Posting #183 – Michigan Messenger’s Recent Articles, by David Alire Garcia

Over the Past few weeks the Michigan Messenger has had four great articles and we wanted to share them with you in a posting.

December 14, 2009:

http://michiganmessenger.com/31807/coalition-wants-mich-sex-offender-registry-reformed

Coalition: Focus Mich. sex offender registry on risk

Coalition members point out that Michigan has one of the highest ratios of citizens on state sex offender registry in the nation

By David Alire Garcia
LANSING — About once a month, a group of Michigan citizens sit around a table in one of the state Capitol’s ornate committee rooms and plot their uphill revolt.
They probably wouldn’t describe it that way, but the members of the Coalition for a Useful Registry’s professional advisory board do acknowledge they don’t often end up on the winning side of legislative or judicial skirmishes over Michigan’s growing sex offender registry.
But at the group’s Dec. 2 meeting, with members seated around highly polished wooden tables, coalition members — including those with family on the registry — discussed rare “victories” at the legislature and state appeals court, and reviewed a looming deadline to comply with new federal mandates.
Coalition members are united in the view that Michigan has too many people on the sex offender registry who, they argue, aren’t a threat to anyone and don’t merit the stigma of extended punishment on the registry.
With over 45,100 names and faces on the registry of convicted sex offenders –- and even some whose records are conviction-free –- Michigan holds the eyebrow-raising distinction of having the highest ratio of its citizens on a state sex offender registry.
According to an analysis earlier this year by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, for every 100,000 Michiganders, 472 are on the registry. That’s the third highest rate of any state — more than California (319), Florida (281), New York (148), Ohio (164) or Illinois (158), and only less than Delaware (465) and Oregon (574).
“We’re trying to put a face on this,” said Lynn D’Orio, a defense attorney and member of the advisory board. “That’s why the coalition exists.”
Nine years ago when the coalition was formed, it was mostly driven by family members of registrants who knew first-hand the humiliation and lasting negative consequences of being on the list.
“We just weren’t getting very far,” said Shelli Weisberg, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and also a board member. “We eventually decided if we put together other professionals who could represent the same views, but back them up with their own professional credibility and their research, that we might have more of a presence.”
Today, the coalition’s professional advisory board counts social workers, juvenile case workers, attorneys and even a former prosecutor as members.
By reviewing legislation and educating state lawmakers, the board hopes to “help convince legislators that the registry needed to be, at least, reformed,” Weisberg said. “We at least need to be logical about how it’s working.”
The group has developed materials including a PowerPoint presentation that spell out proposed reforms to the registry, like most of all, moving away from a strictly conviction-based method of determining 25-year or life on the registry, and toward a risk-based system instead.
The coalition has also hosted education forums specifically for legislators.
“There’s a big interest in the registry,” Weisberg added, noting that the last forum for legislators attracted over 20 state lawmakers. “We’re very encouraged with the interest.”
Since the registry was established in 1994, and went online in 1999, the registry has added photos and been made searchable by ZIP code. Those and other enhancements have been aimed, in large part, at helping concerned residents keep an eye on Michigan’s tens of thousands of convicted sex offenders.
Motivation fueled by regret, sense of injustice
At least one of those offenders has become an active member of the coalition.
His name isn’t John, but he attended the December meeting just as he’s attended many meetings of the coalition. He spoke to Michigan Messenger on the condition his real name not be published for fear of further harassment.
“I’m the only active one who sticks his neck out,” John said with a heavy sigh. “I came to a point in my life where it was either do or die.”
He means that literally. He said his 1997 conviction on a fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct charge — the least serious sex crime Michigan has on the books — and the new reality of life on the online registry drove him to consider suicide.
His offense was committed in 1997 shortly after he arrived at a late-night Oakland County party, and met a girl there.
“I ended up making out with her and feeling her up,” John, then 28, said in an interview. “The party ended up getting broken up by police after a fight and three months later the cops came through my door and asked if I met this girl.” John said at first he didn’t recall the girl’s name, but he answered the questions truthfully. He admits he made a mistake.
“She turned out to be 14 years old,” he said. It was two years later before he pleaded guilty to what he thought was a low-level charge, a decision he describes as a huge error in judgment a decade later.
“I still remember the preliminary trial — the girl thinks everything is a joke. She’s laughing on the stand,” John said. He then recalled a few more details from the night of the party: “It was a school night. She’s drinking a Southern Comfort and coke, and she’s smoking cigarettes and pot. And she doesn’t think it’s a big deal at all.”
Clothes never came off, and the girl’s parents never got involved in the case. But after completing his probation, John realized the real punishment — 25 years on the sex offender registry — was only then kicking in.
“Basically pleading to that charge has ended my life — having a family, having kids, or a career path,” he said, mentioning the many times he’s been turned down for jobs.
Today John is self-employed, but constantly worried contracts could fall through due to his notoriety as a registrant.
“Anything I had wanted to do has come to a halt,” he added. “I’ve stopped dreaming.”
Pushing for reform
But as part of the coalition, he’s trying to make the case to anyone who will listen — especially legislators — that putting people like him on the list for a quarter century is a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.
