CA Supreme Court allows sex-offender sweeps . . . for now
With hundreds of sex offenders in violation of residency requirements designed to keep them away from children, parole agents in California last week began clearing them from neighborhoods near schools and parks. About 1,800 California sex offenders were in violation of Jessica’s Law, a measure passed with 70 percent support from California voters last November. The law, named after a 9-year-old Florida girl who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender in 2005, prohibits offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. California officials had given the offenders 45 days to move, but as of Thursday, about 850 parolees still hadn’t. So Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered their paroles terminated.
The Examiner reports: Parole agents can continue sweeps of sex offenders living too close to schools and parks after the state Supreme Court refused to grant a broad injunction halting the arrests. The court had blocked the state from arresting four parolees who claimed the so-called Jessica’s Law is too vague and unfairly punishes offenders after they are released from prison.
But in Monday’s ruling, the court refused to apply that protection to hundreds of other paroled sex offenders, saying they needed to look to lower courts to get their own injunctions.
Their own injunctions? I wonder if this guy, who videotaped himself raping a three-year-old girl, will someday be eligible for an injunction?




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back to top29 Comments to “CA Supreme Court allows sex-offender sweeps . . . for now”
If you’re that concerned about him, why do you let him out to begin with. I will NEVER understand these types of laws. Do you think 2000 feet bewtween a school and a sex offender is going to stop anything? These laws simply serve to continue punishment of the offender. They never pay their debt, do they? Either keep them imprisoned or leave them alone and WATCH YOUR CHILDREN! I am for keeping them in prison.
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When I used to do a lot of zoning work, one of the adult use regulation schemes that was in full vogue was similar location restrictions (at least “x” feet from schools, parks, churches, etc.). It never ceased to amaze me how small a number for “x” would effective eliminate all of the permissible locations.
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I wonder if this guy, who videotaped himself raping a three-year-old girl, will someday be eligible for an injunction?
Yes, everybody now, not just someday, is eligible to petition for an injunction. The courthouse doors are open 9 to 5. It’s called equal protection of law. It does us all proud.
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Well this was certainly done with all the subtlety, wit, and class we have come to associate with Lynn’s writing!
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This is ritual, Luke, a meal best prepared and enjoyed without subtlety, wit, and class — it’s revenge, it’s primitive, and it’s irresistible — a high moment in conservative experience.
According to LA Times:
“one of the men . . . was convicted 22 years ago of indecent exposure for urinating beneath a railroad trestle in Texas and was recently released from prison after serving time for a non-sex crime.
“Another petitioner was convicted in 1998, when he was 16, of a crime involving sexual contact with a 15-year-old. He came under Proposition 83 because of a traffic citation that had violated his parole.”
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by Luke 10.16.07 at 12:07 pm e
Well this was certainly done with all the subtlety, wit, and class we have come to associate with Lynn’s writing!
5. by Scroop Moth 10.16.07 at 12:42 pm e
This is ritual, Luke, a meal best prepared and enjoyed without subtlety, wit, and class — it’s revenge, it’s primitive, and it’s irresistible — a high moment in conservative experience.
You’re suggesting I must deliver my opinion on a man who rapes a three-year-old on videotape with “wit” and “subtlety?”
There will always be people like the railroad guy who are caught in the gray area of such laws. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him because, gee, he’s only a two-time convict and the second time wasn’t a sex crime? I don’t. But if he proves his case in court, good for him.
Still, you seem to feel it is more important to point out the exceptions that render my delivered opinion unsuitable for discerning liberal palates than to address the topic of the post, which is the larger reason these laws exist — guys like Stiles who rape children, are released, and rape again…or who kill children, are released, and kill again.
You seem to be saying that to suggest that he (or any sex offender) has forfeited the right to live where he wants is somehow “primitive?” Let me show you how unsubtle and primitive I can be: This man Stiles, if guilty, doesn’t deserve to live at all.
There ya go: some “red meat” for the slavering conservative hordes who (as you consistently remind us) are entirely unable to think in your fashionable shades of gray.
Good grief.
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Shame on Jessica’s parents for giving their daughter’s memory to such a law. Revenge does terrible things to people, forcing them to haunt courthouses, clemency boards, and prisons. It makes them say undignified and ungenerous things for television. If horror ever happens to me, my people are forbidden to engage in these behaviors.
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Does California have room in their prisons for 850 more?
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Scroop Moth,
Some of us might argue that you’re confusing revenge and justice. Jessica’s parents deserve shame for working so that no other family suffers as they did? Just because we can’t prevent every crime doesn’t mean we sit back and watch it happen.
What would your solution be?
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This area of the law (sex offenders) is a difficult problem. Many of us are conflicted on the whole matter.
Here are a few principles that most people can agree on:
1. We want people who’ve been convicted of sex offenses to serve their time.
2. We want people who have a child sex conviction to stay away from children.
3. We want want the Constitutional protections to be upheld.
The problems are many:
1. Should a person who has served out their sentence deserve further punishment? Is it constitutional?
2. When we ban people from certain areas or cities, we force them upon other areas. Is that fair on the other communities? If large swaths of America did this, we’d have a huge legal and moral crisis.
