from prison at or near age seventy-three. Because the reasons for imposing the condition are not apparent from the record, the District Court was required to state them at sentencing."

Wardlaw advised the trial court to reconsider "whether the 2,000-foot residency restriction imposes any deprivation of liberty greater than what is necessary for the purposes of Rudd's supervised release."

Citing a wave of recent research on the subject, the court also suggested that such residency restrictions may do more harm than good in some cases.

"There remain significant questions regarding the substantive reasonableness of residency restrictions, including whether they too stringently restrict where a defendant can reside, or whether they play a role in increasing the likelihood of recidivism," Wardlaw wrote. ..Source.. by TIM HULL

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Study Finds Fault With Sex-Offender Restriction Laws

11-8-2011 Toronto:

BOSTON – Laws intended to keep convicted sex offenders far away from schools, playgrounds, shopping malls, and other places where children might gather don’t appear to work or aren’t being vigorously enforced in parts of the United States. And when the laws are adhered to, they often keep offenders far away from needed psychiatric services, job prospects, and social support, researchers said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

In Buffalo, N.Y., sex offenders are legally barred from living in all but 6.5% of the city’s total area, but more than 90% of sex offenders in the county live within that city’s limits, said Dr. Jacqueline A. Berenson, a forensic psychiatrist in private practice in New York City.

"One of the conclusions that has come from a number of studies is that the legislation is not only not helping with the recidivism rate of sex offenders in the community, but may actually be worsening recidivism rates, and that the collateral damage being done by this legislation nationally is self-defeating," she said.

Residence restriction laws vary considerably in their components (who is an offender, where can’t they live, how far they must stay away), and in terms of complexity and ambiguity of the statutes, which vary in their definition, measurement of distance, and enforcement, Dr. Berenson noted.

For example, in Erie County, N.Y., alone, rules vary from one municipality to the next. In the city of Lackawanna, level 3 registered sex offenders or any registered offender over the age of 17 convicted of an offense (including statutory rape) upon a child age 16 or under is forbidden from living within 2,000 feet of any school, park, playground, athletic field, or day care center. In contrast, the Town of Evans and the Village of Sloan set a 1,500-foot boundary, with Sloan bylaws adding teen/community centers, dance halls, and skating rinks to exclusion zones. The law does not specify what constitutes a "teen/community center" or "dance hall."

Such laws, Dr. Berenson said, often force offenders to live in more rural areas where they might not have community or social support or access to services, or to violate the laws by living within an off-limits area and risk parole violation, rearrest, and imprisonment.

"Do they understand what the legislation means? Do their parole officers understand? And if they don’t understand, does that make them not culpable if they’re living in a restricted area? And the answer to that is ‘No’; if they’re living in a restricted area, the potential for being arrested and charged with a felony is real," she said.

A researcher who also studies housing issues of sex offenders, Andrew J. Harris, Ph.D., from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, cited the example of Miami-Dade County, Fla., where sex offenders were living in a makeshift encampment under a bridge on the Julia Tuttle Causeway, the only place they could find that didn’t violate that county’s residence restrictions. Some offenders even received state-issued IDs listing the causeway as their place of residence.

Mapping Offenders

Dr. Berenson reported results of a study that she and Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum of Columbia University, New York, conducted on the effect of residence statutes on the availability of residences for registered sex offenders in both urban and rural areas of Erie and Schenectady counties in New York.

They collected parcel data from the New York State Department of Cyber Security and the Schenectady County geographic information services department, and created overlay maps showing restricted locations according to statute, and residential locations of registered sex offenders.

Although they expected to find that most offenders were living in rural areas, where schools and playgrounds are more widely dispersed, they found that the opposite was true. In Erie County, 90% of offenders were living in restricted areas, and nearly all were within the city limits of Buffalo (91% of the city dwellers were living in restricted areas of Buffalo). Similarly, 90% of offenders in Schenectady County were living in restricted zones, and 100% of offenders living within the City of Schenectady were doing so afoul of the law.

In both counties, only a small percentage of rural residences were in restricted zones, whereas the large majority of multiple family residences or apartments, more commonly found in urban areas, were not legally available to offenders.

The implications of these findings, Dr. Berenson said, are that there may be inadequate resources or an unwillingness on the part of law enforcement agencies to follow the restriction statutes. She noted that courts have overturned sex offender residency laws in eight New York counties, and that the Washington County board of supervisors recently voted to repeal that county’s law.

