From the Christian Science Monitor of all places.
Well, that is a good read. Yes Yes, granted that he is saying things that might one day affect me. However his words ring true. How can a free citizenry allow such laws in the supposedly most free society upon this earth?
The answer is obvious, American citizens are no longer free. They are commanded by a vocal minority of powerful people who bend the ear, and the pocketbooks of the legislature to their will. Can we allow this to continue?
Each person must follow what they believe to be the right path for government, however when it is so obvious that government is controlled by such a small yet financially powerful group of people, how can we let this continue? it is time for a change. That change must be now. We must take control of our government back, and wrest it away from the powers that have profited from our penance.
New York - Few crimes deserve greater sanction than child sex offense. Such crimes betray all reasonable standards of moral conduct and they are (deservedly) punished harshly.
Yet in society's understandable rush to punish these criminals, the Constitution is being violated.
Residency restrictions, unconstitutional laws that bar sex offenders from living in a specified area, are on the rise. But why break the highest law for the lowest crime?
When government betrays the Constitution, no matter the reason, we jeopardize everyone's freedom.
Twenty-two states have prohibited sex offenders from living within a minimum distance of family facilities, such as schools and day-care centers. The distance ranges from 500 feet to five times that. And further restrictions are on the way.
In California, state legislation already bans a child sex offender from living within a quarter mile of a school. And a number of jurisdictions are contemplating banning residence by sex offenders altogether.
In larger cities and rural areas, such restrictions may not be overly burdensome. But in small towns, they can make residence for an ex-offender impossible.
The more crucial problem, though, is that residency restrictions clearly violate the constitutional limits on statutory law. Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution reads in part: "No bill, or attainder, or ex post facto law shall be passed." The Latin phrase "ex post facto" literally translates as "from after the fact." The Founding Fathers wisely realized that law must not be retroactive.
A free citizenry must know what the law permits and what it forbids; arbitrary punishment is unacceptable. If ex post facto legislation were permitted, no citizen would know if his present actions might be later ruled illegal. We owe our liberty a stronger safeguard than the whims of popular conscience.
Most state laws require their state to build schools and family facilities according to the population of a constituency. Therefore, inevitably a case arises when changes in demographics require construction of a school within the restricted range of a convicted child sex offender. We may feel no sympathy when an ex-convict is forced to sell his home because of it, but this practice is retroactive punishment.
Legislators have cleverly tried to sidestep the constitutionality of residency restrictions by inserting a clause specifying retroactive punishment into federal law. But in the traditional spirit of heavy-handed government, this attempt to steer around the spirit of the law is rather like solving racism with Jim Crow. Clever, but the wrong way to protect children.
Until now, the courts have been far too lax. In Doe v. Miller, the Eighth Circuit Court held that residency restrictions, as civil regulations designed to protect children, did not violate constitutional law. But that response barely addresses the argument.
Should society accept law that holds citizens in double jeopardy just because it does so explicitly? If a law, or clause, violates the Constitution, does it make it acceptable simply because a senator notes the unconstitutionality in the law itself? If so, of what value is the Bill of Rights at all?
In fact, residency restrictions are uniquely egregious violations of the ex post facto restriction. It is not only that they happen to fall afoul of the law; it is that they fly in the face of our law. Passing a law that mandates the flouting of the Constitution requires a special brand of legislative hubris.
So what can we do instead?
Society could fix the exact location of all future schools. But without infallible demographic predictions, legislators would find themselves building schools where they were not needed. No law can reasonably lay out exact future residency requirements; therefore no law can constitutionally impose residency restrictions.
Even if an offender is never actually forced to sell his home, democratic society cannot function when citizens are subject to arbitrary forced relocation.
There are other ways to protect our children; we might begin by increasing the number of police assigned to patrol near city schools. Such measures might be costly, but far less costly than violating due process.
We owe our Founding Fathers respect that transcends anger and haste.
C. Alexander Evans is a doctoral student in political philosophy at the City University of New York and an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College.
Well, that is a good read. Yes Yes, granted that he is saying things that might one day affect me. However his words ring true. How can a free citizenry allow such laws in the supposedly most free society upon this earth?
The answer is obvious, American citizens are no longer free. They are commanded by a vocal minority of powerful people who bend the ear, and the pocketbooks of the legislature to their will. Can we allow this to continue?
Each person must follow what they believe to be the right path for government, however when it is so obvious that government is controlled by such a small yet financially powerful group of people, how can we let this continue? it is time for a change. That change must be now. We must take control of our government back, and wrest it away from the powers that have profited from our penance.
2 comments:
This post by Alexander Evans is on the spot. It says as much as I have consistently written on my website.
The United States Constitution in the area of due process of law, double jeopardy, and ex post facto are consistently twisted by the justices of the US Supreme court, and of lower courts, including state supreme courts.
The PLAIN language of the US Constitution is without doubt as to what it says and what is meant regarding double jeopardy, ex post facto, and due process in the law is twisted.
The twisting is performed by allowing justices to apply "what was in the mind of the founders". These justice attempts construct a meaning that flies yes, flies in the face of constitutional directives.
Justices from the US Supreme Court to district courts, appellate courts to state supreme courts are all too often applying judicial interpretation in the form of originalism instead of strict construction, or of simple construction. Many of these justices in applying originalism or some other form of ‘ism’ or the loose fitting of interpretation have weakened the United States Constitution in some areas noted above.
“Shall make no law” ‘shall … due process in the laws’ are now routinely interpreted in such ways as to make these judicial directives meaningless. Justices, not all have strayed far away from the strict meaning in favor of interpretations that fit a political philosophy of conservatism – ultra right wing conservatism.
It is interesting when US Supreme Court justices let us the public know that they can make the United States Constitution whatever they want it to be. This in itself lends to the brand of judicial reasoning that ignores the plain language in favor of interpretations that favor a political view or system of belief.
I don’t remember the Justice who said what is underlined, although I believe it was Scalia that spoke about their judicial powers over the United States Constitution.
In the Alaska case known as Smith v. Doe, on the matter of retroactive residency restrictions, it became quite clear after reading the transcript of the US Supreme Court case that in giving deference to the state in its argument that the restrictions applied necessary regulatory restraints, the majority all but indicated that they the majority on the bench would over look the United States Constitution on the matter of ex post facto and give the deference to the state.
These justices with the exception of Ginsburg and one other dissenter blatantly used a well known false recidivism statistics to further support the state in its regulatory claim. This was judicial activism near its highest ever. Most sex offender laws in light of the plain language of the United States Constitution and of state constitutions are unconstitutional.
By keeping the citizenry ignorant of the facts by misleading the citizens of this nation, it is my opinion we are seeing both judicial and legislative corruption.
I cannot disagree with your interpretation of the recent SC rulings. They are overlooking the Constitution and placing words such as punitive, criminal, etc onto the meaning of expost facto laws. I see the meaning for expost facto as what it plainly states in the Constitution, that NO law will be created that expressly affects people that have been tried and completed their time.
Call me old fashioned, but in a New World, as the Founding Fathers created, I cannot see envisioning a Constitution that would one day punish people that had completed the retribution to the system. The idea that someone could be continuously re-punished for the same crime. That might have been the reason for the double jeopardy law, to stop just this thing.
The Legislative body today has found a way around such original regulations. Maybe one day, these same law makers will find their way back to its original intent.
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