Is this what legislators in Mississippi really intended?
By Sandy Rozek, Communications Director with NARSOL
First published at NARSOL.org
A young man in Mississippi was arrested on January 7, 2024, for statutory rape that he committed in 2018 when he was 13 years old.
The local media says that he is the youngest person on their local sex offense registry. Rozek questions why he has been placed on the registry when Mississippi statute states: “when the offender was eighteen years of age or younger at the time of the alleged offense, shall not be a registrable sex offense.”
Sandy is asking questions for which our society needs some answers. Read Sandy’s article here.
Constitutional Law on Ex Post Facto prevents convictions of crimes of old law prior to passage of a new law.
This does apply to sex and even murder crimes.
Also, if there was a state law that applied to his crime at his age then that sentence can not be increased by a new law.
Alabama done the same thing.
A boy had sex with another boy at age 12 both. It was a sleep over and the parents knew and encouraged the act. This was November 1998
At age 18 he was arrested under a new 2006 law.
He got sentenced to life. They used his current age and the age of the other boy when was 12 not 18.
Alabama refuses still to admit to what they did when painting an adult to child sex act. But was not charging the parents for using the boys as sex toys. Another side of this was that one of the parents was a school teacher and the other a cop.
Where did you find this case Rob?
@Robert Rex Edwards Can we acknowledge that weird stuff and sex play happens, particularly around this age? A wider age difference between the two, a forced act, or if they had been much younger would actually be alarming. I don’t know what trauma or “trauma” beget the other (if it was him) boy to bring up that incident, but $ound$ fi$hy.
The guy in Sandy’s news piece shouldn’t have been placed on the SOR for a two-year age gap. Counseling, yes. 11 and 13 are more obvious with two same-gendered children, but boys don’t mature as fast. I’d be more alarmed at an age reversal with an older girl. But still, no BS SOR.
Get it fixed and move to a friendlier state.
Of course, we shouldn’t be putting kids on the sex offender registry — at all, much less for life. This also applies to adults.