3. In a state like California, which has horribly overcrowded prisons and a “three strikes” policy, there is simply not enough room to house everyone to serve their full sentence. Taxpayers would revolt at the cost of building all of the prisons necessary.
4. Will banning a person from a certain area keep them from re-offending? Are there any statistics to back this up?
5. I believe I am right in stating that most sex offenses are committed by family members or close friends, not strangers. Certainly there have been notorious cases like Jessica’s. But her case is not the norm.
6. The lack of treatment (or treatment that is effective) for sex offenders is a huge problem.
I myself have no answers.
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Post 7
Jessica’s parents did a wonderful thing to help other parents –
Putting those who kill and rape children in prison is a GOOD, it’s the only place where they belong PERMANENTLY!
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Cameron, how could anyone allow the memory of their child to attach to the subject of a social pathology? As I see it, the personal histories of a child and a sex offender have nothing more to do with each other than the occupants of cars that collide with each other in traffic. I would never sit in a witness box rehearsing my memories of my child in the presence of a criminal defendant. Yuk! It would offend my tender feelings and violate my sense of justice and fairness. I would not abuse my love and loss by setting it against the measure of a malefactor’s punishment. Courts badly serve victims with by incorporating factually irrelevant material with the purpose of gratifying such feelings.
My solution: an offender who shouldn’t live within 300 yds. of a church, playground, or school should live in jail. California voters should let parole boards figure these things out .
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You’re suggesting I must deliver my opinion on a man who rapes a three-year-old on videotape with “wit” and “subtlety?”
Honey, nothing in your post comes close to expressing an opinion on a man who raped a 3 year old on video tape. We can guess that, and you don’t mention him till that very last sentence of your post. Go “good grief” yourself there, Charlie!
What your post does to is express nothing but hamhocked contempt for the California court and the suggestion that once someones times is served, making them into pariahs might not be the best idea for anyone.
And yet, this is going over your head. Because you are someone who has the gall to select out the most extreme and graphic case you can find, and then accuse others of pointing out exceptions!
Here’s what you can do.
You can express some relief that the Supreme Court has, in it’s good judgment, upheld the injunctions in the case of those who are not a threat to children and directed everyone else to seek their own injunctions from lower courts on a case by case basis (you know…legal recourse?, something YOU MIGHT WANT should you ever find yourself astride the law). You could acknowledge that some actual good governance has just occurred, rather than lubing up the old slope (thanks for that one Random)!
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Cameron, how could anyone allow the memory of their child to attach to the subject of a social pathology?
Never having experienced this, I can only guess that so they feel their child did not die in vain and so that others do not suffer a similar fate.
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Lynn #6, you don’t have to feel sorry for anyone except yourself.
Stiles is irrelevant. You want to kill him. The question is, what to do about the offenders you don’t want to kill, if any? Whatever you want to do, it can’t be arbitrary and unreasonable. Not because we feel sorry for offenders, but because we have pride in ourselves.
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Did Luke just call me “honey?”
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Luke=gay! He throws teh pet names around very loosely!
I wouldn’t take it personally, but are you going to make a substantive comment? Or do you have a really pressing deadline again?
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Uh-oh! It’s on Luke. You’ve been “served” by Lynn.
That’s it folks – this Saturday at the Orange County Civic Center it will be Lynn against Luke in a “serve off”.
Heh
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We are in a real Catch 22 with child sex offenders. There are many of them that are persistant, prolific and apear to be incorrigible. They shouldn’t be left free to do further harm, but we don’t seem to be able to deal with them without snaring a number of relatively harmless or hapless people who really aren’t much of a threat.
We are often both over-broad and under-inclusive, while being both excessively harsh and ludicrously lenient.
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I just returned home from the post office with a fistful of Louisiana election mailers, half of which have screaming headlines about sex offenders. Thanks, Lynn.
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Orange County?
Lynn definitely would have home court advantage!
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All you need to know about the liberals here is that they consider a toddler-rapist as morally superior to a conservative. Their moral landscape looks like a bad Dali painting.
Do Scroop Moth or Luke have kids? Ever been around kids? Or are their lives just spent gazing at their own navels (or at something further south)? Isn’t there a pro-child molesting site somewhere they’d be happier patronizing?
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David, we don’t need your kind of talk here.
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Who asked you, Hamachi? And anyway, who’s this “we”? Maybe what I said is too close to the truth for you?
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Luke and Scroop have a problem with Lynn’s view on this particular situation?
In # 6 she writes:
“You seem to be saying that to suggest that he (or any sex offender) has forfeited the right to live where he wants is somehow “primitive?” Let me show you how unsubtle and primitive I can be: This man Stiles, if guilty, doesn’t deserve to live at all.”
Or…I would suggest a life sentence of being repeatedly raped while living out his natural life in prison.
Does that offend too?
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David L. 86% of toddler-rapists are conservatives.
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Surely you meant to say that 86% of conservatives are toddler-rapists, Scroop. We feel the love.
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“Or…I would suggest a life sentence of being repeatedly raped while living out his natural life in prison.
Does that offend too?”
Are you kidding?
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Am I kidding?
No, Luke, I’m not. Are you?
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