Legal News

Halloween & the Law, Part Deux: Targeting Sexual Offenders

By Dan Slater

(AP Photo/Tom Stromme)

Earlier this week, a federal court temporarily struck down two provisions of a Missouri law that banned, among other things, sexual offenders from having “Halloween-related contact” with children. Now Maryland is backing off a similar plan that would’ve required convicted sex offenders to hang orange pumpkin signs on their doors on Halloween reading, “No candy at this residence.”

The sign, according to the Washington Times, was sent to the state’s 1,200 violent and child sex offenders earlier this month along with instructions that they must post them on their front doors Halloween night.

The plan became fodder for TV comics after details of the plan were reported earlier this month. “Sex offenders in Maryland are now required to post signs that read, ‘No candy at this residence,’ on Halloween or face a possible parole violation,” Seth Meyers deadpanned on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” “They are also being required to take down the signs that read, ‘Knock if you can keep a special secret.’”

Maryland parole agents told the Washington Times that they were ordered this week to replace the pumpkin signs with pumpkin-free signs that bear the same message. However, a state official said Wednesday that the new signs are only an “option” for agents to give to sex offenders who might not want to display a pumpkin.

“I don’t see it as an admission that the signs don’t work, or the signs aren’t good,” said Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Binetti said he saw the “Saturday Night Live” skit but that the national ribbing hadn’t driven the department’s decision to veer away from the pumpkin signs.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).