"Policy makers should be pulling out the [geographic information services] software themselves and asking, ‘What is the actual impact of this legislation? What’s going to happen? Where are these guys going to go?’ " Dr. Harris said. "Housing is a matter of managing this inherent risk that people have for public safety and minimizing the collateral risk."

Dr. Berenson’s study was internally funded. Dr. Berenson and Dr. Harris reported that they had no relevant financial disclosures. ..Source.. by NEIL OSTERWEIL, Clinical Psychiatry News Digital Network

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Court ruling has communities overhauling Megan's Laws

10-4-2011 Pennsylvania:

When 7-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by a neighbor, a twice-convicted child sex offender, the reaction in communities large and small was: God forbid something like that should happen here.

Bolstered by online registries of convicted sex offenders, towns enacted laws to keep such criminals from living near schools, parks, day-care centers, and bus stops.

But many of the estimated 150 Pennsylvania cities and towns with such laws are repealing or reconsidering them after a state Supreme Court ruling in May invalidated one statute. New Jersey municipalities did the same after the N.J. Supreme Court ruled residency restrictions invalid in 2009.

"The repeals are overdue," said Don Driscoll of the Community Justice Project, who argued the case against Allegheny County before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. "The laws contributed to enhanced risk of public safety, instead of the opposite. They exclude sex offenders from stabilized housing, employment, and treatment, all of which have been identified as factors in recidivism."

Since the May 26 ruling, Doylestown and Hilltown Townships and Hatboro Borough have wiped the laws off their books, and Abington, Lower Pottsgrove, Newtown, and Falls Townships are considering doing the same.

Doylestown and Hilltown supervisors also were prompted by a letter from the Delaware Valley Insurance Trust to repeal the law to avoid liability. The trust provides coverage to about 40 cities and towns in the Philadelphia area.

"I suspect [other towns] will be following suit," said Jeffrey P. Garton, solicitor for Doylestown and Newtown Townships.

The laws are similar to Allegheny County's, which prohibited sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any child-care facility, community center, public park, recreation center, or school. They were enacted around 2005 to expand on Megan's Law, which requires convicted sex offenders to report their addresses to police but does not restrict where they can live.

Allegheny County's law violated the state legislature's intent behind Megan's Law, the seven judges on the state Supreme Court ruled, by banishing sex offenders to "localized penal colonies" with little access to jobs, support, or their families. ..Source.. by Bill Reed, Inquirer Staff Writer

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Pa. Supreme Court rules against Lemoyne sex offender regulations

The media doesn't quite have the court's decision correct. The case dealt with folks on parole/probation, and the court held that, residency laws frustrate state parole probation purposes, and therefore are preempted by the state's goals. Read the decision HERE.

7-8-2011 Pennsylvania:

Registered sex offenders will soon be free to live wherever they choose in one West Shore community.

Why the change? The highest court in the state now says Lemoyne and other communities that have rules like this have no right telling anyone where they can and can't live.

According to the state police Megan's Law website, there are 13 registered sex offenders who work in Lemoyne, and three more who live there; with one living just outside of the municipal limits.

The current rule states they can't live within 500 feet of any borough school, daycare or any one of Lemoyne's five parks. But the state Supreme Court ruled in May that laws like that are unenforceable. And that's why Lemoyne will do away with the restrictions.

A borough council meeting is scheduled 7:30 pm on Thursday. ..Source.. by Ben Russell

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Restrictions on sex offenders lack sense, common and otherwise

6-22-2011 Illinois:

I wish I could tell ___ not to worry, that common sense will surely prevail in the sad, scary story of his son.

But I would be lying. His son is a sex offender, and when it comes to sex offenders, hysteria and superstition trump common sense every time.

In December 2008, ___ (pictured), then 27, had sex with two 16-year-old girl in a Downers Grove motel room. The girls were willing participants, and ___, who suffers from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, has the judgment and social skills of a 10-year-old.

But the girls were legally underage, and authorities contended ___ knew right from wrong when he had sex with them. So he ended up pleading guilty but mentally ill to aggravated criminal sexual abuse and received a five-year prison sentence.

Flash ahead to today: ___ is scheduled to be paroled from Taylorville Correctional Center on July 23. His parents, Walt, 60, and Kathy, 58, want him to move back into their Elmhurst home where they can supervise his transition to freedom.

