The Illinois Supreme Court has heard a case to determine if the state’s sex offense registry’s lifetime registration is constitutional. The case involves a man convicted in 2003 of a sex crime. With no additional criminal charges since then, his greatest challenges have been living with registration requirements and residency restrictions.
Getting straight to the issues everyone forced to register has to manage, a lower court judge cited the lack of rationale for residency restrictions. He cited the examples of some people being grandfathered in while others aren’t and that a registrant is prohibited from living next to a school or day care, but could be living next to a family with many children.
Like eyes opening one by one across the country, a small awareness in courts is taking hold that lifetime registration requirements eventually stop serving any purpose other than permanent punishment. Judges are starting to see study after study show the low risk of recidivism as offenders age further away from their offense, yet laws are written to treat offenders as if their crime were yesterday.
Let’s hope this awakening spreads rapidly.
@Martin
Thank you for your bravery, your strength and your ability to stand up to the courts. We have had a few victories here in Florida but mostly things like not having to hang signs saying no candy on Halloween. Even if you did not participate in Halloween, they were still making people post signs.
Some of us have been on the registry since it came out and were retroactively added.
I will leave you with this encouragement even if you are not a believer, it will give you solace:
Deuteronomy 20:4
“For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.”
Something worth mentioning. Everyone , no matter the state ur in, has one thing in common with everyone. They are all punished past their sentence. To be ordered to register after ur sentence is over is barbaric and to be forced to register without being part of ur sentence is bizarre
And not to throw anyone under the bus, but those of us who were added well after sentencing especially are retroactive punishment. Unlike those today who can at least try, and plea bargain a bit due to facing a life of registry, we/I had no idea there was even a registry in the works. My crime was in 1991, well before the 1997 implementation of it.
I needed to see some good news today.
THANK YOU!
Since we have 50 states with 50 different registries, you could live in one state and get removed, then you have states like Florida where they want us to suffer and rot into old age.
Registries cause fear, hate and violence towards us and our families.
Also, sad that even though we applaud the states who are winning the fight, there are many more who are told not even death might get us removed.
Well everyone knows that sex offenders have ex-ray vision they can see through buildings, they can jump tall buildings in a single bound and they live forever , so why not?
Is there finally light of common sense in the tunnel of ignorance? I am actually giddy here. My conviction is from 2000 in Illinois so this ruling would DEFINITELY impact my life. My entire future in fact. I am absolutely going to follow this case.
I also was convicted in 2005 crime was in 98 but also have to register to life been trying to get off I moved to iowa trying to get off there unfortunately they go by the Illinois rules I have not had any further incidents either
Kevin
This is Martin. I’m the one who brought the case pro se. While I was extremely nervous during oral arguments, I believe there were things the court picked up on from my arguments and briefs.
One Justice even asked the state if an individual determination of dangerousness would be relevant in an as-applied challenge. The state said that yes it would be.
I don’t want to give you false hope though. This is a tough battle, I’ve been at it for over 5 years now. I have no idea how the full court will decide this case. They may want to just punt it back down to the circuit court for an evidentiary hearing.
Listen, no matter what, keep hanging in there. Sooner or later these laws will be unconstitutional.