May, 2006 News
Sex offenders sue for playground access
The Associated Press
31 May 2006 5:36 pm
Six sex offenders sued Indianapolis Wednesday to block a new ordinance that bars them from venturing within 1,000 feet of parks, pools and playgrounds when children are present.
The plaintiffs went to federal court to argue that the law is unconstitutionally vague, violates their rights to vote and attend church, and prevents them from freely traveling on roads that may pass within 1,000 feet of the affected sites.
The ordinance was approved May 15 and took effect immediately. It carries fines of up to $2,500.
Tenley Drescher, an attorney for the city, said officials planned to defend the ordinance. "The important part is protecting kids," she said.
Judge in short sentence flap targeted
The Associated Press
31 May 2006 2:12 pm
A petition drive is calling for the resignation of the judge who sentenced a sex offender to probation instead of prison in part because of his short stature.
The petition drive is being conducted by Tiffany Jones, a resident of the county seat of Sidney, who said she already had about 200 signatures.
A friend and colleague of the judge, Bernie Glaser of Lincoln, Nebraska, said Cecava's ruling has been misunderstood.
He said the prosecutor didn't ask for prison time, and the judge took other factors into account when deciding that prison wasn't right for Thompson including his mental capabilities and information contained in a pre-sentence report that is not public.
"I truly hope that my bet on you being OK out in society isn't misplaced," Cecava said at the sentencing hearing. "It's very hard to keep you in society when I know the risk is another child getting hurt."
District judges in Nebraska are appointed but face retention elections that determine if they will remain in office. Cecava's next retention vote is in 2008. In the 2002 election, 74 percent of the voters said she should remain on the bench.
Declaration of innocence, persecution falls on deaf ears
31 May 2006 12:00 am
As a 39-year-old Southwest Portland man made an impassioned proclamation of innocence at his sentencing, a Washington County judge rolled her eyes.
"I heard all the evidence in the case," Circuit Judge Gayle A. Nachtigal told Hugo Garcia Alvarado on Friday. "I didn't believe you then, and I don't believe you now."
Nachtigal found Garcia guilty of two counts of first-degree sexual abuse and one count of second-degree kidnapping in April for sexually assaulting a 21-year-old Aloha woman in his van after offering her a ride from a Beaverton restaurant.
But when it came time to sentence him for the Aug. 5 crimes, Nachtigal on Friday handed down the least she could under Oregon's Measure 11 rules.
Nachtigal sentenced Garcia to 71/2 years in prison and ordered him to register as a sex offender. He faced more than 12 years had the terms run consecutively.
Garcia is expected to be deported after finishing his sentence.
Jeff Lesowski, senior deputy district attorney, said Garcia was arrested in Los Angeles in 1995 for trying to lure an 11-year-old girl into his car. The case was dropped when the victim could not be tracked down.
A 16-year-old Merlo Station High School student testified that Garcia tried to pull her into his van after asking her personal questions as she walked to the Tigard transit center in October. She got away and ran for help.
"It stretches the imagination that so many girls out of the blue would choose you to pick on," Nachtigal said Friday.
The woman Garcia met at the Beaverton restaurant testified that he was persistent, but she turned down his offer of a ride. After walking partway to a MAX station, she decided it was too hot for her 6-month-old baby and called Garcia to pick her up.
"No means no," she said Friday. "I'm very depressed about the situation."
Unspoken Injustice: Your Neighbor The Sex Offender
Stephen Webster
29 May 2006 12:00 am
Part one in a series.
Over the next several weeks, LSI will be running a series of investigative reports detailing the widespread leniency being dolled out to sex criminals, and the cycle of abuse that turns their victims into tomorrow’s offenders. There are several judges in Denton County who have records of giving these criminals probation, even after repeat offenses and multiple convictions. Furthermore, during our own research we noticed that dockets detailing the trials of several area sex criminals have simply vanished from the court’s archives.
The goal of this series of reports is to break our community’s silence on this unspoken injustice. We will be joining with Building B.L.O.C.K. to raise awareness of this important topic, and we encourage our readers to write in and get involved with this cumulative effort to shine a light on a most painful topic.
Also archived at:
Unspoken Injustice; breaking the silence, cycle of abuse
Stephen Webster
26 May 2006 12:00 am
Part two in a series.
Christopher Largen's experiences are what lead him to found Building Block, a national activist group that helps survivors of childhood sexual assault break their silence and confront their inner demons. "Breaking the silence about your victimization is step one. There can be no healing unless you do that," claimed Largen. "I should know."
Also archived at:
Court limits TV-sex-sting charges
Howard Fischer
25 May 2006 12:00 am
Reporters pretending to be teens on the Internet to lure adults may be great television. But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Wednesday it isn't enough to get their targets arrested.
In a unanimous decision, the justices concluded people lured to meet with what they think are teen girls can't be charged if it turns out the person doing the luring is not a minor, but in fact a TV reporter or any other adult, for that matter. The court concluded charging someone with seeking out a minor for sexual purposes, by definition, requires an actual minor.
The only exception, they said, is if the person doing the luring is a police officer.
Judge rules sex offender is too short for prison
Associated Press
25 May 2006 5:14 am
A judge said a 5-foot-1 man convicted of sexually assaulting a child was too small to survive in prison, and gave him 10 years of probation instead.
Police: Sex assault suspect shoots family, self
Associated Press
25 May 2006 12:18 pm
A man standing trial on sexual assault charges apparently killed his wife, their two children and himself hours before he was to testify Thursday, authorities said.