Unfortunately, there is a part-time preschool program operating in a church around the corner from the ___ residence. It's roughly 400 feet from lot line to lot line, and the rigid, one-size-fits-all legal restrictions in Illinois prohibit sex offenders from living within 500 feet of schools, parks, day-care centers and other places where children gather.

Nothing in the record suggests ___ is a pedophile with a deviant interest in the 2- to 5-year-old clientele of a preschool or that he has any predatory tendencies.

But even if he were a pedophile, the vast weight of research on residential restrictions — now in roughly 30 states and expanding, in places, to quarter-mile buffer zones — suggests this geographic limitation would do nothing to protect children.

"There was no significant relationship between reoffending and proximity to schools or day cares," concluded an academic study of such restrictions published last year in Criminal Justice and Behavior, the journal of The American Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology. "The belief that keeping sex offenders far from schools and other child-friendly locations will protect children from sexual abuse appears to be a well-intentioned but flawed premise."

That premise will keep ___ locked up past his parole date. The Illinois Department of Corrections refuses to allow sex offenders without legal places to live to enter supervised release (parole) programs, and a DOC spokeswoman said roughly 1,000 such inmates a year are "violated at the door," as the expression goes, and reincarcerated until their full sentences are up.

Some of you, I know, are saying, "So what? Sex offenders are the lowest of the low and the longer they're locked up, the better."

The flaw in this thinking is that it ultimately short-circuits the safeguards — such as mandatory therapy, electronic monitoring and tight supervision — that help offenders successfully re-enter society. When ___'s sentence is up in July 2012, for instance, he'll walk free even if he has nowhere to live.

"One of the unintended consequence of these draconian residency-restrictions is that they increase homelessness and transience among ex-offenders," said Lynn University psychology professor Jill S. Levenson, one of the authors of the article in Criminal Justice and Behavior. "And those," she said, "are known risk factors for the resumption of criminal behavior."

Last year, my colleagues Megan Twohey and Joe Mahr chronicled in this newspaper a series of horror stories of sex criminals who served their parole periods behind bars, then reoffended after vanishing unsupervised into the community. Nearly 1 in 3 was not up to date with the state's sex-offender registry.

Walt and Kathy ___ are unemployed and say they can't move or afford a separate dwelling for ___, their only child.

The compassionate and sensible solution would be for state officials to consider the circumstances here — including substantial expert opinion that it would be best for ___ and for society for him to live at home — and issue a waiver.

But there is no provision in the law for such consideration or the issuance of such a waiver, according to the Department of Corrections. And given the invertebrate skittishness with which our lawmakers approach the issue of sex crimes, there's little chance we'll ever add such a provision or relax the restrictions and introduce common sense when it comes to nonviolent offenders.

All I can tell Walt ___ is, if I were him, I'd worry, too. And good luck. ..Source.. by ERIC ZORN

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Pa. high court: Allegheny sex-offender law invalid

The Pennsylvania Supreme court decision is HERE and rather interesting. Other jurisdictions ought to read this Judge's opinion.

5-26-2011 Pennsylvania:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court says an Allegheny County ordinance barring sex offenders from living in certain areas is invalid.

In a strongly worded opinion, Chief Justice Ronald Castille said the 2007 ordinance is pre-empted by the state's Megan's Law registration requirements and state policies that promote rehabilitation.

Castille said the ban on registered sex offenders living within 2,500 feet of schools, child-care facilities, community centers and public parks would force many to live in isolated areas that in effect become "localized penal colonies."

The court's unanimous opinion stems from a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of several sex offenders. The county appealed a federal judge's 2009 ruling striking down the ordinance and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sought the state court's input. ..Source.. by PETER JACKSON

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UPDATE: Sex Offender to Continue Fight with Village over Residency

See comments below, what a tangled web lawmakers try to weave, but actually create more loopholes than one can imagine.

4-30-2011 Wisconsin:

Despite previous court rulings, man's attorney plans to take his case to the state Supreme Court.

A registered sex offender who village officials say is violating Menomonee Falls' residency rules hopes to take his case to the state Supreme Court.

Since 2009, Jason Ferguson has been unsuccessfully challenging the village's finding that he is violating an ordinance that prohibits sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of facilities or properties used by children, such as schools and day care centers.

