SEX OFFENDER HERALD EXAMINER! Universal Registration
We need all criminals to be registered and posted on the net.
By the time a person is classified by the courts as a repeat felony offender, he has proven himself
to be actuated by a disposition to crime so powerful that our laws and penalties have proven
ineffective in deterring him from pursuing a course of action that would justify his classification
as a predator of sorts. Crime statistics, rates of recidivism, and the increase in desperation shown
by repeat criminals in taking measures to avoid detection and capture for their crimes has
obligated our legislature to create a law designed specifically to deal with this category of
criminal. The law is known metaphorically as ‘three strikes’ but in reality it should be called ‘two
strikes and a foul.’ Today our courts sent a man to prison for 26 years to life for stealing some
“ice cream and twenty dollars.” If you find this sentence disturbing in proportion to the offense,
congratulations, you have a heart, but we must not lose sight of the criminal and his criminal
history when analyzing degrees of culpability.
It is standard to give more weight to ‘theories’ of ‘escalation’ when formulating sentences.
Property crimes such as burglary are often the precursor of more serious crimes such as assault
with a deadly weapon and murder. In his article ‘Three Strikes Was the Right Call’ criminologist
John DiIulio offers Statistics from NJ suggesting that the "typical prisoner” has had 9 arrests, and
6 convictions, he has committed over a dozen serious crimes (excluding all drug crimes) in the
year prior to his incarceration, and has about a 50-50 chance of victimizing again after his release,
also he is “most likely to victimize poor and minority citizens." Dilulio adds also "Within three
years of their release, persons convicted of property crimes are about as likely to commit a violent
crime as persons convicted of violent crimes in the first place."
I propose an amendment to this law that I believe would prove advantageous to public safety as
well as cure the evil of unequal treatment before the law suffered by registered sex offenders who
at present are the only offenders subjected to the indignity of having their picture and addresses
published on the internet. That is all criminals should have their crime and pictures posted on the
inter-net, misdemeanor or felony, violent or not.
For sex offenders there is no similar theory of escalation in severity as in the case of property
crimes to violence. Those who commit the most minor register-able “sex offenses” are not
commonly found to go on to commit those of a more serious nature. Without drawing too great a
parallel between the offense of “indecent exposure” 314.1 and that of 647(a) I will conceded for
the sake of argument that some members of society find lewd conduct "offending and annoying"
but point out that unlike indecent exposure it seems unlikely that the reaction sought or even the
reaction provoked by lewd conduct is that of "fear and shock" as has been suggested by
researchers quoted below. Lewd conduct is more akin to that conduct performed on stage by
exotic dancers and strip tease artists, and the reaction sought is accordingly similar even if it isn’t
performed under traditional circumstances. In my case the conduct was performed for the sake of
capturing photographs, the element of being public was in accordance with those factors that
separate that which is done in secret with a sense of shame and that which is done in public with
no shame. Although I have never committed the so called crime of “indecent exposure,” I find the
history of this “offense” in the legislatures and the penal systems illustrative of the baseless
notions that law enforcement assign to sex offenders and their personalities under the beguiling
rhetoric of public safety; namely that those initially convicted are best assumed to have been
rapists or pedophiles discovered while in their fledgling stage of development.
By 1847 the punishment in California for the crime of ‘indecent exposure’ was not more than "40
shillings or jail sentence of not more than 14 days." The same as it was in England. In 1952 the
penalty for a second offense became "indeterminate prison time" and the states attorney general
argued in defense of this sentence on the grounds that "in quite a number of such offenders the
exhibitionism is only a facet of sexual problems which may manifest themselves in more
aggressive acts." While this statement at first blush may sound plausible, it was authoritatively
debunct by the California Supreme court in the case of In re Lynch (1972) 8 Cal.3d 410, which
concluded that the argument was based upon nothing more than "mere fantasy." Citing clinical
studies that concluded emphatically that such occurrences were at best anecdotal “…strongly
atypical and rare occurrences…” and that the suggested “escalations” were not borne out in their
follow-up studies. “The exhibitionist who commits a further offense is much more likely to repeat
the same offence than any other kind..." (Gigeroff) “It is a widely held misconception, the belief
that sex offenders regularly progress from minor offenses such as exhibitionism to major offenses
like forced rape; such a gradation is almost unknown." (Guttmacher and Weihofen) "It should be
stated explicitly that persons convicted of serious sex crimes do not commonly begin with
voyeurism and exhibitionism and work up to crimes of violence and murder." (Bowman)
After thoroughly debunking what according to the states attorney general passed for sound
criminological underpinnings behind the drastically enhanced statutory penalties by 1972, the
court listed various crimes for which the penalty was potentially less than that for a second
offense indecent exposure. They included Assault with intent to commit rape or sodomy, forcible
abduction for purposes of defilement, or a second offense of a felony committed while armed
with a deadly weapon, "Grand theft," "forgery," "embezzlement," and bribery of an executive
officer, a judge, or a juror. They then looked at statutes designed to protect children, noting that
the indecent exposure statute is "often defended on that ground." The list of crimes whose
punishments were potentially less sever than second offense indecent exposure included the crime
of "inflicting unjustifiable physical pain on a child "under conditions likely to produce great
bodily harm or death," and "inflicting on a child any cruel or inhuman corporal punishment or
injury resulting in a traumatic condition." They concluded: "If a major purpose of section 314 is
to guard children against assaults upon their sensibilities, what possible justification is there for
the great disparity between petitioner's punishment and the simple misdemeanor penalties
attached by Penal Code section 273g to the conduct of one who "in the presence of a child
indulges in any degrading, lewd, immoral or vicious habits or practices."
The sentence in the Lynch case should not be viewed as light simply because he was sentenced
for an indeterminate time and thus could have been released at any time at the discretion of the
Adult Authority. Nor is this a case in which the character of the man is likely to have played a
role in his treatment by the state. The underlying conduct itself appears to have been a case of a
man masturbating in his vehicle while viewing a "pin up magazine." Circumstances argue that his
conduct was deliberately indiscrete, but nothing more. After the verdict and sentence the trial
judge was moved to remark "Mr. Lynch, before you leave, let me say to you in utmost sincerity,
it has been my impression from the very outset of this case that you are a man of great potential.
You are a person of unusual appearance, you make a very pleasant appearance, you obviously
have the capacity to get along well with people, you are obviously a person of superior intellect."
Ironically the Adult Authority, assumed to be the experts for whose discretion the indeterminate
sentence was designed for, after five years hellish years still could not perceive any of that
potential for rehabilitation implicit in the flattering comments of the judge after trial. The Lynch
court pointed out that John Lynch was denied parole four times, three and a half of those five
years in the maximum-security confines of Folsom prison, and never had his sentence fixed at
anything less than life maximum. This is an example of the hideous unfair treatment of so called
“registered sex offenders.” Go to cmybuttjudge.angelfire.com endorse universal registration.