Screw keeping them from bus stops

 

molesting a kid should = death penalty or castration, along with public beating and signs on their home.

 

But I am harsh compared to most

Ya think?

 

 

We aren't Saudi Arabia.

Cruel and unusual?

 

The crimes they committed were cruel and unusual.

 

Not being able to live by a school bus stop is not.

If you have done the time in jail that was specified as punishment for your crime against society, your time is done and you have no need to be punished any longer. If you want to just get up and change the whole system, fine, but if you're going to stick with that Constitution thing then let's follow all of it.

 

Just another example of people picking and choosing what amendments to follow and which to throw away. Maybe we should just put all the amendments in the first one, since that's the only one that people expect followed unconditionally.

Cruel and unusual?

 

The crimes they committed were cruel and unusual.

 

Not being able to live by a school bus stop is not.

If you have done the time in jail that was specified as punishment for your crime against society, your time is done and you have no need to be punished any longer. If you want to just get up and change the whole system, fine, but if you're going to stick with that Constitution thing then let's follow all of it.

 

Just another example of people picking and choosing what amendments to follow and which to throw away. Maybe we should just put all the amendments in the first one, since that's the only one that people expect followed unconditionally.

 

 

post of the year?

not to mention that just because a sex offender cannot reside near a school bus stop doesn't mean he can't still get to one. like someone mentioned, they're usually all over the place so it's not like this has eliminated all chances of them finding one. they might be sick losers but they're not idiots. they can and will find children/women/whatever if they want. i admit it might help lessen the offender's needs and whatnot but this isn't exactly some big breakthrough law or anything.

 

 

 

what's next, people who commit theft can't live near banks? :mischief

Cruel and unusual?

 

The crimes they committed were cruel and unusual.

 

Not being able to live by a school bus stop is not.

If you have done the time in jail that was specified as punishment for your crime against society, your time is done and you have no need to be punished any longer. If you want to just get up and change the whole system, fine, but if you're going to stick with that Constitution thing then let's follow all of it.

 

Just another example of people picking and choosing what amendments to follow and which to throw away. Maybe we should just put all the amendments in the first one, since that's the only one that people expect followed unconditionally.

Huh?

 

It's a part of their sentence to register as a sex offender. Part of their sentencing often includes not being able to live in certain places. This isn't some random law or random added on punishment, this has been in place for a while and comes with the sentencing.

 

Is it cruel and unusual that a felon won't be hired by most businesses because they are a felon?

 

A sex offender arguing that they will have a harder time earning a living or the like is a joke as well considering that as a felon the places they are going to be able to work are low paying fast food or meat packing plant jobs. There are plenty of places away from bus stops that they can work. It's ludicrous to use that as a defense when the type of job you are doing in a large city is easy to find in other, less populated areas.

 

Being registered as a sex offender is just the same as being a felon except it has to be publicly known to ensure public safety. Registered sex offenders who have these restrictions have some of the lowest recidivism rates of any other criminals. That's enough for me to keep these laws and strengthen them.

 

Another example of you throwing around the constitution when you only use it to fit your argument. The 8th ammendment would never strike down this law. Look at some of the cases that have shown when a punishment is cruel and unusual.

 

1. Wilkerson v. Utah - Torture is cruel and unusual

2. Trop v. Dulles - Taking away the citizenship of a natural born citizen is cruel and unusual.

3. Weems v. United Stats - Shackling for duration of incarceration is cruel and unusual.

4. Coker v. Georgia - Death penalty is unconstitutional for anything other than murder

 

All of those landmark cases give a good outline for things that constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment'. It's a joke that some of you think that not being able to live near a bus stop near children or people that a criminal had hurt in the past is cruel or unusal.

 

U.S Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan wrote 4 guidelines after the case Furman v. Georgia about what constitutes that a punishment is cruel and unusual. I refer you and leave you with these:

• The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity", especially torture.
  
• "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion".
  
• "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society".
  
• "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary".
  

 

I'm going to answer a portion of your post now at work and then address the precedent when I get home and can access the court cases I have saved.

It's a part of their sentence to register as a sex offender. Part of their sentencing often includes not being able to live in certain places. This isn't some random law or random added on punishment, this has been in place for a while and comes with the sentencing.

 

Is it cruel and unusual that a felon won't be hired by most businesses because they are a felon?

 

A sex offender arguing that they will have a harder time earning a living or the like is a joke as well considering that as a felon the places they are going to be able to work are low paying fast food or meat packing plant jobs. There are plenty of places away from bus stops that they can work. It's ludicrous to use that as a defense when the type of job you are doing in a large city is easy to find in other, less populated areas.

 

Being registered as a sex offender is just the same as being a felon except it has to be publicly known to ensure public safety. Registered sex offenders who have these restrictions have some of the lowest recidivism rates of any other criminals. That's enough for me to keep these laws and strengthen them.

