Legal News

Cal Supremes deny challenges to 'Jessica's Law'

By Richard Binder

Today a split California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 83, or "Jessica's Law," turning back constitutional challenges to the measure from four ex-convicts who argued that the law's provisions are "not rationally related to the harm voters were trying to prevent."

The 2006 ballot initiative requires any person registering as a sex offender "to reside within 2,000 feet of any public or private schools, or park where children regularly gather."

Each of the four offenders before the Supreme Court was convicted of crimes requiring lifetime registration well before the proposition's passage. They maintained it was impermissibly applied to them retroactively, in violation of the state Penal Code, because it attaches new legal consequences to convictions prior to the law's passage.

But the court decided it made no difference that their convictions preceded the law. Justice Marvin R. Baxter, writing the majority opinion, said that since a sex offender is already subject to the lifetime registration requirement of the Penal Code,"that status, together with his act of moving into noncompliant housing upon his release from custody on parole after the effective date of Proposition 83, subjects him to the residency restrictions."

Full story at The Sacramento Bee.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on February 01, 2010 (boomark / email).