In Lansing, there are probably few causes more unpopular with lawmakers than anything perceived to endanger kids’ safety. But coalition members argue strenuously that’s not what they seek. One reform they advocate is mandating risk assessments to determine if an offender really represents such a threat to the community that he or she merits 25 years on the registry.
Or allowing a process by which individuals can petition to be removed from the registry.
But in the absence of playing offense on legislation the coalition would like to see enacted, the group often finds itself playing defense on initiatives it considers a step backwards.
Weisberg cited last month’s Michigan House Health Policy Committee hearing on a proposal to permanently revoke the state license of any healthcare professional who’s convicted of criminal sexual conduct — including dietitians, pharmacists, and even veterinarian technicians — as a rare victory.
The committee hearing took place on Nov. 17. But a vote on the proposal — inspired by the well-publicized case of a Farmington Hills dentist who drugged and raped one of his patients yet was still allowed to resume his practice after serving one year in jail — didn’t happen.
“That we were successful in stopping that bill was something we just don’t experience very often because it’s really easy to use the sex offenders as a kind of battering ram,” Weisberg said. “That’s why we were very pleased with our success with that bill, but it could still come back.”
That’s a sentiment more than echoed by state Rep. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge), one of the sponsors of the proposal. He said the vote was simply postponed.
Asked if there’s a risk of using one sensational crime as a launching pad for legislation, Jones told Michigan Messenger there’s many more similar cases — and strongly defends his proposal.
“It’s just sickening, sickening that this dentist was able to get his license back,” he said. “And there are many other cases. There have been doctors and chiropractors where they’ve raped a patient,” said Jones, who once served as Eaton County sheriff.
But citing the nearly 30 health care professions that require the state license — roughly 400,000 jobs in the state — Weisberg argues that many low-risk offenders would unnecessarily get kicked out of work if the proposal ultimately passes. “It would negatively affect a lot of people,” she said.
Beyond legislation, Weisberg invoked last month’s Michigan Court of Appeals ruling that being listed on the sex offender registry can amount to cruel and unusual punishment for underage offenders, and how victories in court can help convince lawmakers that reforms are in order.
“After the DiPiazza case came down, we had many more legislators say, ‘OK, if the courts are saying this, now we can see that maybe it’s time for us to make some changes.’”
One reform she’d like to pursue is to figure out a way for sex offenders who were convicted between the ages of 17 and 20 — and in many cases have had their records wiped clean through their legal designation as “youthful trainees” — to be able to get removed from the registry.
But the coalition has yet to find a sponsor willing to introduce a bill.
At the coalition’s December meeting, staffers for two state lawmakers attended the meeting — but then were very coy afterwards explaining what they were trying to achieve by taking part.
“It’s not necessarily anything he’s looking at,” explained Andy Mutavdzija, legislative director for Rep. Bert Johnson (D-Detroit), who attended along with one other staffer from the office. “We were there to mostly be educated and enlightened on what the group was trying to aim at.”
A staffer for Rep. Rebekah Warren (D-Ann Arbor), was also at the meeting. Since then, several messages left with Warren’s office seeking comment for this story have not been returned.
Getting in line with new federal requirements
That’s surprising since coalition members like Weisberg praise Warren for her past support, and her pledge to lead the effort to make sure Michigan complies with the federal Adam Walsh Act, a law that requires states to enhance and tweak their sex offender registries.
The deadline for compliance is April of next year, and non-compliance could mean the loss of approximately $6 million in federal funds.
Weisberg described the new federal mandates that come with the Adam Walsh Act as “a mixed bag.”
She noted that while for the first time, Michigan will have to have a petitioning process for registrants to be removed from the sex offender registry, compliance with the federal law will also force juvenile offenders to be on the public registry beginning at age 14.
Currently, Michigan law allows juveniles to be on the state’s private registry — accessible mainly to just law enforcement — until they turn 18.
John, on the other hand, has been focused on what he describes as the new “information intrusion” that compliance with the Adam Walsh Act will compel.
In addition to the current registry requirements, Adam Walsh will require that registrants regularly submit where they’re living, working or attending school, license plate numbers for any vehicle they might be driving, as well as all phone numbers and email addresses they’re using — or face further penalties.
Going forward, fingerprints and a DNA sample will also be required.
“If the Adam Walsh Act passes as it sits right now, what really scares me is how many people will find that a reason to just end it,” John said bluntly. “They would just give up.”
About himself, he’s seen some changes — for the worse — close up:  “I love kids, I really did. Now, I obviously shy away from them.”
The ACLU’s Weisberg emphasized that the goals of the coalition and law enforcement aren’t that far apart.
“We also believe like they do that public safety is paramount,” she said. As for her wish-list of reform, she embraces a new focus on those sex offenders who truly pose a threat.
“I would want the registry tiered by risk as opposed to crime such that the low risk is not publicly available and to have a meaningful and streamlined process to be removed from the registry after five years,” she added.
For John, he’s not currently eligible to be removed from the registry until 2024, a form of extended punishment he’s mostly numb to these days. But not entirely.
At the end of a recent interview, he posed a question to himself.
“If I had the choice of living on the registry for 25 years or dying in my sleep,” he said, “I hope I die in my sleep.”

