Fairness 2007 Legislative Summary (04/23/2007)

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Fairness for Prisoners’ Families

2007 Georgia General Assembly

Legislative Summary - April 23, 2007

The 2007 Georgia General Assembly came to a close on Friday night. The Governor is expected to announce details this week of a Special Session to address the budget for the last two months of 2007.

Fairness for Prisoners’ Families and the Southern Center for Human Rights owe a debt of gratitude to our friends and colleagues at the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the Georgia Innocence Project. To quote Mother Jones, “We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: ‘We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.’"

Thanks to all the members of Fairness and the readers of this bulletin who took action this session. Thank you for your solidarity!

Two victories this year addressed wrongful convictions. House Resolution 352 creates the House Study Committee on Eyewitness Identification Procedures. HR 352 was introduced by Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-Dekalb) to allow for a process for the legislature to thoroughly explore Georgia's procedures for eyewitness identification. This comes in the wake of Willie O. "Pete" Williams' exoneration in January after more than 21 years in prison on a wrongful rape conviction has raised the issue of eyewitness error for the second year. All six of the men whose convictions have been thrown out by DNA evidence in Georgia were prosecuted based on eyewitness testimony. Additionally, House Resolution 102 gives $1.2 million compensation after being wrongfully incarcerated for 25 years to Robert Clark, exonerated by DNA evidence in 2005.

Sometimes the victories of a legislative session can be better measured by looking at the bad laws that did not pass. Below are some of these bad bills that we were able to stop this year:

HB 185 would have allowed death penalty verdicts to be handed down with only 9 of the 12 jury members in agreement. There was tremendous opposition to this legislation and compelling testimony presented in committee from attorneys (including former prosecutors) , faith-based organizations, and Georgia citizens. This bill was ultimately struck down unanimously by the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the last week of the session.

SB 129 would have allowed for the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) to charge people in prison co-payments for medication. However, we know that no one in Georgia prisons can earn money; so ultimately, SB 129 was ultimately an additional tax on the families who have a loved one in prison. Members of Fairness testified against this measure in a Senate committee and rather than passing the bill, the committee placed the bill in a subcommittee (that we’re happy to say never met) to be studied further.

HB 527 would have allowed for private probation companies to supervise people convicted on nonviolent felonies and charge them a minimum $50 monthly supervision fee. Currently, private probation companies supervise misdemeanors, charge “supervision” fees of around $30 per month that most people cannot afford, offer no actual supervision, and charge extra if the person is required to attend drug treatment or other counseling. We joined Judges, Sheriffs, and the GDC in opposition to this measure and succeeded in stopping the bill from expanding private probation.

SB 1 would have made it illegal for people on the sex offender registry to take photographs of minors. It allowed for no exceptions for parents on the registry taking pictures of their own children nor did it excuse unintentional photographing of children in public places. As this legislation made its way through the legislature, our allies succeeded in amending the language to allow for pictures to be taken if the child’s parent consents. Ultimately, the House did not take action on this bill.

Here is the list of bills that were still pending as the session came to an end along with their current status:

Corrections Bills

• HB 313: Moves the Prison Industry Enhancement (PIE) Program under the jurisdiction of the Georgia Correctional Industries Administration. Passed both Houses and now awaits Governor's signature.
• SB 34: Prohibits a person in prison for a sex offense from possessing a photograph of the victim of the offense for which he or she is serving time. Passed both Houses and now awaits Governor's signature.
  

Sex Offense Bills

• HB 314: Requires that people convicted of certain sex offenses who receive a sentence of probation to provide DNA samples. Language from SB 1 and SB 249 was removed on the Senate floor. Passed both Houses and now awaits Governor's signature.
• SB 1: Prohibits people on the sex offender registry to take pictures of children. It does allow parents to consent to someone on the registry (including themselves) taking photos of their children. It also guards against the taking of pictures of children who might accidentally wander into a scene. Did not pass in 2007 General Assembly but can still be considered in 2008 session.
• SB 54: Re-writes the incest statute to be gender neutral. Passed as included in HB 314.
• SB 249: Sheriff’s Association Legislation that clarifies and changes some registration requirements. Also includes a provision to allow for elderly and disabled people to petition the court to be exempt from residency restrictions. Did not pass in 2007 General Assembly but can still be considered in 2008 session.
  

