Weekly Updates

(Weekly Update #169) Dear Members and Advocates, One of our members recently shared a quote with us that sends a powerful message to those forced to register:  An investigation in search of a crime.  For many people, there was initially a real crime that was committed; but after completing their sentence, they are now law-abiding citizens.  In fact, I know

(Weekly Update #166) Dear Members and Advocates, When I was indicted, I knew some people were never going to like me. Not so much that they wouldn’t like me, they just wouldn’t like what I had done, and as a result they would ostracize me or villainize me. As horrible as it feels to live life as “persona non grata”,

(Weekly Update #165) Dear Members and Advocates, The St Lucie County Sheriff’s Department and the US Marshals Service reported some great results from a two-week joint initiative dubbed “Operation Watchful Eye”… More than 97% of persons forced to register were found to be compliant and the few that were not, had benign technical violations! The results proved that “Watchful Eye”

(Weekly Update #163) Dear Members and Advocates, This week’s update is somewhat of a continuation of last week’s. Last week, I shared an important revelation; that Smith v. Doe DID NOT find that registration is not punishment. It only found that the pre-2003 version of Alaska’s registry was not punitive. Following up on that concept and in anticipation of our

(Weekly Update #162) Dear Members and Advocates, Even though I’ve been deeply involved in advocacy for nearly a decade, I continue to learn new things and see things from a different perspective from time to time. I once had one of these “ah ha” moments when I realized that I’m not really advocating for reform, but I’m advocating for abolition.

(Weekly Update #161) Dear Members and Advocates, Things have not slowed down AT ALL for FAC  this summer! We’ve had a lot of movement in both Ex Post Facto Plus challenges and we filed our Out of State Challenge. In EPF I, which is currently in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a reply brief was filed last week and

(Weekly Update #160) Dear Members and Advocates: This past weekend we celebrated Independence Day, commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States. The holiday celebrates this nation’s breaking free of the British on July 4, 1776, who they felt were oppressive and unjust. So what were some of these things the colonists were complaining about? Within the Declaration of

(Weekly Update #158) Dear Members and Advocates, Someone just posted something great on our website. He wrote, “well to show there may be hope, Bill Cosby just had his conviction overturned”. I don’t mean to imply this comment is great because of the overturned conviction. In fact, if someone was actually guilty and  evaded justice, the news is certainly not

(Weekly Update #157) Dear Members and Advocates, We’ve all heard the phrase “every parent’s worst nightmare” in the context of a sex offender. It usually conjures the image of an abduction and sexual assault or murder. But for every parent who happens to be required to register as a sex offender, our “parent’s worst nightmare” is that one day, some

(Weekly Update #156) Dear Members and Advocates, A couple of developments took place in both “Ex Post Facto Plus I” and “Ex Post Facto Plus II”  cases this past week. The government filed their responsive pleadings in both. In the case of EPF I, which is pending in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, the government filed their answer brief