In 2000, Ferguson was a 22-year-old manager at Hardee’s on Main Street in Menomonee Falls. A 14-year-old girl came to the restaurant with two other friends to apply for the job. Ferguson brought the girl back into the manager’s office, unzipped his pants and asked her to perform oral oral sex on him. Ferguson told police at the time he thought she was 15 or 16 years old, according to the report.

After the incident occurred, the girl was hired at Hardee’s. She told officers that Ferguson asked her to perform oral sex on him again and made other sexual comments to her while she was working, according to the report.

Ferguson was convicted in 2001 of second-degree sexual assault of a child. He received six months in jail and 60 months of probation; the probation was discharged in 2007 and according to Wisconsin Circuit Court records, he has no other criminal record.

There is no question that Ferguson lives within the village's so-called child safety zone.

But the issue is a bit complicated because Ferguson started living in the zone, in an apartment on Main Street, four years before the ordinance was passed in 2007. A grandfather clause in the ordinance allowed offenders to continue living at their current address, even if it was located within the child safety zone.

But in November 2008, Ferguson moved less than a mile away — to Menomonee River Parkway — to live with his wife's parents. Once he moved, Falls police said he was in violation of the ordinance and issued him a $1,100 citation.

On Wednesday, the state appeals court upheld a Waukesha County Circuit Court ruling that Ferguson indeed violated the ordinance.

His attorney, however, argues that since Ferguson has been living in the zone since before the ordinance was passed he should be allowed to continue to live within the zone even though he changed his address.

“He gets booted out of his apartment and goes to live with his in-laws within the same protection unit. So how has the threat increased to anyone?” asked Ferguson’s attorney, Daniel Fay.

“We have these ordinances because they look good. But look in any neighborhood within 1,500 feet of a school. How many drunk drivers live in that area? Who represents a bigger threat to the kid on a bicycle?” Fay asked.

The Menomonee Falls Municipal Court in May 2009 found Ferguson guilty of violating the village's ordinance, and ruled that Ferguson’s grandfather status did not travel with him when once he changed residences. That ruling was appealed but upheld in circuit court and the appeals court.

Fay said the ordinance doesn’t specifically prohibit a sex offender from moving from one location to another within a safety zone. He said the court rulings went beyond what was written in the ordinance, which he said is prohibited if the ordinance itself isn't ambiguous.

“We’ll pursue this at the Supreme Court level. What do we have to lose?” Fay said. “My job is to test the system; it’s not to get along with the system.”

Village Attorney Michael Morse said the other courts correctly interpreted the language in the ordinance. He said the grandfather clause of the ordinance refers to a “residence” not “resident.” In other words, a specific home can be "grandfathered," but not the offender himself.

OK, so any residence were a former sex offender lived, and since has moved out, is protected forever, and any other former sex offender can move into that residence at any time in the future. Right? So, the ordinance sets up a patchwork-quilt of residences were sex offender can move in at any time in the future. Yes? Or, NO? If no then the grandfather clause pertains to the offender and not the residence; or is punitive in nature.

“I think the opinion stands for itself and it’s well written, and we believe the court’s decision is correct,” Morse said.

During a Circuit Court hearing, the village contended that allowing Ferguson to move under the grandfather clause would undermine the purpose of the ordinance, which is to prevent sex offenders from living near children.

“This is not a punitive law, this is a regulatory law. It was drafted with the goal of protecting children,” Morse said.


According to data from the state’s sex offender registry, Ferguson is still registered at the Menomonee River Parkway address. He was forced to move after his lease was terminated at his Main Street apartment in 2008. His wife suffers from serious medical issues, so they moved in with her parents on Menomonee River Parkway.

Menomonee Falls Police Capt. Mark Waters said Ferguson could technically receive a citation every day that he continues to live at his current residence. He said the department typically waits until cases clear the courts to pursue further enforcement. Waters said they are in discussions with Morse on whether to issue another 30-day notice to Ferguson based on Wednesday's appeals court ruling.

“Generally, we’ll wait for the court to hear that citation,” Waters said. “And if he is fact found guilty, he is eligible to get a citation each day. But our goal is for compliance of the law not to rack up citations.”

Fay said the ordinance is overbearing and unpractical for sex offenders who have not been in any trouble with the law and are following mandatory guidelines. He said Ferguson is essentially homeless if he is forced to vacate his current home.

“The bottom line is, ‘Where do want these people to move to?’ ” Fay asked. “What are we going to do with these people who are convicted of crimes? Maybe set up our own little country for them like we did with Australia.”

