Montana: Compensation for exonerated to include time wrongly placed on sex offender registry
The Montana legislature seems to agree that being on the sex offender registry is punishment, for which one incorrectly placed on it would receive compensation if exonerated.
House Bill 92, created a process through which the wrongfully convicted and imprisoned can get paid $60,000 a year for each year they spent in prison and $25,000 for each additional year on parole, probation, or as a registered sex offender.
While there are some issues with the bill, for example it would require anybody seeking compensation under HB92 to waive their rights to sue (when a lawsuit could probably net more than $25K/year), but at least one state is including being on a sex offender registry as tantamount to probation.
Slowly I see change. I thought the other day I felt like I just lived in probation. It is good for the state to recognize the resources they have to assign to the registry are similar to probation. There needs to be a light at the end, needs to be redemption somewhere. If it’s just darkness for life, that contributes to new offenses, new victims. Usually not sex related. This argument has been used for nearly every other offense, it’s time for justice to be blind and fair. Instead of blind to the injustices being done by the mob running roughshod over the law.
As this is a step to the good. Let’s look at where it goes two steps back. They will have a bigger incentive to not overturn verdicts. As we all know its not really about guilt or innocence its about how many convictions they can get. And how many and harsh they can make the sentence.
To bad ben franklin ain’t here he could repeat his famous words ” it is better 100 guilty persons should escape them that one innocent person should suffer.” Many have went with this line of thought the British jurist william blackstone said it as better 10 guilty go free then one innocent suffer. Also many religious leaders have expressed the same. Even voltaire when he said it is better to run the risk of sparring the guilty then to condem the innocent .Our laws are grounded in British common law. We were founded on christian princaples love and forgiveness .but we have become a nation of retribution your guilty until you can prove your innocent
Interestingly it was Otto von Bismarck who worried about making sure someone was punished even at the expense of the innocent when he turned it around to, that 10 innocent suffer then one guilty escape and is communist countrys like china , vietnam , and cambodia that use this same reasoning 🤔 all communist and non christian .
Sorry for the rant and the history lesson it just burns me up to see our great nation going towards more and more communist ways because of corrupt people who have corrupted the whole system , the media who hypes anything remotly bad to panic proportions no matter how small ,insignificant or who it harms, with no such fan fare or appology when they get it wrong or it turns out the person was innocent and the sheep who believe all the lies and innuendo
This is a step in the right direction. Kansas made an almost identical determination about 2 yrs. ago.
Being on a government sex offense blacklist is, indeed, probation.
1. One is forced to report at set intervals under penalty of felony prosecution
2. One is followed/checked up on at regular intervals by the police
3. One must report one’s travel
4. One is (often) banned from being in certain spaces
5. One must report life changes such as change of addess, change of vehicle, change of telephone number, and internet identifiers.
The founding fathers had one overarching purpose when drafting our constitution. This was to ensure LIBERTY FOR ALL.
I am under no sanction! (or am I??)
So they are compensating the individuals for time on a registry…. That sure sounds like they are compensating them for unjust punishment. Oh yes, there’s that word: punishment!
So this person gets recompense from being wrongly placed on the “regulatory” registry? This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that public disclosure is punitive/punishment along with emotional distress.
Maybe part of the reason some “authorities” don’t want to abolish the punitive registry is because they fear the potential million-plus lawsuits that would subsequently be filed by PFR’s claiming they were PUNISHED unlawfully.
I think Texas also has this in their exonerations as well. If not Texas, I know there’s at least one other state that does.