Thirty-five states and counting will not have to take down sex offenders' photographs and other personal information from the Internet, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled March 5 in a decision supporters say may encourage more states to do likewise.
Though some suggested these listings - derived from New Jersey's landmark Megan's Law - were likeable to colonial shaming laws, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that these were nothing of the sort. "The publicity may cause adverse consequences for the convicted defendants, running from mild personal embarrassment to social ostracism," Kennedy wrote for the 6-3 majority, but the laws are aimed at "inform(ing) the public for its own safety, not to humiliate the defender."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, however, wrote that they resemble "shaming punishments once used to mark an offender as someone to be shunned," in a dissent joined by Justice Stephen Breyer. Justice John Paul Stevens, the third dissenter, wrote that sex offenders have lost jobs, homes, and incurred threats once they were listed on these Web pages. He also wrote that these listings in effect punish "wrongly" those who served time for sex crimes before the Alaska law which provoked the Court ruling was passed.
"Every state has a version of Megan's Law covering ordinary published registries," Kennedy wrote. "By contrast, the stigma of Alaska's Megan's Law results not from public display for ridicule and shaming, but from the dissemination of accurate information about a criminal record, most of which is already public. Our system does not treat dissemination of truthful information in furtherance of a legitimate governmental objective as punishment…The Internet makes the document search more efficient, cost effective and convenient for Alaska's citizenry."
The ruling wasn't well received by the Hartford Courant, Connecticut's largest daily newspaper. "Connecticut's Internet sex offender registry, off line for two years pending legal challenges, apparently will soon be back in business thanks to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. That's too bad, because although this law is intended to protect the public from predators, it is flawed and has the potential to ruin lives," the newspaper's lead editorial said March 6.
The editorial agreed with Ginsburg and Breyer that, concerning sex offenders who did their time before Alaska's law passed, it "amounts to lifetime punishment." But the editors went further, saying the law hits more than just the sex offenders who've done their time - it can actually help punish the victims of child sex abuse themselves.
"For example, one Connecticut father thought he had put his regrettable past behind him. Years ago, he molested his young daughter. The family stayed together, and he has been in counseling ever since," the editorial continued. "Yet when his picture appeared on the Internet registry, his child was readily identified, singled out for ridicule, shunned by schoolmates and excluded from community activities."
The ruling has at least one state making moves to expand its sex offender notification program, including its over eight thousand exempt offenders. Arizona state Sen. Dean Martin told the Arizona Republic he wants to talk to other lawmakers to expand the program, even if the big obstruction might be finding more money to pay for any expansion.
"This would be definitely at the top of my list of budgetary needs," he told the newspaper. Martin sponsors a bill to extend the notification mandate to college campuses, the Republic says, a bill that's passed the state Senate and is set for a March 6 hearing in the state House Judiciary Committee.
"We have a system now that's working, and everybody knows how to use it," Martin told the paper. "We just expanded it to include campuses."
Arizona's online sex offender registry is reported to get at least thirty thousand visits a month.