The bodies of Scott McCarter, 40, his wife, Wendy, 35, their 12-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter were discovered by a friend who went to check on McCarter when he didn’t appear in court Thursday morning.
McCarter was accused of molesting two teenage girls between 2001 and 2004. He had denied the charges, telling investigators in a tape-recorded interview played in court Wednesday that he offered the girls advice on hygiene and sexual matters and that any physical contact he had with them was accidental.
“This is a tragedy to the entire family,” said Jeffrey Hark, McCarter’s lawyer in the case. “It’s a tragedy all the way around. It’s a very hard day. My family extends our heartfelt condolences to everybody involved.”
Judicial Misconduct Leads To Woman Being Set On Fire
CNN
25 May 2006 9:14 am
Video News Link
Mother Jailed Because Daughter Skips School
CNN
25 May 2006 9:11 am
Video News Link
Teacher accused of arriving at school drunk
Associated Press
24 May 2006 3:46 am
After arriving at school Monday morning, police said Sterling Johnson asked a student to retrieve a bag containing a bottle of cognac from his car. Police then said Johnson rubbed the buttocks and thigh of a 13-year-old girl and directed a sexual remark at another 13-year-old girl.
The principal ordered the teacher, who has been teaching for 22 years, to leave after becoming aware of his behavior, police said. Johnson complied but returned a short time later and was arrested. A hidden bottle of liquor was found in Johnson's classroom.
Johnson was charged with misdemeanor assault and a misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace.
Sex offender arrested outside school
24 May 2006 12:00 am
A convicted sex offender now faces felony charges after being found on the grounds of a South Side school with a gun in his waistband and his hand down his unzipped pants, according to police.
Leon Patton, 57, of the 7200 block of South Langley, was arrested as classes were being let out on Tuesday after a school security guard found him on the grounds of Susan B. Anthony School (for grades 4-8), 9800 S. Torrence Ave., according to police News Affairs Officer JoAnn Taylor.
The guard called police, who arrested Patton on an outstanding warrant for failing to register his change of address as a sex offender, police said.
The State Police Sex Offender Registration shows Patton has a previous Cook County conviction for the rape of a victim under age 18.
Justice is ill-served by tunnel-vision policies
23 May 2006 12:00 am
There is one thing that America does better than anyone else: lock ’em up and throw away the key. We do it better than anyone else in the First World, or the Second. We do it better than Third World dictators, police states, theocracies and garrison states.
We have been at this for decades. Americans are now the most imprisoned people on the planet. The pace is picking up. And we seem to have no other main-line defense in prospect.
That burdens supporters of the lock-’em-up ideology with the duty of answering a few questions. Is this what we’re supposed to regard as success? Have we taken back the streets? Won the war on drugs? Made our homes safe from invasion and our families safe from deranged people and drug-crazed brutes?
Maybe this is the best we can do, and we should tone down the extravagant predictions and trudge onward. But even if there’s no alternative, nothing that would do away with the need for prisons, there are other approaches to lawmaking and sentencing. Wouldn’t it make sense, for the sake of public safety and government economy, to explore those with the same kind of vigor we display in cheering the latest conviction and mandatory prison sentence? Someone should at least come forward and explain what’s wrong with both/and.
Security gaps at county jail go unfilled
JOSEPH ROSE
23 May 2006 12:00 am
Nearly a year ago, Multnomah County jail officials released a man booked on trespassing accusations without knowing he was wanted for murder in Spokane.
That same month, they put an extremely violent convicted murderer in a cell with a man who had turned himself in on drug charges, only to find the man savagely beaten the next morning. He died two weeks later.
And in January, jail officials released another man booked on trespassing without knowing that he had a violent criminal record in another state. Two days later, he was back in jail, this time accused of slashing a man's throat in front of a popular downtown Portland restaurant.
A judicial advisory committee is reviewing the background-check process. But any change, said Multnomah County Circuit Judge Julie Frantz, probably will be small.
Requiring national checks on every prisoner would paralyze a local justice system that already is limping, said Frantz, who is on the advisory committee.
"Officers would get backed up at the door with new arrestees," Frantz said, "taking them off the street and reducing their availability to respond to criminal activity. In many ways, it creates a greater danger."
Police offer reward for finding sex offender
Associated Press
23 May 2006 1:39 pm
In 1998, Anthony Wayne Johnson was convicted of one count of kidnapping and one count of attempted rape.
He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. He was released in February 2005. A condition of Johnson's post prison supervision requires him to live at the Washington County Community Corrections Center in Hillsboro.
Johnson checked out of the center the morning of May 19th -- and has not returned.
Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to one-thousand dollars for information that leads to an arrest in this case.
1 in 136 U.S. Residents Behind Bars
ELIZABETH WHITE
21 May 2006 6:33 pm
Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.
Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which supports alternatives to prison, said the incarceration rates for blacks were troubling.
"It's not a sign of a healthy community when we've come to use incarceration at such rates," he said.
Mauer also criticized sentencing guidelines, which he said remove judges' discretion, and said arrests for drug and parole violations swell prisons.
"If we want to see the prison population reduced, we need a much more comprehensive approach to sentencing and drug policy," he said.
Mountain States Imprisoning More Women
David Crary
21 May 2006 6:58 am
Oklahoma, Mississippi and the Mountain states have set the pace in increasing the imprisonment of women, while several Northeastern states are curtailing the practice, according to a new report detailing sharp regional differences in the handling of female offenders.
The report concurred with previous analyses attributing much of the nationwide increase in women's imprisonment to the war on drugs. The proportion of women serving time for drug offenses has risen sharply in recent years, while the proportion convicted of serious violent crimes has dropped, it said.