Criminal Procedure, Sentencing, and Death Penalty Bills

• HB 185: Allows a judge to impose a death sentence on a defendant even if two jurors vote against it. Did not pass in 2007 General Assembly but can still be considered in 2008 session.
• HB 197: Abolishes Georgia’s Sentence Review Panel. Passed both Houses and now awaits Governor's signature. Now includes language from SB 97.
• HR 352: Creates the House Study Committee on Eyewitness Identification Procedures. Adopted by the House
• SB 97: Requires lawyers to state with specificity their objections to the jury charges prior to deliberations, or waive them. Passed as part of HB 197.
• SB 145: Allows for prosecutors to seek life without parole sentences for murder without having to seek the death penalty. Did not pass in 2007 General Assembly but can still be considered in 2008 session.
  

Indigent Defense

• HB 586: Limits the amount of money that the state must pay for capital defense; the county must pay the balance. Passed both Houses and now awaits Governor's signature.
• SB 139: Transfers the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council from the judicial branch to the executive branch. Passed both Houses and now awaits Governor's signature.
  

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

With hope and solidarity,

Sara

Sara J. Totonchi
Public Policy Director
Southern Center for Human Rights
83 Poplar Street, N.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
404/688-1202 voice
404/688-9440 fax
stotonchi@schr.org

Warning: City off-limits

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It's so sad this world cannot learn from others or past mistakes. I am ashamed to be a part of the human race. We've all become barbaric animals who lust after seeing others suffer. Sick!!

04/22/2007

Deltona's ordinance, in effect, keeps convicted from moving in

DELTONA -- A local law that limits where sexual offenders can live has effectively barred them from moving into metro Orlando's second-largest city.

Deltona last year joined a group of nearly 100 cities and counties that have gone beyond the state law that prohibits many sexual offenders from living within 1,000 feet of certain areas where children congregate.

Commissioners in the Volusia County city decided that registered sexual offenders and predators cannot live within 2,500 feet -- nearly a half-mile -- of schools, parks, playgrounds, day-care centers and school-bus stops.

That left only a few pieces of vacant land not off-limits to offenders considering a move to the bedroom community of more than 85,000.

The city's ordinance does not apply to sexual offenders who lived in Deltona before the new rules were passed, as long as they stay in the same house.

City officials said they did not plan to close Deltona to sexual offenders, but they are not disappointed at the result.

"I think it sends a strong message: Don't become a predator or offender," Commissioner David Santiago said.

The public, for the most part, seems to support stricter residency rules for offenders.

"When you're talking about your children, it's better to err on their side," said Ocoee Mayor Scott Vandergrift, whose city has an ordinance similar to Deltona's. "Adults can fend for themselves and, certainly, they [offenders] should not have done something to get themselves in the position to be labeled that way."

Tougher to track offenders

But some law-enforcement officials, attorneys and civil-rights activists worry that what has become a national trend will ultimately make it tougher to monitor offenders.

If these men and women have no place to live, some officials warn, they might go underground and stop checking in with police.

"We lose track of them; they then become a threat to the community," said Fred North, who oversees probation officers in the 7th Judicial Circuit, which includes Volusia.

In Miami, five offenders were living under a highway bridge because local ordinances made it difficult for them to find a home, according to the state Department of Corrections.

The agency, which requires offenders to have addresses so that they can be checked on, reluctantly allowed the men to camp under the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

The increasingly stringent rules on sexual offenders have generated disagreement about their constitutionality.

