Weekly Updates

(Weekly Update #155) Dear Members and Advocates, For this week’s update we’re going to take a trip back in time. We make this trip because the Supreme Court of the State of South Carolina found that their registry, which requires registration for life without any judicial review, is unconstitutional. A huge win for the people in South Carolina but a

Weekly Update #152 Dear Members and Advocates, You know a scenario has played out far too often when a Federal Appellate Court decision begins with the words, “This is another of those cases…” Before a case gets to a Circuit Court of Appeals it had to have gone through the District Court, and according to Pew Research, 90% of federal

Weekly Update #151 Dear Members and Advocates, I felt nauseous the second I read the headline. “Florida sex offender tries to abduct 11-year-old girl at bus stop” was the title of the article in the NY Post. The story began, “An 11-year-old girl fought off a knife-wielding would-be kidnapper at her bus stop Tuesday morning… The 30-year-old unidentified sex offender

Weekly Update #150 Dear Members and Advocates, What makes school zones “safe” for children? Residency restrictions and proximity ordinances preventing persons required to register as sex offenders from living or even entering within thousands of feet of a school somehow create the illusion that once inside the exclusion zone, our children will be safe from sexual assault. Nothing can be

Weekly Update #148 Dear Members and Advocates, Senate Bill 234 has passed through the Florida Legislature and is now on its way to Governor DeSantis for signature. This Bill was the primary focus of our Legislative Committee this session and over the course of the last few months members have written emails, made calls, submitted speaker cards and even showed

Weekly Update #147 Dear Members and Advocates, Yesterday, a jury in Minneapolis, Minnesota found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd. It was the culmination of deliberation that lasted a couple of days, a trial that lasted a few weeks, and a prosecution that lasted almost a year. But for many out there who have been fighting

Weekly Update #145 Dear Members and Advocates, I’d like to think we accomplished something big last week. The language that we were so concerned about in Senator Book’s Bill, SB 234; “A day includes any part of a calendar day” might be gone! I say “might” because you never know what kind of shenanigans can happen before this Bill reaches

Weekly Update #143 Dear Members and Advocates, Yesterday, the Volusia County Sheriffs Office made a mistake. Instead of sending a text message alert (that a registrant had moved into the community) to only the people within 1000 feet of his new residence (as intended), they blasted it out to the whole county. Clearly it’s embarrassing for your immediate neighbors to

Weekly Update #142 Dear Members and Advocates, Today, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case having nothing to do with the sex offender registry, but that might have an impact on registrants and their families. The case is Caniglia v. Strom and it deals with warrantless searches of one’s home. Here’s what happened in Caniglia: One day Mr.

Weekly Update #141 Dear Members and Advocates, So much respect is deserved by Patty Wetterling. In 1989, Patty’s son Jacob was abducted and killed near their home in Minnesota. Three years after Jacob’s abduction, Minnesota enacted a registry in his memory and a couple years after that, the federal government did the same. In fact, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against