Sex Offender Can Sue Town Over Residency Ban

7-23-2014 Texas:

A Texas man can sue a Dallas-area suburb over the constitutionality of its ban on registered sex offenders living within 1,500 of children, the 5th Circuit ruled.

Registered child sex offender Aurelio Duarte and his family sued Lewisville, Texas, after he tried and failed to find a house to rent or buy in the city that complied with the ordinance. He had earlier served eight years in state prison after a conviction of online solicitation of a minor.

Duarte returned to Lewisville upon his release in 2009 and learned of the ordinance enacted one year earlier that bans registered child sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of "where children commonly gather."

The family currently lives in a one-bedroom motel room to comply with the ordinance.

The trial court later dismissed they family's constitutional claims, concluding they lacked standing.

A three-judge panel with the 5th Circuit disagreed, unanimously reversing and remanding the ruling Tuesday.

Writing for the panel, Judge Edward C. Prado said Duarte and his family have standing because they had "concrete" plans to live in Lewisville as opposed to indefinite plans.

Sex offender disputes claim he moved

We wonder, as to the vehicle address, under Pennsylvania DMV code, is anyone who fails to change addresses -on vehicle registrations- likewise prosecuted? Or whether vehicles towed or otherwise impounded are checked and prosecuted likewise if addresses are different between licensed owners and registered vehicle addresses. In addition, does MV code charge a felony for incorrect motor vehicle addresses?

1-8-2014 Pennsylvania:

WILKES-BARRE — Police say convicted sex offender Cyrus Spencer moved without informing authorities, as required under Megan’s Law, and that he admitted as much to officers.

Spencer’s response? Prove it.

Defense attorney Allyson Kacmarski has filed a motion on Spencer’s behalf in Luzerne County Court, seeking a hearing in connection with the allegations against her client, arguing the prosecution does not have enough evidence to prove its case.

Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Vough on Monday scheduled the hearing to take place at 2 p.m. Feb. 7.

According to an affidavit filed by state police, Newport Township Police Chief Jeremy Blank told Trooper Martin Connors that on Jan. 4, 2013, he went to a home on Miner Avenue, Wanamie, in connection with an unrelated incident.

While there, Blank told Connors, he encountered Spencer, who told the chief he was living at the address, according to the affidavit. A records check revealed that Spencer was a Megan’s Law offender listed as living on Essex Lane in Wilkes-Barre.

In March 2000, a Luzerne County jury Wednesday found Spencer, then of Hunlock Township, guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. The following month, county Judge Mark Ciavarella sentenced Spencer to a state prison term of six to 12 years.

State records show that Spencer, 48, is a Tier 3 offender and must register for life. State police must be notified of any change of address within three days.

Newport police said they returned to the Miner Avenue residence the following week and took statements from Spencer and his girlfriend indicating that they had moved into the apartment on Jan. 1, 2013. Police said they also obtained a written statement from the landlord — the girlfriend’s father — who said the couple moved in on Jan. 1.

On Jan. 18, 2013, Spencer’s girlfriend was cited with a traffic violation while driving his car, which was then towed, police said. Spencer called Blank a short time later to ask where the vehicle was, and the chief told him “he could be towed for numerous violations including failure to change his address and his motor vehicle registration,” the affidavit says.

Later that day, according to police, Spencer arrived at the police station to drop off a change of address form for his license and vehicle registration, which indicated he had moved on Jan. 1.

Spencer is facing two counts of failure to address/be photographed, a felony.

According to the motion filed by Kacmarski, the defense does not believe the prosecution can establish a case. ..Source.. by Roger DuPuis

Serial rapist Kevin Coe demands he be freed

Civil Commitment

12-30-2013 Washington:

Locked up in McNeil Island sex predator center, ‘South Hill Rapist’ sues state

Notorious Spokane serial rapist Kevin Coe is attempting to sue his way out of a state center for sexual predators.

Acting as his own attorney, Coe, better known as the “South Hill Rapist” filed the lawsuit earlier this month in U.S. District Court. In it, he contends he doesn’t belong at the Special Commitment Center, a McNeil Island facility housing sex criminals who’ve completed their prison terms but are deemed likely to attack again due to mental illness.