The very base of this part of the argument is exactly why it's not the same. What you're discussing is private businesses not choosing to hire felons. That's all fine and good and their perogative. If I was a business owner, I probably wouldn't want a felon working for me under most circumstances. Businesses can do as they please in this regard.

 

The government, however, cannot. The law doesn't set any regulations on businesses in regard to speech, due process, grievances, just compensation, etc. The Bill of Rights (well, all the amendments really) act not as an overall posting of rights but a set of limitations on what the government can do. The government has to afford you things you wouldn't necessarily receive in the private world. So when a felon is denied work at a business, that's not a violation of any of the felon's rights. He doesn't have a right to work at a certain place, much less work at all if no one wants him. Different animal completely from the case at hand, which is the government writing a law imposing an unnecessary burden on its citizens.

 

As far as being a registered sex offender being public and all, that's true. But then again, technically all crimes are public knowledge (minus under-18 stuff). That's one of the main tenets of the system. That the sex offender stuff is advertised a little bit more than say, bank robbery, is understandable but they're still both public knowledge. Also, since registering as a sex offender isn't really a huge change from the parole system and/or public record of the crime the convicted committed, it's not in the same boat either as the location issue.

Cruel and unusual?

 

The crimes they committed were cruel and unusual.

 

Not being able to live by a school bus stop is not.

If you have done the time in jail that was specified as punishment for your crime against society, your time is done and you have no need to be punished any longer. If you want to just get up and change the whole system, fine, but if you're going to stick with that Constitution thing then let's follow all of it.

 

Just another example of people picking and choosing what amendments to follow and which to throw away. Maybe we should just put all the amendments in the first one, since that's the only one that people expect followed unconditionally.

Huh?

 

It's a part of their sentence to register as a sex offender. Part of their sentencing often includes not being able to live in certain places. This isn't some random law or random added on punishment, this has been in place for a while and comes with the sentencing.

 

Is it cruel and unusual that a felon won't be hired by most businesses because they are a felon?

 

A sex offender arguing that they will have a harder time earning a living or the like is a joke as well considering that as a felon the places they are going to be able to work are low paying fast food or meat packing plant jobs. There are plenty of places away from bus stops that they can work. It's ludicrous to use that as a defense when the type of job you are doing in a large city is easy to find in other, less populated areas.

 

Being registered as a sex offender is just the same as being a felon except it has to be publicly known to ensure public safety. Registered sex offenders who have these restrictions have some of the lowest recidivism rates of any other criminals. That's enough for me to keep these laws and strengthen them.

 

Another example of you throwing around the constitution when you only use it to fit your argument. The 8th ammendment would never strike down this law. Look at some of the cases that have shown when a punishment is cruel and unusual.

 

1. Wilkerson v. Utah - Torture is cruel and unusual

2. Trop v. Dulles - Taking away the citizenship of a natural born citizen is cruel and unusual.

3. Weems v. United Stats - Shackling for duration of incarceration is cruel and unusual.

4. Coker v. Georgia - Death penalty is unconstitutional for anything other than murder

 

All of those landmark cases give a good outline for things that constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment'. It's a joke that some of you think that not being able to live near a bus stop near children or people that a criminal had hurt in the past is cruel or unusal.

 

U.S Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan wrote 4 guidelines after the case Furman v. Georgia about what constitutes that a punishment is cruel and unusual. I refer you and leave you with these:

• The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity", especially torture.
  
• "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion".
  
• "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society".
  
• "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary".
  

 

 

 

 

Post of the year candidate? :whistle

 

 

Cruel and unusual?

 

The crimes they committed were cruel and unusual.

 

Not being able to live by a school bus stop is not.

If you have done the time in jail that was specified as punishment for your crime against society, your time is done and you have no need to be punished any longer. If you want to just get up and change the whole system, fine, but if you're going to stick with that Constitution thing then let's follow all of it.

 

Just another example of people picking and choosing what amendments to follow and which to throw away. Maybe we should just put all the amendments in the first one, since that's the only one that people expect followed unconditionally.

 

 

post of the year?

 

 

 

Juanky and legacy, Your obviously both intelligent and I enjoy reading your posts but you guys are killin me on this cruel and unusual business.

 

 

All I said was not allowing registered sexual predators to live near a school bus stop IS NOT cruel and unusual punishment. Are you disagreeing with this specific statement?

The government cannot put that type of burden on any citizen of this country. Not living near schools and the such is a fair price to pay for the crimes a predator has committed, but school bus stops are all over the place. It would be an undue burden and unconstitutional to completely alienate any member of the community to this extent.

 

Once you rape or molest a child your rights are thrown out the window, IMO.