December 16, 2009:

http://michiganmessenger.com/31987/another-day-another-story-from-mich-s-sex-offender-registry-dragnet

Another day, another story from Mich.’s sex offender registry dragnet
By David Alire Garcia

This story was published yesterday, but it’s very much worth the read. In it, AnnArbor.com’s Lee Higgins profiled Matthew Freeman, a 23-year-old Pittsfield Township man who pleaded guilty to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct — the state’s least serious sex crime — six years ago.
According to the story, when he was 17 he had consensual sex with his then 15-year-old girlfriend, and the girl’s mother wasn’t happy about it.

Because the age of consent in Michigan is 16, Freeman committed a “crime” — and if nothing changes, he’ll pay for it by remaining on the state’s online sex offender registry until 2028. Sound fair to you?
Read the story for yourself and see what you think.
It is the case that Michigan puts more of its citizens on the registry than just about any other state — and with harsh, employment- and housing-denying consequences for years.
About Freeman’s case, I’m left wondering why the description of his 4th degree CSC charge on the online registry includes the words “Force Or Coercion,” when the police report apparently contradicts that.
From the story:
                [T]he police report says the victim was “not forced to commit any act” nor “did she ask him not to commit any act.”
My hunch is that if either Freeman or his then-girlfriend were consuming alcohol — and that somehow found it’s way into the court record — a by-the-books prosecutor may have decided that “force or coercion” did in fact play a role, even though a common-sense understanding of those words would indicate it did not.
The best (and worst) part of Higgins’ story, in my opinion, is that in includes the recent tip that came to the Michigan State Police from a concerned neighbor.
It was that tip (culled, in part, in error from Freeman’s page on the sex offender site) that brought an officer to his driveway back in August looking into Freeman’s latest problem with the terms and conditions of being a registered sex offender in Michigan: living less than 1,000 feet from a school safety zone. In his case, his family home is across the street from Carpenter Elementary School,
From the story:
                The tipster was a mother who lived in the neighborhood. She wrote that a sex offender of a “child under   the age of 13” was living in front of the school.
                “I can’t let my children play at this school anymore because he is always outside playing basketball,           watching the kids that are playing,” she wrote. “How creepy, how disgusting…please help us get rid of him.”
                Freeman said the accusation he sexually assaulted a child under age 13, “just kills me.”

December 31, 2009:

http://michiganmessenger.com/32526/prosecutors-weigh-reforms-to-state-sex-offender-registry

