SCOTUS will not be rehearing Gundy
The Supreme Court refused to rehear Gundy, a case that would have revived the non-delegation doctrine and prevented the decision as to whether SORNA could be applied retroactively to the Attorney General.
After Gundy lost last year, a petition for rehearing was filed. Today the Court refused the rehearing and also refused to take up the same issue in two other cases that were presented to the court with the same issue.
We know that rehearing is granted in VERY, VERY few cases, so this is not a surprise.
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We lost out in the Gundy case, but maybe the Pennsylvania Supreme Court can help out registrants in the five cases before them dealing with Megan’s Law.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/spl/pennsylvania-sex-offender-registry-megans-law-challenge-supreme-court-20191205.html
Absolutely, plus Gundy would not have benefitted many, if any, Florida registrants
…because the legal issue in Gundy was not really sexual offenses or registration.
When politicians talk about criminal justice reform they talk about the easy issues, nobody is touching the sex offense problem. It is persistently demonized and excluded from fairness and reason. It’s just the way things are until 20/20 does a special on it exposing the faults.
Instead we get CSI and L&O SVU “programming” teaching people the image of “violent offenders” and special “reports” about the dangerous offenders “in your backyard”. But the majority of people on the registry are there are for misdemeanor offenses, a tactic prosecutors use to get people “in the door”.
The system is more crooked than most people would care to imagine. But no one is willing to counter the momentum. Legislation is being passed all the time to preempt the courts and the judges are being left to look like the badguys for trying to help defendants. After a while they get rotated and replaced by new judges, many of them being ex-prosecutors or sheriffs trying to build their careers.
None willing to take on the sex offender problem.
This is coming from someone who’s been helping a falsely accused and convicted family member. I risked ALL to dive into the problem as do many of you out there. I fully understand that this commits me to a difficult road ahead. Sometimes I get hopeless and it just feels like fighting the wind. I gave up a promising career.
But to have done nothing is still a worse decision. Because it so easily could happen to anyone out there. The laws are already proven to be indiscriminate and the system is game to send the next defendant into their trap. And the next. And the next.
So get tough and get smart.
It is just like here in Florida. To pass the felon rights restoration act, they had to make it more palatable by excluding sex offenders and those convicted of murder.
So what they are saying is, some people matter but not all people. Once you have messed up you are damaged goods and no 2nd chances for the outcasts, no matter how many decades it has been since your charges.
Funny how others can post links to stories but I posted a link to an attorney’s site which speaks on information to be taken off the registry in FL and that comment was not published here.
I’m kinda sick of reading that people who move to or visit FL AFTER they’ve completed their registry obligations in another state are FORCED to register in FL. I gave the link for information to perhaps suppress this idea that there’s no chance to be removed from FL’s registry. I’ve even found FL LAW which has a section where it describes HOW TO GET REMOVED and even that mentions the crime having been in another jurisdiction and your registry was completed there.
So why was my comment not published?
I’ve noticed that not many of you, if any at all, even take part in conversing/replying to me anyway. Is there a “formula” to being involved in discussions here? SMH
Links to third party websites are not generally allowed in comments. If you want a resource added, send it to [email protected].
The moderation of comments is a cursory process – there’s no time to review third party content for accuracy or if it is relevant to the topic.
Very well. But when it comes to getting off the registry, I felt it’s relevant in all these topics.
I will gladly email you my findings.
Gundy was not about sex offender registration. It concerned a question regarding separation of powers and the constitution’s non-delegation clause. That topic could have involved nearly anything. I know this is unpopular here, but the Court ruled reasonably (correctly is another matter) in that regard.
We all know that ignorance, moral panic and political opportunism are the root causes of draconian sex offender laws.
Much judicial ignorance is derived from Justice Kennedy’s demonstrably incorrect “frightening and high” statement, which has been quoted so often by prosecutors that it is accepted as fact. The real problem is that registration is not considered punishment, but a civil regulatory measure.
That idea originated in a 2003 challenge to Alaska’s registration scheme, which was benign as compared to those that exist in many states today. Much draconian legislation has been imposed since then in many states. A key concept in the decision was that Alaska’s statutes were “reasonably designed” to protect public safety, and therefore not punitive.
Today registration has become so oppressive that it is neither reasonably designed nor rationally based on on objective data, and is thus punishment. If it is punishment, the ex post facto argument is made. At that point, one could also argue that this is non-judicial punishment and is effectively a bill of attainder, which also violates the 8th Amendment.
Punishment is the key to any judicial relief.
Wow Ed, you said that so beautifully that YOU should stand before the supreme court and state just that. What you said it true. A registry for law enforcement is one thing. A scarlet letter registry with our names, address, photos, vehicle info and more for anyone to see and come visit and threaten us, are another matter. Law makers, politicians, judges, and law enforcement just do not care 2 shitz about us.
I can understand anyone who was directly affected by a sex offense being mad, but many people who have never been a victim still want us all dead.
Cherokee,
I’m not even for a non-public registry that only police can have access to because it will still cause them to harass those who are on it AND it will still be a problem with passports. NO REGISTRY. Period.
Well I am not either but if we had to compromise in court I would agree to a private one over getting no relief at all. If law enforcement wants to find out if you get stopped, they have everyone’s criminal history at the dispatcher’s disposal.
If my below link to “Florida fights cities and counties that challenged gun law enacted after Parkland” is not working, then try this one:
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-florida-fights-local-gun-laws-20191125-g6jj7qjmm5b7teyuxfy3i5lhpy-story.html
2,500’ is a product of home rule. Were Florida not a home rule state, then the ongoing Miami-Dade homeless RSO crisis would never have existed. Nor would Clay County have considered its most recent ordinance.
Excess local banishment laws tend to cause localities to push transient registrants onto neighboring localities, which in turn cause neighboring localities to contemplate similar laws, setting themselves up for future lawsuits or other shenanigans.
At some point, a future state legislature, pressured by these neighboring localities and other groups, could say, enough is enough, and try to reign in home rule as it affects residency restrictions (won’t happen under this legislature, though).
Where I live it is 1000 feet but I do not fall under that. When they changed it, I was grandfathered in so it does not affect me as I live right next to a school. ( Well a block or so away ) They did move the bus stop that use to stop right in front of my house. Was glad actually as was tired of kids standing in my driveway every morning throwing trash in my yard.
My link posted below did not work as I thought it would. You will have to go to page B3 to find the article.