Senate Panel Ready To Pass Sex Offender Registration Bill, With Minor Adjustments

Legislation making the names of convicted sex offenders widely available to the public needs some minor amendments, but it should go forward, a legislative committee decided Monday.

“All of the things that we were concerned about last year have been addressed in this,” said Sen. Sheila Sorensen, R-Boise.

Mike Schwarzkopf of the Idaho American Civil Liberties Union warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that several sections of the measure law are unconstitutional.

He pointed to three problems:

The bill conflicts with constitutional guarantees against “ex post facto” punishment. That’s because it would add an extra punishment for people who were convicted years before the law would go into effect. That problem could be avoided with a simple amendment applying the law to convictions after this year, Schwarzkopf said.

The list of crimes that would land people on the list of sex offenders includes statutory rape, the “infamous crime against nature” sodomy law, and possession of child pornography. Schwarzkopf said those offenses don’t indicate a likelihood of reoffense or danger to the community. The first two can be used to prosecute consensual sexual relations.

Unlike most other states, the proposed Idaho law wouldn’t distinguish between classes of sexual offenders before putting their names on the list.

Bill von Tagen, deputy attorney general, said, “We avoided going to multiple tiers as in other states, because that would have an enormous fiscal impact.”

Schwarzkopf responded, “Sometimes it takes money to protect our constitutional rights.”

Connie Vietz of the Idaho Prosecuting Attorneys Association said prosecutors wouldn’t charge someone over consensual acts.

“You couldn’t file a case like that. You couldn’t get a conviction,” she said.

The committee heard emotional testimony from both supporters and opponents of the legislation.

“This will swing the door wide open to more hate crimes across the state,” Terry Crisp of Boise said.

Beverly Knapp, mother of an abuse victim, said she leads a Brownie troop.

“We do cookie sales, some of you might have been approached,” she said.

“I don’t want to walk that troop up to a sex offender’s house.”

Sens. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, and Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene, backed a motion to approve the bill without even the minor amendments von Tagen proposed, but the committee unanimously supported an alternate motion to send the bill out for amendment.

The mostly technical proposed amendments would match the bill’s language more closely to federal guidelines.

, DataTimes