Both the boys admit they did it. Horsing around, two New Jersey 14-year-olds pulled down their pants and sat on the faces of two 12-year-old boys. As one of them later explained, “I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh.”
For that act, he and his buddy are on the sex offender registry for life. This was, after all, “sexual contact done for sexual gratification or to degrade or humiliate the victim.” The boys lost an appeal in 2011, with a three-judge panel writing that “although we are not unsympathetic to the arguments criticizing the application of the lifelong registration requirements…we are bound to uphold such application because that outcome is mandated by the Legislature.”
This is what our sex offender laws have done: Today, your child is more likely to end up on the registry than to be molested by someone on it.
It is unbelievable what our system is doing to people. Is anyone fighting these type of problems? Has anyone gone to the Supreme Court about civil and constitutional rights?
This reminds me of a story I read in USA Today a few years ago. It was about a 15-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy in Utah who were caught having sex with each other. They were both placed on the state’s sex offender registry! Can you imagine what sex offender registries would look like if every underage couple who engaged in sex were placed on the registry? It’s especially sad, considering how many of those in authority (if they were honest) engaged in sexual activity before they reached the age of consent in their state. Hippocrates!
I m scratching my head. It’s ok for young people to have sex at 16 or 17 but if your caught talking about it on line you get put on the sex offender registry.
“we are bound to uphold such application because that outcome is mandated by the Legislature.” ….That is a very telling statement right there by 3 judges. I always thought that judges always had the final say based on their discretion and JUDGEment of the case presented to them. Hence their being called JUDGES. Well duhhh, what in the hell was I thinking. That’s too common sensical. The people that actually run this country and/or any given state are the stupid jack ass morons that get elected to the legislatures apparently. And I keep saying it but no one seems to agree or want to listen to me. Until we put some actual literal fear into those legislative morons, they will keep on doing what they’re doing. Making ridiculous laws based on their own political and/or financial gain (a la the Books/Crooks) or catering to the rich lobbyists who buoy their political careers. If all 900,000 SO’s and their families in this country stormed the national mall and made a scene like all these other groups do, maybe it’ll make a difference. It will at least get national exposure
@mj
What the statement is saying is the judges personal opinions mean nothing when it comes to the law they are meant to uphold. The law as passed by the legislature is what they are bound to regardless of how retarded that particular law is.
I’ve come across several comments similar to this in my research. Re-read that comment in a different light and you will see it for the disapproval that it is.
“we are bound to uphold such application because that outcome is mandated by the Legislature.”
That is essentially the reasoning used by the Illinois Supreme Court in upholding the constitutionality of that state’s sex offender park prohibition.
For good or bad, it is not the job of judges to save us from the consequences of bad laws and we shouldn’t expect a court decision to make the registry or any of its provisions go away.
Or, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.”