Lawsuits Leave Us More Vulnerable To Offenders

Parents take note: unless state lawmakers take action, registered sex offenders will likely have a great deal more leeway in choosing where they live and congregate in the very near future.

A Santa Maria civil rights attorney and one plaintiff, a 62-year-old registered sex offender, have been on a tear over the past year, challenging ordinances up and down the state that bar sex offenders from living or loitering within 300 feet of schools, parks, libraries and other public places where children might be.

Attorney Janice Bellucci, who runs a group called California Reform Sex Offender Laws, contends that the local rules don't align with state law and run afoul of the U.S. and California constitutions. A state appeals court last year agreed with her, blocking Irvine's and Orange County's restrictions.

That ruling cleared the way for a flurry of litigation. Around 20 of those lawsuits – including complaints against Santa Ana, Orange and Westminster – were quickly settled. Another 40 municipalities so far have been repealing or rewriting their laws to pre-empt potentially expensive court fights.

The Inland Southern California city of Murrieta is the latest to knuckle under, with the city council two weeks ago voting unanimously to repeal its sex offender ordinance.

Now those city council members will be anxiously awaiting news that some paroled sex offender took advantage of the relaxed ordinance and hurt a child or raped a woman. Do you suppose the victim or the victim's loved ones would accept “our hands were tied” by way of explanation?

Here we need to acknowledge that sex offenders are not all the same. A man convicted of statutory rape after a consensual encounter with an underage girl, for example, does not pose the same sort of threat as someone who served hard time for forcibly assaulting children. Yet, both men will be registered sex offenders for life. Is that just?

How, then, should the law prioritize such threats? Who should be let go and who should remain locked up forever? Should some offenders remain in civil confinement for life, receiving mental health treatment? Should minor offenses be dropped eventually from the registry?

In 2006, a whopping 70 percent of voters attempted to answer at least some of those questions by approving Proposition 83, also known as Jessica's Law. The measure was named after Jessica Lunsford, a 9-year-old Florida girl who was kidnapped, raped and buried alive in 2005 by a known sexual predator wanted for multiple parole violations.

Although Prop. 83 was in some ways a blunt instrument, the case in its favor was perfectly straightforward. Violent sexual predators obviously presented a danger to the public that only long-term incarceration or intensive treatment and close monitoring could alleviate. State and local law enforcement agencies needed more tools to keep predators in check.

The measure boosted sentences on a variety of sex crimes, eliminated time off for good behavior, required lifetime satellite monitoring of “high-risk” offenders and banned registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. It also empowered the state Department of Mental Health to commit sexually violent predators to treatment indefinitely.

The initiative also was supposed to give local governments leeway to extend “predator-free zones” to include children's recreation centers, private childcare facilities, libraries and arcades.

For all of those reasons, Proposition 83 seemed like a good idea. Most newspapers endorsed the measure wholeheartedly.

Then the courts got involved.

The broader enforcement mechanisms of Jessica's Law remain intact, but local flexibility is gone. If the state statute is the problem, then the Legislature needs to find a remedy – pronto. Unfortunately, California's lawmakers have tended to avoid making hard policy choices, choosing instead to punt them to voters.

Assembly Bill 201 by William Brough, R-Dana Point, would allow cities to pass the sort of laws they were supposedly empowered to enact under Prop. 83. Brough's bill may not survive the amendment process in a Democratic Legislature, however. Opponents argue that the state should have one standard, ignoring that different municipalities face different challenges.

If legislators can't get the job done this year, that means voters would need to take it upon themselves once again – or leave our communities potentially less safe.

Meantime, the lawsuits will continue unabated.

“Anybody who has to register as a sex offender in California can be a plaintiff,” Bellucci said last year. “And there are 105,000 potential plaintiffs.”

You've been warned.

This piece originally appeared in Orange County Register

This piece originally appeared in Orange County Register