SexCrimeDefender

Adam Walsh Act in the Crossfire

In Maine the Adam Walsh Act is seen (from the defense perspective) as an improvement over the current state of affairs.  While it may be just as draconian in some respects, the AWA at least holds open the possibility, in theory, of an evaluation to see if a registrant is an ongoing risk and assess whether offenders should have to register.  There are other improvements over the current state of law here as well.

This New York Times article details a variety of challenges to the AWA from both the prosecution and defense perspective.  I have previously written of the defense challenges-particularly the Commerce Clause theories.  I was unaware that there was any pushback for such localized concerns as Alaska's where someone in the remote bush might have totravel by bushplane to register.  AWA does not create any allowances for this sort of problem.  At heart, I am an ardant federalist and state's rights kind of guy.  As a defense lawyer, however, I see the states' temptation to constantly ratchet up the severity of these laws as well as my clients' efforts to deal with the patchwork of state laws as they may happen to move around.  I have seen the AWA as a worthy attempt to balance the inevitability of a registration law with the need for consistency and fairness to offenders.  It would certainly be an improvement in my home jurisdiction.  Perhaps AWA needs a rewrite to allow a bit more state flexibility

Things NOT To Wear To Court

Occasionally some people so transcend cluelessness that it approaches the sublime.  The most common example I have seen is the Defendant charged with OUI (DWI) who wears a Budweiser t-shirt to court. Recently, though, I saw a Defendant charged with domestic violence assault wear a "Tapout" brand "wife-beater" style t-shirt.  For the uninitiated"Tapout" is a brand associated with Ultimate Fighting mixed martial arts.

Both of these examples pale in comparison to a recent faux pas by a client who was recently headed to court to plea and be sentenced for raping his two underage stepdaughters.  The client, an enormously obese man, with plenty of area for a billboard wore a t-shirt with a pirate motif of two phallicly positioned crossed cutlasses over the caption "Prepare to Be Boarded."  It was a classic moment.  The t-shirt got turned inside out!

What a difference some favorable facts make!

I was recently involved in a computer solicitation case in which my client was accused of enticing a "13 year old" (who in reality was a cop) to a location under one of our local bridges.  The investigation began when a 14 year old created a myspace page advertising himself as 22 and would have testified that he advertised himself as being as much as 31.  When the cop took over the chat he told my client that he was 13 to which my client said that he thought he was 21.  The cop responded "I lied."  The defense was that my client was simply showing upto see the actual age of the person before rejecting the encounter.

I liked this defense and while it may have been a bit "out there" thought we had decent oddsof success.  We elected to proceed jury waived.  On the day of trial we struck a deal which avoided both a felony conviction and registration as a sex offender.  The Bangor Daily article is here.

I was intrigued when just a few days later the same judge who reluctantly accepted the plea in my case sentenced a computer enticement case as follows:

Gordon D. Lovely was sentenced to five years in prison with all but one year suspended also was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years after his release . . ..

. . .

Lovely pleaded guilty Friday to one count of solicitation of a child by a computer, a Class C felony that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $5,000. In a plea agreement with prosecutors, the more serious Class B felony charge of attempted gross sexual assault was dismissed, Roberts said.

A tip to Bangor police that an 11-year-old-girl was being asked online to meet an adult male led investigators to Lovely....A Bangor police detective posing as the girl, according to Roberts, took over the online conversations with Lovely. When Lovely showed up late last year expecting to meet the girl, he was arrested.

PS: I get such a kick out of the way I get demonized in the "comment" sections.