Do you think Ferguson should be allowed to move within the child protection zone? Do you think the ordinance is overbearing to sex offenders? YES! ..Source.. by Carl Engelking

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Judge rules some Jessica's Law restrictions violate parolees' rights

2-19-2011 California:

SAN DIEGO—A San Diego judge ruled Friday that a restriction passed by California voters on how close sex offenders can live to parks and schools is unconstitutional.

Superior Court Judge Michael Wellington found that parts of Jessica's Law violate parolees' rights to travel and privacy by forcing some of them to leave family homes or even sending them to homelessness, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The law passed in 2006 forbids sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children gather.

Wellington said the restrictions must not apply to four offenders who challenged the law in court, and gave prison and parole officials 120 days to make sure the provisions comply with state guidelines on government regulations, or parts of the law would be deemed invalid.

The offenders, Julie Briley, Jeffrey Glynn, William Taylor, and Stephen Todd were all paroled to San Diego County and represented in court by the public defender's office. Todd has since returned to prison on a drug conviction.

It was not immediately clear how the decision, which echoes a similar ruling made for Los Angeles County in November, would affect other offenders in San Diego County. Some 130 of them have filed similar challenges, but their cases were stayed while rulings were made in lead cases.

Deputy Public Defender Richard Gates said he believed the ruling would apply to other county parolees, and called it a victory for law enforcement that makes it easier to track and monitor parolees.

"It's a reasoned decision that puts public safety first," Gates told the Union-Tribune. "It's better that they have a stable life, family and a place to live. The chance for reoffending is much less."

Last February, the California Supreme Court allowed the residency requirement to be challenged but said each claim would have to be decided at the trial court level, prompting the Los Angeles and San Diego county cases.

At the time, petitioners noted that almost all of San Francisco was off limits because of high density housing near parks and schools.

The high court also said there were 3,884 sex offender parolees in California subject to the law, and 718 of them had declared themselves homeless because of their inability to comply with the requirements.

Before Jessica's Law passed, the residency requirements applied only to those who committed offenses against children. ..Source.. by MercuryNews.com

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Sex offender sues county over laws that limit his options on where he can live in the community

2-17-2011 New York:

BALLSTON SPA — An anonymous sex offender using the pseudonym John Doe is suing Saratoga County in Supreme Court, challenging a county law that restricts where sex offenders can live and work.

Local law 1-06 prevents registered sex offenders from residing or working within 1,000 feet of schools, child-care facilities, parks, playgrounds or public swimming pools.

It was enacted by the Board of Supervisors in 2006, and in the past six months, three people have been charged with violating the law; one in Moreau, one in Ballston Spa and another in Mechanicville. All three have challenged the law.

In Moreau, the judge found in favor of the defendant and against the law. In Ballston Spa, the judge decided against the defendant, and the case was appealed.

"I used essentially the identical motion that I used in Moreau," First Assistant County Attorney Richard Kupferman said.

The case in Mechanicville is still pending.

John Doe’s case, though, is different. The lawsuit contends that Saratoga County Local Law 1-06 is unconstitutional and violates New York state preemption principles.

"It is not filled with any of the complications of someone having been charged," Kupferman said.

While his identity remains anonymous, the lawsuit states that Doe is a level-one sex offender. There are three levels of sex offenders; level one is described as "low risk" by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Doe was convicted of a third-degree criminal sexual act and two related misdemeanors after having sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl in Essex County in 2008. He served 15 months in jail, according to the lawsuit, and is not on probation or parole.

The lawsuit states that Doe lives in Clifton Park but wants to move to Ballston Spa to live with his girlfriend. He was informed by the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department, though, that local law 1-06 would prevent him from doing so.

Kupferman said he discussed the Moreau case with the public defender’s office about the differences between the two rulings and "that is why they brought the appeal into county court."

Doe’s case contends that the law violates both the New York state and U.S. constitutions by denying him due process to "show that he does not pose any risk to children." It also contends that other New York state laws, such as probation and parole regulations and the Sex Offender Registration Act, preempt the law.

"When the Supreme Court of Saratoga County speaks, it will be the highest precedent to date," he said, which would mean that lower courts would have to abide by the court’s decision. However, he pointed out that whichever way it goes, it could still be appealed to a higher court. ..Source.. by LUCIAN McCARTY, The Saratogian

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