That's true, HOWEVER, the Constitution doesn't work that way, and just because most sex offenders are perverts, you can get labeled with a sex offender tag if you go streaking or you moon someone.

The government cannot put that type of burden on any citizen of this country. Not living near schools and the such is a fair price to pay for the crimes a predator has committed, but school bus stops are all over the place. It would be an undue burden and unconstitutional to completely alienate any member of the community to this extent.

 

Once you rape or molest a child your rights are thrown out the window, IMO.

That's true, HOWEVER, the Constitution doesn't work that way, and just because most sex offenders are perverts, you can get labeled with a sex offender tag if you go streaking or you moon someone.

The chances that you get criminally charged and go through the legal system for that are very few and far between.

The government cannot put that type of burden on any citizen of this country. Not living near schools and the such is a fair price to pay for the crimes a predator has committed, but school bus stops are all over the place. It would be an undue burden and unconstitutional to completely alienate any member of the community to this extent.

 

Once you rape or molest a child your rights are thrown out the window, IMO.

That's true, HOWEVER, the Constitution doesn't work that way, and just because most sex offenders are perverts, you can get labeled with a sex offender tag if you go streaking or you moon someone.

 

 

 

 

State Attorneys Office most likely will decline the case and in the rare chance they did Im sure a plea deal would be as far as it went (which wouldnt land Frank the Tank on the sexual offender registry list).

Yeah, and what of a state that has an overzealous prosecutor or just happens to not like people who moon others?

I'd like to know where former murders are living as well.

 

 

Why arent former murders forced to go through public ridicule.

 

 

Hell same thing with thiefs. I dont want my crap taken and live near someone who used to rob.

 

 

:hat

Yeah good point.

 

 

But it just pisses me off that people are concerned about some child predator and that he may be deprived of living near a school bus stop.

 

Ive said it once and Ill say it again, our judicial system is all about protecting the offenders and the victims are left to pick up the pieces. And often times that healing process takes years.

Being registered as a sex offender is just the same as being a felon except it has to be publicly known to ensure public safety. Registered sex offenders who have these restrictions have some of the lowest recidivism rates of any other criminals. That's enough for me to keep these laws and strengthen them.

 

Another example of you throwing around the constitution when you only use it to fit your argument. The 8th ammendment would never strike down this law. Look at some of the cases that have shown when a punishment is cruel and unusual.

 

1. Wilkerson v. Utah - Torture is cruel and unusual

2. Trop v. Dulles - Taking away the citizenship of a natural born citizen is cruel and unusual.

3. Weems v. United Stats - Shackling for duration of incarceration is cruel and unusual.

4. Coker v. Georgia - Death penalty is unconstitutional for anything other than murder

 

All of those landmark cases give a good outline for things that constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment'. It's a joke that some of you think that not being able to live near a bus stop near children or people that a criminal had hurt in the past is cruel or unusal.

 

U.S Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan wrote 4 guidelines after the case Furman v. Georgia about what constitutes that a punishment is cruel and unusual. I refer you and leave you with these:

• The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity", especially torture.
  
• "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion".
  
• "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society".
  
• "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary".
  

As promised, here's the case law I've looked up.

 

First off, the large basis of the Supreme Court's 8th amendment cases are (not surprisingly) dealing with capital punishment and its many different entanglements. Of the four cases you listed, none actually have to do with what happens to a felon after his conviction. It hasn't been widely regarded that any of the measures that effect convicts after being released from prison are part of a sentence, which is what myself and legacy see this law as being.

 

That said, there have been cases dealing with sex offenders. In fact, they were quite recent - Conneticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe and Smith v. Doe. Both of those cases dealt with the same topic, sex offenders having to register publicly upon being released. In both these cases the Supreme Court ruled that the so called Megan's Laws were constitutional. Writing for the 9-0 majority, Chief Justice Rehnquist stated that the government "has decided that the registry requirement shall be based on the fact of current dangerousness. Indeed, the public registry explicitly states that officials have not determined that any registrant is currently dangerous." Basically, the court is telling us that the registry is ok because it's the result of a past offense. Notice the bolded part - it specifies the current state the offenders. That law is ok because it doesn't make any assumptions after release, but that is not the case with the one barring offenders from living by the bus stations.

 

Another realm that this law falls under is a discriminatory issue against those that have been convicted of a specific crime. The law singles out only sex offenders instead of focusing on a general realm of all released felons. When dealing with discrimanatory issues, the court uses three tests to decided whether or not the law is permissable. Normally a law that deals with just one type of offender would most likely fall under the rational basis test, for which surely the law would pass. However, because the law is based on where those in question are allowed to live, the issue becomes trickier. What if they were living close to a bus stop already? Then this becomes a strict scrutiny test, because unless just compensation is given to every sex offender who lives close to a bus stop (which something tells me is quite a number), the state has violated the 5th amendment rights of every registered sex offender evicted from their homes due to this law.

