The punishments are getting out of hand!
The punishment for minor registration violations are out of hand. Case in point, this story out of West Virginia:
BUCKHANNON — The West Virginia State Police have made an arrest for a man failing to update his sex offender registry.
John Paul Shipman, 43, of Adrian, was arrested for failure to register as a sex offender — life registrant, a felony.
In September 2016, Trooper C.C. Mayle was conducting sex offender registry verifications and located Shipman’s residence on Millertown Road, according to the criminal complaint in the Upshur County Magistrate Clerk’s office.
Mayle observed a blue truck outside the residence and Shipman said it belonged to his girlfriend.
However, Shipman allegedly admitted that he had driven the vehicle to the end of the road to check mail and back to his residence. Mayle told Shipman this was in violation of his responsibilities as a registered sex offender and that the vehicle was supposed to be registered if he had access to it.
Mayle also told Shipman that he did not have a valid driver’s license and that he was not to be driving the vehicle, according to the complaint.
Shipman was convicted of a sexual offense in June 1995 which required him to register as a sex offender for life, according to the criminal complaint. Magistrate Mike Coffman set bond at $75,000.
If convicted, Shipman faces imprisonment in a state correctional facility for one to five years.
They just increased the federal penalty to ten years. I’m not even sure it passed. The resentecing punitive laws change so often lawyers can’t keep track let alone normal people.
Imagine being resentced for ten years for failure to register on a misdemeanor originally that you could only max out at 90 days or two years? Two decades later…. Nah that’s not punitive or illegal because it’s strictly regulatory.
Where do you see they increased the federal penalty to 10 years?
Child safety act. Increased penalty for failure to register and increased penalties if it’s a repeat offense.
https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/328188-strengthening-childrens-safety-act-closes-loopholes-in-existing
Pretty sure that hasn’t passed already. Still, it doesn’t matter. If you ask me, a felony charge and prison time for failure to register proves that the system is punitive in nature and therefore unconstitutional.
Getting; already been out of hand….. others are just figuring out.
No wonder violent crime is out of control. Law enforcement is too busy chasing down the ‘easy targets’. Why risk one’s life when you can make an arrest for someone not updating an address or drivers license and then go home feeling as though the public has been served?
My friend got 5 years probation for failure to register an internet identifier…his crime was 24 years ago long before these laws and was non violent. 22 year later he registered his identifiers,but forgot 1 website..listed his identifer just forgot to say what website it was to. He never had any other sex offense crimes in 24 years. He got 5 yrs probabtion. He would have never accepted the negotiated plea 24 yrs ago if he had known there was going to be a life registry
have him contact legal@floridaactioncommittee.org
“..listed his identifer just forgot to say what website it was to.”
I find this particularly interesting, since the FDLE site where you register your internet identifiers has done away with the field to say at which site the identifier you are registering is being used.
The last identifier I registered shows “unknown” under the provider field, simply because there is no place for me to fill in that blank anymore.