This morning an article came out on Vox.com about ways the upcoming Presidential Election may shape the legal landscape through creating a more liberal Supreme Court.
Currently, President Obama’s nominee of Merrick Garland is on hold, because Republicans are refusing to confirm his nominee at the tail end of his presidency, certainly holding out their decision in the hopes that a Republican president will come in and appoint someone more conservative.
However, if Hillary Clinton wins, she might just nominate someone even more liberal. With Kennedy and Ginsburg in their eighties and Breyer at 78, this next president has the power to redirect this country.
Among the ways in which the article highlighted change may come dealt with the current state of sex offender laws. It wrote:
One way in which the courts could be more receptive to directly challenging sentences, she says, is by starting to take “collateral consequences” into account. That’s the technical term for the myriad ways that criminal convictions, and in particular sex crime convictions, can hamper defendants’ lives in the long term. That includes restrictions on where they can live after they’re released from prison, bans on government employment and benefits like public housing, inclusion on sex offender registries, bans on gun purchases and voting, and so forth.
Dolovich outlined one possible example of a challenge incorporating collateral consequences: “So you’re a 19-year-old boy who’s been convicted of having sex with your 15-year-old girlfriend. You’re convicted of statutory rape, which itself carries huge direct carceral consequences — you go to prison for five years. But not only that; you also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life, which is a burden in itself and carries innumerable other collateral consequences that come along with the status of being a registered sex offender.”
“So you bring a claim under Harmelin v. Michigan” — a 1991 ruling banning “grossly disproportionate” sentences — “claiming the sentence you received is grossly disproportionate to the crime. That’s an incredibly state-friendly standard, and you barely ever win. … But a court committed to including collateral consequences in its thinking about gross disproportionality would realize it’s not just the five years in prison, it’s all of the burdens that someone registered as a sex offender has to follow.”
Aside from being hopeful about the possibility of change, another of the take-aways from this article as it relates to the State of Florida are voting rights. Here, felons do not get their voting rights restored and in the case of most registered citizens have to wait almost a decade before applying to get their voting rights back.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that the registry is punishment. See her dissent in Smith v Doe. RIP.
Vote Hilary! Speaking of voting, every year I get a new voter registration card. I checked the state voter registration website https://registration.elections.myflorida.com/CheckVoterStatus to see if I am allowed to vote, and it comes back Active* “*An active voter refers to a registered voter who is eligible to vote.” I went a step further and checked the Duval website http://www.electionsfl.org/duval/index.php?mais=Y&fvrsid=103432902&ckey=1234567 and it comes back Voter Status “You are currently eligible to vote in Duval County.” So, I also checked to see if my civil rights had been restored at https://fpcweb.fpc.state.fl.us/. Here it gets a bit dicey, coming back with “RECORD NOT FOUND.” There is a notice on the page that also says “This Restoration of Civil Rights (RCR) search only returns information regarding civil rights that have been GRANTED.”
Now, is this a trap to see if I will try to vote and get slapped with a 3rd degree felony, or did some clerk somewhere forget to take my rights away when I was convicted over a decade ago?
As a registrant I feel your pain. The good news though is I see the exact opposite. I see us making Leaps and Bounds in a positive direction. Sure there are setbacks, but overall I definitely see the tides turning…Sus Sue Sue
Sue, Sue, Sue is right. Join our Membership call in September (Thursday September 1, 2016) where our topic will be our next lawsuit.
Sounds good. But I doubt even Hillary will be able to help turn the tide for sex offenders. No politician or judge wants to backtrack on any current law or restriction in place…..NOBODY!! We’re f**ked for life. I’ve just come to accept it. I’ll just budget $50 a year for the rest of my life to give to the sheriff’s office in Jax. And only look for places to live that are 1000ft away from anything. All for thinking about doing something with someone who didn’t even exist (sting operation).
That’s not exactly the attitude we hope our members will take. It’s why we have lawsuits going right now.
Agreed. There have been a number of demographics throughout history that have been just as vilified as we are at the moment. I’m sure you can think of at least a couple. They did not ‘just come to accept it’ and though their fights have been long and difficult, they have made much progress.
We (i.e. you and I personally) may not see huge tangible progress in our lifetime, but if we don’t stand up now, our children and grandchildren may have to deal with a situation that is even worse than the one we face today.
Does our current situation suck? Yes. However, it can get worse, which is what will happen if we just stick our head in the sand and cry about it. It can also get better, which will require effort and action.
While I appreciate and can sympathize with the despair that some of the posters here relay, it really doesn’t do anyone any good, especially yourselves (mark, I’m thinking of you here….)
I’m sure even Rosa Parks had bad days, but she didn’t let them rule her. And thank god for that.
Well at some point you just get tired of fighting and dealing with it all. People like me are more worried about working 3-4 part time jobs just to survive and pay all the stupid probation obligations and therapy/polygraph costs so I don’t go back to prison.
If you have time to comment here, you have time to remain involved.
The same effort could have gone towards forwarding this article to your local legislator asking him what he intends to do about this: http://floridaactioncommittee.org/miami-dade-sex-offender-homeless-encampment-reaches-250-people/
Just did. Sen. Audrey Gibson.