Coe, a radio announcer turned serial rapist, was arrested in 1981 and ultimately convicted in three rapes in the Spokane area. He is widely believed to have attacked as many as 32 other women during the late 1970s through the early 1980s, when multiple rapes were committed against women walking alone at night.

Having served a 25-year sentence, Coe was scheduled for release when the state moved to commit him as a sexually violent predator. A jury agreed in 2008 and ordered Coe detained indefinitely.

Under Washington law, county prosecutors or the state Attorney General’s Office may file civil lawsuits asking that convicted sex offenders be confined indefinitely at a Department of Social and Health Services facility, the Special Commitment Center.

To prevail, prosecutors must show that an offender is likely to sexually assault again, and that the offender has a mental abnormality making him so. If a jury or judge agrees with prosecutors, an offender can be sent to the McNeil Island center.

The Special Commitment Center is home to about 300 men being held indefinitely. While several offenders have "graduated" from the program and more than a dozen others are living off the island, most remain at the facility. They make up about 1 percent of the sex offenders convicted in Washington courts.

Coe appealed the 2008 detention order. In 2012, the state Supreme Court found against him and upheld the jury verdict.

Now, Coe contends he should have been allowed during the 2008 trial to again interview the women he raped. The rapist was silent on what purpose such testimony would have served, though he contended the court’s failure to allow him to do so violated his rights.

“This case is a fiasco of justice,” Coe said in the lawsuit. “And when justice has not been occasioned in the trial court – or in the state review courts – the unjustice must be remedied upon federal review.”

Coe also contended that he does not have a “mental abnormality or personality disorder,” as the jury found, and that a recent revision to a widely circulated psychiatric guide removed rape from the list of behaviors of caused by mental illnesses. He faulted his attorney for not asking the court to define “personality disorder” for the jury.

The state has not yet responded to Coe’s lawsuit. He remains confined at the McNeil Island center. ..Source.. by Levi Pulkkinen

Mistaken ID as 'sex offender' brings lawsuit

Andrew died before lawsuit was settled. See second story below.

12-27-2013 Florida:

Andrew Flaherty was divorced, alone, legally blind. By the end of 2011, he left his Louisiana home and let his brother drive him to Jacksonville.

He hoped he could spend time with his brother’s family. Meet a few people and go fishing. Have a chance at living among people he could trust.

Nearly 11 months later, on Halloween 2012, he went to a Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles office on Blanding Boulevard and asked for a state ID card.

The clerk faced a screen of yes-no options:

Organ Donor. Insulin Dependent. Florida Resident. Sexual Predator. Career Offender. Sexual Offender.

Yes, Flaherty is insulin dependent; it was the diabetes that blurred his eyesight, forcing him to forfeit a driver’s license. Yes, he’s now a Florida resident. And then, by some twisted, warped luck, the clerk said that yes, Andrew Stokes Flaherty was a sexual offender. Except that he wasn’t.

When it comes down to it, Andrew Flaherty is suing the Duval County Tax Collector’s Office because of seven numbers and what those numbers represent.

He's Not a Sex Offender, Married Man Says

12-24-2013 California:

A man required to register as a sex offender for life for having consensual relations with his now-wife 24 years ago - when he was 19 and she was 17 - asked a state court to remove that obligation so he can get on with his life.

In 1989, police busted Lonny Leon Rivera, then 19, for having "consensual, voluntary relations" with his 17-year-old girlfriend. He pleaded guilty to a single count of oral copulation with a minor. That charge requires mandatory, lifetime registration as a sex offender in the state of California, according to Rivera's lawsuit in Tulare County Court.

Rivera and his girlfriend remained together and are now married.

Rivera registered, but acknowledges that he failed to update his information annually from 1991 through 2011. In 2012, California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a criminal complaint for failure to register as a sex offender. Rivera was arraigned in October.

In his petition for writ of mandate, Rivera claims that the state's demand is unconstitutional.

"Rivera's inclusion in the sex offender registry under the mandatory provisions of the California Sex Offender Registration Act violates his right to equal protection of the laws, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 7 of the California Constitution," Rivera says in the petition, citing a 2006 ruling by the California Supreme Court in People v. Hofsheier.