Kyle Shephard, assistant city attorney in Orlando, said it might be difficult to defend a ban on some individuals when cities are not allowed to exclude certain businesses such as adult-entertainment shops.

Orlando decided not to craft its own ordinance.

John Stickels, a University of Texas attorney and criminology professor, said he sees no legal problems with banning offenders from certain areas, even if it closes an entire city to them.

"A person who has been convicted of a felony loses some of their protections under the Constitution," he said, "and one of the rights they may lose is the right to associate with certain types of people."

Iowa's experience

While relatively new in Florida, expansive residential buffers have been controversial in Iowa for years.

In 2002, Iowa adopted a statewide 2,000-foot buffer that surrounds schools and day-care facilities -- twice as restrictive as Florida law.

Corwin Ritchie, executive director for the Iowa County Attorneys Association, said cities there then created even harsher restrictions.

The rules shut sexual offenders out of most large cities. They now stay at rest areas, truck stops and motels on the edges of town.

At some motels, Ritchie said, offenders are the only guests.

Law-enforcement officials there complain they waste a lot of time and money trying to track down banned offenders.

Ritchie's group has lobbied the Iowa legislature for the past two years to repeal the 2,000-foot law because of the unintended consequences.

But politicians do not want to appear soft on sexual offenders.

"They will admit to you privately it's ineffective and a waste of resources, but they won't vote for it [a repeal] publicly," he said.

Ritchie and others question the effectiveness of boundaries, saying many offenders prey on the children of family and friends.

Florida legislators, however, have been debating whether to expand the current statewide offender boundary.

Lawmakers and other authorities have said it may be easier to legally defend a statewide restriction than a patchwork of varying buffers among city and counties.

In Deltona, the addition of school-bus stops -- the city has nearly 1,000 of them -- is the main reason why so much of the city is off-limits.

A map provided by the Volusia County Sheriff's Office showed only a few unrestricted areas, including a section of swampland at the south of town.

Family forced out

Juan Matamoros, a registered sexual offender in Deltona recently ordered to move, knows how tough it is to find legal shelter in Volusia's most populous city.

Matamoros was convicted in Massachusetts more than 20 years ago of lewd conduct after he was caught urinating on the side of a road. He said he likely will move his wife and two sons to a neighboring town.

"It is kind of impossible to find a place around here because it's like everywhere you go, it's either a private day-care or some sort of story they come up with," he said.

While Deltona's ordinance is strict, parents such as Debra Hicks, a mother of three and Cub Scouts den leader, say they still cannot relax.

Although new sexual offenders can't move in, she worries about those who lived in Deltona before the new rules were passed.

Said Hicks, "They need to put them all on an island, as far as I'm concerned."

Don't banish offenders

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04/22/2007 Aurora flirts with misguided policy

Aurora may join Greenwood Village and become the second Colorado city that prohibits certain registered sex offenders from living near places children frequent.

In Aurora's case, the ordinance would target violent offenders and those who have attacked children. The forbidden zone would be anywhere within the city limits that's 1,000 feet or closer to a school or recreation center.

The Lyons town board wisely rejected a similar measure not long ago. We hope the Aurora ordinance, which is scheduled to be heard by the city's public safety committee Tuesday, suffers a similar fate.

Any attempt to banish former sex offenders from large portions of a city or town is counterproductive and would probably drive them underground, where they'll be even more of a threat. Such measures are also quite possibly unconstitutional.

The public is concerned that the corrections system is releasing potentially violent predators into the community with scant supervision. The reality is more complicated. Colorado has supervision guidelines in place to monitor sex offenders who have completed their sentences and are on parole. These regulations go far beyond the requirement to register with local law enforcement every time they move.

In fact, most felony sex offenders who have been sentenced since 1998 face some form of lifetime monitoring. Before an incarcerated offender who faces lifetime supervision is approved for parole, the inmate is expected to attend counseling and demonstrate improvement, make arrangements to find housing and a job, and agree to continue treatment after leaving jail. If they can regain something that resembles a normal life in their community, they'll be less likely to harm others again.

