U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin has ruled that 4,400 convicted sex offenders should be dropped from the Megan's Law list and left free to live wherever they want without their addresses being made available to the public."The judiciary has a long history of substituting its judgment for that of the Legislature who are elected by the public," said New York City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens). "For the safety of the public this decision must be appealed."
Chin was appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1994.
2 comments:
Why is it that we feel it is reasonable to publicly track sex offenders but we do not feel it is reasonable to track, say, convicted burglars, arsonists, or murderers? Why are their names not put on public web sites? It's not that this is a puritanical country uptight about sex or anything is it?
Murderers are usually put away for quite a while. Same with arsonists.
As for burglars, one of my lawyer friends asked me yesterday why we shouldn't have a registry for burglars. His kids are all grown and for him in his neighborhood burglars are a significant risk. I replied that I didn't see any reason why we couldn't have a registry for convicted burglars but the Dems would never go for it.
As for sexual predators, they have an extremely high recidivism rate and the harm to children is so great that extreme measures are warranted. My view is that upon conviction, sentences should be very long - up to life - because of the lifetime harm suffered by child victims of sexual abuse.
I guess I don't have much sympathy for convicted criminals. With the current court system's revolving door justice and plea bargaining, they have to be really bad to find themselves convicted of a serious crime. Usually they are serial criminals with long records already. So tell me why they should have my sympathy?
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