My nephew is a sentenced sex-offender currently serving time. This was his first offense, everything was through the internet and he did not physically touch or meet with anyone. He went to a legal site where a 16 year old lied about his age. When my nephew found out, he cut off contact, as well as when he downloaded groups of pictures, he would delete ones that he new were underage. That being said, the whole sex offender registry is a joke. Studies have showed that this crime has a low rate of recidivism, yet they are the ones who pay for their crimes for the rest of their lives. If a registry needs to be around, it should be visible only to the police. My nephew wasn’t even sentenced but the local media plastered his picture and did a report where the facts weren’t even correct. Then a woman in our town blasted his picture on Facebook and went on about this evil, deplorable “dirtbag”. My sister was worried that vigilantes would be surrounding her house.
My nephew lost EVERYTHING because of one stupid mistake where NOBODY was touched. He was a successful business owner, owned his own house and traveled the world. He totally owns up to his mistake and is serving his time without complaining. But even though he will get out in 4 years, he will really be serving a life sentence if the registry continues as it is. And making it public really is only pandering to the voyeurism that so many people crave. Our Department of Justice does not serve justice at all. We never would have believed that if we didn’t see the way it works (or doesn’t work) first hand.

Besides the fact that this guy just had his life turned upside down, another ‘sad’ point to this is the person who wrote it is basically being apologetic, saying that her nephew “made a mistake”. How can he be the one to have made the mistake when at the beginning of the comment this person claims that the nephew cut off contact and deleted the images of the apparent 16 yr old when the age was revealed? How is that his/her nephew’s fault? How is it a ‘mistake’?

This is a problem in my opinion, when something like this happens and we claim we (or our loved one) ‘made a mistake’. No one is making any mistake by doing what everyone does these days which is talking to people online. Welcome to the new age, eh? Or we haven’t quite figured that out yet?
If I were a politician, much less AG Bill Barr, I’m not quite sure I would have any sympathy for someone who says two different things in one breath.
If this commenter said that the nephew went through with meeting the minor, then I can maybe accept the “mistake” part of it. But when someone attempts to do the RIGHT THING by cutting off communication with someone who just revealed that they are under age, I’d like to know what the big “mistake” is.

When people are set up either by actual minors or undercover police, let’s stop using the word “mistake” and just call it what it truly is – TEMPTATION. And this coming from me, an atheist, but temptation doesn’t have to be biblically connected. It’s a fact that people can easily be tempted or swayed or enticed or tricked into things they wouldn’t typically do. For example; the right thing to do if you find a lost wallet is to turn it in to a local police station. But TEMPTATION would have us at the very least looking inside to see how much cash might be in there. Some of us would keep the cash, but my point is that we would ALL be at least curious to see how much is in there even if we don’t steal it.

Take into account all the men who have been set up by LE agents online in what are supposed to be dating/hook up sites for ADULTS, and ask yourself: Did this person actually go looking for minors on an adult site? And if these men who lived perfectly healthy and law abiding lives were easily manipulated into possibly breaking the law, then what does that say about our society? All those tough guys on Facebook comments saying “If it was my daughter, he’d be a dead man”, perhaps even those keyboard warriors could be swayed into something illegal after all the crap they talk online.
This has got to stop. We know it’s got to stop, but the only way it will is if the right attorneys SAY the things that need to be said and stop tip toeing around with “politically correct” courthouse jibberish. Tell it like the fck it is, for fcksakes!

Any thoughts?

I’m sorry that I don’t possess the humanity that you do, Isaac, regarding not wishing death upon anyone. But, I stay alive just to piss them all off.

If I read this right, a person in a jurisdiction that will not register to the degree required by SORNA Can be perpetually liable for arrest and incarceration while waiting for the courts to;
“establish as an affirmative defense an inability to comply with SORNA because of circumstances beyond his control as provided in 18 U.S.C. 2250(c)”

That is beyond belief SCOTUS would accept that.

That should be embodied in an official comment. The legal contortions this registry spaghetti has made is going to send many in the justice system to an early grave with all the mess its caused. All they’ve managed to do lately is play tennis with cases because none of them can interpret the law as it stands.

Point is, sex offender registration law is an unintelligible tangle of useless garbage.

Thanks for the motivation to submit a comment. My submission:

I understand the proposed rules may be perceived as simply administrative changes to civil code, however, this particular civil code has regulatory ramifications with the potential to affect millions of individuals and collaterally, their household members, which may number in the tens of millions. What other civil statutory scheme in the federal code provides for criminal penalties in excess of a decade or more in prison and up to LIFETIME of supervised release? With such stiff penalties for non-compliance, citizens rightly expect such demanding regulatory schemes to be highly effective at achieving their stated goals. SORNA, and other variants of sex offender registration schemes cannot demonstrate this. The burden that sex offender registration schemes place on US citizens and, subsequently, on law enforcement agencies to ensure technical compliance make this one of the greatest legislative failures ever conceived, perhaps surpassing that of Prohibition.

At its core, any type of registration scheme promotes the objective of pitting neighbor against neighbor. This type of schema is fundamentally flawed and can never further the objectives of public safety. Its only actual effect serves to make communities feel less safe. No DOJ statistic or other independent study can show that SORNA has achieved any of its stated purposes. Therefore, let us not continue to weave a more convoluted web of regulations when even our highly trained law enforcement agencies cannot properly enforce the current regime. Instead, those with the power to enact these statutes should demand evidence-based approaches that can demonstrably reduce the prevalence of sexual crime.

But please don’t use “form” letters or template letters. No one likes those and they’ll be rejected. You don’t have to write Shakespeare here, just give your honest opinion on why SORNA is a bad law.

As of this morning there are 120 statements. We need more! I’d love to see more than a thousand.

There were 98 comments yesterday but just a moment ago when I looked at it, there’s only 68. What happened????

That was my point, actually. But technically the registry is a sanction. You don’t get put on the registry for a DUI so technically the registry is part of the sanction for the sex “crime”.

(I put crime in quotes because certain things should not be criminalized).