Measures that try to banish sex offenders can put them beyond the reach of family members, community and religious organizations and other support systems - as well as jobs and decent housing.

When Miami Beach established a 2,500-foot buffer zone in 2005, the only place that state corrections officials would allow sex offenders to live within the city limits was under a bridge that's beside the Intracoastal Waterway.

Last October, a federal judge suspended an ordinance in Indianapolis which prohibited sex offenders who committed crimes against children from coming within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds. To be sure, that's stricter than the proposed Aurora ordinance, which would regulate only where sex offenders live, not where they work . . . or walk. Still, the basic principle is the same.

The legislature has turned back attempts each of the past three years to impose a buffer zone statewide. We urge council members in Aurora, and elected local officials elsewhere, to show similar restraint.

DNA exonerates man who served 25 years

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04/23/2007

CHICAGO - A man who spent 25 years in prison for rape was exonerated Monday as a judge threw out his convictions because DNA evidence showed he couldn't have committed the attack. An advocacy group said it was the 200th such case.
- When did DNA come into being? If it was older than 25 years, why didn't they do this back before the man lost 25 years of his life? I hate to say it, but, is it because he's black? Well, from this page, it says DNA forensics came into being in 1984. Still, this man has lost 25 years of his life, and should be compensated for his LOST time.

Jerry Miller smiled and the courtroom erupted into cheers after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane G. Cannon read the ruling that cleared him of all charges.

Miller, 48, had been found guilty of rape, robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated battery even though he testified he was at home watching television at the time of the 1981 attack. He was paroled in March 2006 and now works two jobs and lives with a family member in a Chicago suburb.

"I will get on with my life, start a life, have a life," Miller said at a news conference after the hearing. "I'm just thankful for this day."

The Innocence Project, a New York-based group, had persuaded prosecutors last year to conduct DNA tests on a semen sample taken from the rape victim's clothes. Those results excluded Miller as the attacker.

The case is the 200th in the United States in which a person was convicted and later exonerated based on DNA evidence, the group says. The first exonerations based on DNA testing were in 1989, and in all, the 200 defendants served about 2,475 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit, according to the group's Web site.

"We look at this as a learning moment," said Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project and one of Miller's lawyers. "What went wrong? We have to get the answer for the future or there'll be too many Jerry Millers."

Miller was arrested in the attack on a 44-year-old woman at a Chicago parking garage in September 1981. The attacker raped her and put her in the trunk of her car, but he ran away when two attendants approached him as he tried to leave the garage.

The attendants helped authorities make a sketch and later picked Miller out of a lineup.

Now that he is exonerated, Miller no longer has to register as a sex offender.

Mark Ertler, deputy supervisor of the Cook County state's attorney's office DNA review unit, told the Chicago Tribune that the case was "a good example of what the DNA unit was intended to do."

On the Net:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Sex offender tier system possible

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04/23/2007

Right now sex offenders have to live 2000 feet away from a park, daycare, or playground. But some say the law leaves sex offenders with hardly anywhere to live legally.
- It does, draw 2000 foot circles around all these areas in your area and you will see this is a fact.

The proposed bill would classify sex offenders in three levels.

Level one offenders would pose a low danger to the community and most likely not commit another crime.

Level two offenders are those that pose a moderate risk to others.

Level three would be someone posing a serious danger to the community and would continue engaging in criminal sexual conduct.

Some parents say anything that would help law enforcement focus on the most dangerous sex offenders is a good idea.

When Merisa Muniz's kids hit the playground she's watching.
- This is what any responsible parent should do!

“I do try to keep a really good eye on my children.”

But Merisa knows she can't always be there. So she lets her kids know that not everyone is there to treat them right.

“Me and my daughter did talk about this. We had one on our block that we thought was a sex offender and we didn't know how severe it was.”
- This is what a real parent should do. Warn your kids, not just about sex offenders but that the whole world is a dangerous place and they need to be on the watch for all things. Do not TRUST anyone unless you've known them for years, and even then I'd still be weary.