 

If it ever does get to SCOTUS it'll be a fun case because there is very limited precedent.

I'm not satisfied with the idea that the state rarely charges or convicts people for crimes such as mooning. Thats somehting that can easily change. Furthemore, I don't like pedophiles, so keep them in jail longer, or in mental institutions, but this punishment is inhumane. By the way Coker v. Georgia does NOT prohibit the use of the death penalty for someone who rapes a child under 11. Although rarely done, in most jurisdictions people can still get the detah penalty for raping a child. Coker just said you cant use it for the rape of an adult woman bc it violates Amendment XVIII

Juanky, I ran through these posts pretty quickly, but Im not sure what right you're necessarily basing your argument on? Im not sure it is a deprivation of life, liberty, or property for the state to tell people where they can or can't live and if it is, all they have to do is provide due process, and isnt that provided by the original conviction here? Plus we often tell people where they can't live don't we? There are laws that say no 3 unrelated people can live in a home together. Isnt this similiar? Certainly substanative due process has never extended this as a fundamental right.

 

I also don't think this falls under equal protection. As you pointed out, rational basis is the test and rational basis has rarely if ever been used to strike down a race/gender/other status neutral discriminatory law like this.

 

I think the only argument might be in 8th amendment jurisprudence, which has foundation in contemporary societal standards. Like the death penalty however, whether right or wrong, our modern society does not like sex offenders.

 

We often treat sexual offenders harshly and one example where there might be the harshest treatment is evidence law. Normally you can never tell a jury about a defendants past crime to prove that he commited another crime. It's fundamental that a person's predisposition, past and character should not be the basis of how we prosecute someone. But the one major exception we make is for child molesters. Essentially, if you molest one kid, and then are accused by another, the first conviction can be used against you. And doesnt that stack the deck pretty badly against the defendant? But society has deemed this ok.

 

One thing that distinguishes child molestation from other crimes is the long term effects. The family members of the victim of a murder don't become murderers. Victims of theft don't become thiefs. Victims of child molestation often become the problem.

Let me pose a hypothesis here:

 

 

What if someone on the Sexual Predator registry was living in his home, minding his own business for the rest of his life, and he was forced to move out because of this law?

 

 

 

 

Now I do think Child Molestors and Rapists are deserving of life sentances because they take away someone's life, even if they still live. But if you've served your time, the state cannot legally do anything to force someone to move away without eminent domain and/or if they are in violation of their parole.

 

 

 

Now on the other hand, I have no problem with sex offenders not being able to live near busstops who committ offenses after the passing of the law. But to force people to move away for an offense that they committed before passing the law, I believe, sets a dangerous precedent.

You would think that they would have the sense NOT to put a bus stop next to a sex offender's house. But that might be asking too much.

Let me pose a hypothesis here:

 

 

What if someone on the Sexual Predator registry was living in his home, minding his own business for the rest of his life, and he was forced to move out because of this law?

Unless you commit another sex act, a sex offender usually only has to be registered for 10 years.

Thats why I said on the registry. :thumbup

We often treat sexual offenders harshly and one example where there might be the harshest treatment is evidence law. Normally you can never tell a jury about a defendants past crime to prove that he commited another crime. It's fundamental that a person's predisposition, past and character should not be the basis of how we prosecute someone. But the one major exception we make is for child molesters. Essentially, if you molest one kid, and then are accused by another, the first conviction can be used against you. And doesnt that stack the deck pretty badly against the defendant? But society has deemed this ok.

 

One thing that distinguishes child molestation from other crimes is the long term effects. The family members of the victim of a murder don't become murderers. Victims of theft don't become thiefs. Victims of child molestation often become the problem.

Yeah, child molestors have been looked upon as differently by society. However I think that the words of Rehnquist in the Megan's Law cases (posted again below) stand as the current law for dealing with child molestors.

Chief Justice Rehnquist stated that the government "has decided that the registry requirement shall be based on the fact of current dangerousness. Indeed, the public registry explicitly states that officials have not determined that any registrant is currently dangerous."

If we're going by the standard that registry is ok because it doesn't assume danger after the convicted have been released, then this law should be struck down for that very reason. The law assumes current danger - if not, why even write it at all? Smith v. Doe, in the absence of direct case law, tells us that the government shouldn't be in the business of assuming danger with people getting out of jail.

 

You would think that they would have the sense NOT to put a bus stop next to a sex offender's house. But that might be asking too much.

Yeah, well, common sense and the government have a love/hate relationship :lol

You would think that they would have the sense NOT to put a bus stop next to a sex offender's house. But that might be asking too much.

 

 

 

Bus Stops are determined by the number of students needing transportation to the school, not by where Sex offenders live.