But Marisa also says that she feels not all sex offenders should be considered equal.
- Amen! They are NOT all equal. That is like saying all Christians are the same or all white people are the same. They are not!

“To me it all depends on what the sex offender has done.”
- So true. When will the idiots we have in office see this? This is a lady with brains, which the politicians only see greed, money, corruption, etc.

A state representative says changing the way sex offenders are classified would make the system fairer. It would also free up more resources to concentrate on the most dangerous offenders.
- And would save a lot of money, man hours, and free up time. And anything to save us tax payers money is good, IMO. Buffer zones, GPS, registries, etc do nothing to protect anyone, they are a false sense of security. If a violent person wants to commit another crime, THEY WILL! This is like asking criminals to obey the laws, doesn't make much sense.

Merisa says she believes, “there needs more focus on the ones that are really out there making crime after crime after crime for the same thing that needs to be put away.”

And if a "level three" offender ever moved into a neighborhood like where Eric and his kids live, the Department of Corrections would let everyone living within one mile know that person was their new neighbor.

Eric says, “a lot of families are very concerned about their kids they want to make sure that their kids live in a nice, healthy safe environment.”
- Doesn't everyone? Who wants to live in fear daily? Nobody. But these laws do not protect anyone, it only banishes sex offenders and is punishment regardless of the idiot politicians saying it's punitive not punishment, that is BS!

If the bill is passed it would take effect November 1st.

And if you would like to look at the bill more closely, a copy of the bill is available online.

Colorado City polygamist sentenced to probation for marrying teen

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04/22/2007

KINGMAN - A member of a polygamist sect who pleaded no contest to a child abuse charge for taking an underage wife was sentenced to one day in jail and 3 years probation.

Colorado City resident Vergel Jessop will also have to register as a sex offender during his probation. The judge in Mohave County spared him additional jail time Friday because his wife has significant medical problems, county prosecutors said.

Jessop, 47, had been charged in August 2005 with sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He pleaded no contest to the lesser charge in December.

Jessop's sentencing was the sixth of eight cases involving members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to be concluded. All eight were charged with crimes related to their underaged plural wives.

Dale Barlow is set to be sentenced in June for his no contest plea to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. The last defendant, Rodney Holm, is set for trial in May.

Of the remaining members of the polygamous sect originally charged, one was acquitted, charges were dropped against two men, and two others were convicted at trial or pleaded guilty.

The leader of the FLDS, Warren Jeffs, is being held in Utah on two counts of rape by accomplice and faces life terms in prison if convicted. In Arizona, he faces sexual misconduct charges which carry lesser penalties.

Both states brought the charges in connection with marriages Jeffs allegedly arranged between older men and teenage girls.

The FLDS is based in Colorado City and nearby Hildale, Utah.

Man who killed sex offenders dies while in prison

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Why even bring this up, except to point out that 2 sex offenders were killed? I see no point in this. At least we have one less vigilante in this world!

04/23/2007

BELLINGHAM - The man who killed two registered sex offenders in August 2005 died in prison last weekend, according to Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney Dave McEachran.

Michael Anthony Mullen, 36, died in Aberdeen on April 15. The details of his death were unavailable Saturday. An obituary ran in Friday's edition of The Bellingham Herald.

Mullen was sentenced in March 2006 to 44 years in state prison for posing as an FBI agent and shooting Victor Vazquez, 68, and Hank Eisses, 49, in their Northwest Avenue home. Both were registered Level III sex offenders, the highest level of sex-offender classification.

Mullen eluded police for a week, sending letters signed "Agent Life" to local media outlets with a "hit list" of other sex offenders he planned to kill. He turned himself in to police on Sept. 5, 2005.

During the past year, Mullen had continued to send numerous letters from prison to law enforcement and media outlets with threats about killing more sex offenders.