Prosecutors weigh reforms to state sex offender registry

Michigan's overly broad sex offender list includes some kids younger than 13

By David Alire Garcia
LANSING — Anthony Flores doesn’t fit the profile of the card-carrying ACLU member agitating for reform of Michigan’s broadly inclusive sex offender registry, because he isn’t.
He was a prosecutor for a dozen years through the summer of 2005, holding a variety of front-line criminal-pursuing positions in both Mecosta and Ingham counties.
More recently, he’s worn a different hat. At this month’s meeting of the Coalition for a Useful Registry at the state Capitol on Dec. 2, Flores, chairman of the group’s professional advisory board, announced he’ll be leaving his position at the end of the year.
But that doesn’t mean that his determination for reforming the state’s sex offender registry is relaxing — or that his time as a prosecutor doesn’t continue to inform his views.
“I was a career prosecutor, I loved prosecution,” he said in a recent interview.
When he worked in the Ingham County prosecutor’s office, Flores said he handled just about every kind of criminal case that came through the courtroom doors — “everything except appeals and child support cases.” In 2001, he was made chief of the unit responsible for prosecuting the state’s criminal sexual conduct laws, the division responsible for child molestation cases. “I zealously prosecuted child molesters. I make no bones about it,” he said.
“It was one of the things that gave me longevity in my career,” he added. And he explained that the experience gave him a unique perspective on all sorts of criminal behavior, the victims of crimes and perpetrators both. “I could understand somebody caught in the cycle of drug addiction. I could understand being angry because you caught your wife cheating and you strike out in violence, I understood the behavior,” he said. But there was some behavior he couldn’t understand.
“I could never understand why anyone would beat or molest a child,” he said.
Over the past four years, Flores has taught full-time at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, leading courses on trial skills among others. But reflecting on his time as a prosecutor in the CSC unit in Lansing convinced him that state laws are forcing too many people on to Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry — especially those convicted of having consensual but underage sex — and not allowing the public to use the online registry to actually identify predatory child molesters nearby.
“When I started looking at it, I got offended,” he said. “At some level, it really insulted the victims of these really heinous offenders when you lump them all in.”
With more than 45,100 names and faces on it, Michigan’s public sex offender registry has the third-highest percentage of its citizens on it of any state registry, and the second largest number of offenders overall. It went online in 1999, and has been amended several times since then, usually to add more requirements for registrants to follow such as housing restrictions or mandatory quarterly address updates, which are then listed on each offender’s unwanted webpage.
Flores would like to see it amended again, but this time to add new requirements that all juveniles accused of committing criminal sexual conduct — from severe first-degree cases to less serious fourth-degree charges — be professionally evaluated prior to sentencing them to, on top of other penalties, a minimum 25-years on the online registry. Currently, all CSC convictions include 25-years on the registry.
“The juvenile system has always been meant for rehabilitation,” he said. “We shouldn’t just knee jerk put them on the registration.”
Flores notes that most people would be surprised to learn that there are registrants as young as 13, and a few even younger than that. Flores said that he’d also like to see judges given “the discretion and tools to put the right people on” after receiving thorough pre-sentencing evaluations.
In an interview with Michigan Messenger, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy disagreed with Flores’ give-judges-more-discretion view. “No, I don’t think that judges should be making that call,” she said. But Worthy did suggest she’s open to other reforms that people like Flores’ also support.
She noted that a 2004 amendment to the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act does allow some juvenile offenders age 17 to 21 stay clear of the registry and have their convictions expunged if they complete the terms of their probation. “That’s a good thing,” Worthy said. But she points out that there’s a three-year time limit on offenders’ ability to petition to have their name removed from the registry — a limit she’d like to see lifted.
Referring to a legislative proposal from her office this year, the prosecutor with the state’s busiest office sought an “indefinite” time limit. “In other words, there would be no time period,” she said.
While that would-be reform has yet to find a sponsor, the earlier 2004 reform wasn’t retroactive — although a recent appeals court decision may open the door to revisiting hundreds of cases adjudicated before the new petitioning process was established.
Worthy, a former Wayne County judge as well as an assistant prosecutor for a dozen years before that, cites what she calls a “fairness issue” in so-called Romeo and Juliet criminal sexual conduct cases.
“I don’t think it’s fair to have them be on the sexual offender registry forever because of that. If it’s a non consensual situation, of course that’s a different story,” she said. “But that shouldn’t be something that people are settled with especially when an awful lot of people did it when they were that age and there was no such law.”
She added: “Let me just say we’re not condoning teenage sex at all. We’re just saying it shouldn’t be criminalized and you shouldn’t have a permanent record because of it.”
Flores agreed with that but went further by suggesting that too often prosecutors don’t really have the discretion to decide against prosecuting underage, consensual sex crimes, citing the intense pressure that can come from parents — or even political pressure to avoid appearing too lenient. “Sometimes we don’t have prosecutorial discretion. Sometimes the parents demand prosecution.”
Worthy, however, disagreed. “The prosecutors absolutely have discretion, and it may be a hard decision to make, just because the parents are yelling for the boy to be charged because their previously quote-unquote innocent daughter has been violated by this boy. [But] it doesn’t mean that we don’t have discretion. We still have the absolute discretion not to charge it.”
Flores’ fellow agitator for comprehensive reform of the state’s sex offender laws, Van Buren County Circuit Judge William C. Buhl, noted that while prosecutors may technically have the discretion not to prosecute a Romeo and Juliet relationship, the political reality usually demands such prosecutions.
“Kym Worthy is right,” Buhl said in an interview. “The prosecutor can do that. But she knows full well that politically it’s not a popular thing, and somebody’s gonna come out and beat you over the head with it. They’re gonna accuse you of being soft on sex crimes or favoring child molesters, and of course under the law, if they’re under 16, they’re children and they can’t consent.”
In the end, there’s probably an age-old philosophical debate over different ideas on reforming the state’s sex offender laws — or not. On that count, Worthy very much fits the profile of the tough crime-fighter.
“I have to say as a prosecutor, I have more compassion for the victims. We have parents of defendants and defendants themselves who certainly feel that they’ve been violated,” she said. But turning to what she called “the hell that some of these victims have to live with for the rest of their life because they were victims,” she added: “The defendant chose to be a defendant. The victim did not choose to be a victim. Their lives are sometimes ruined and changed forever. So I have to say that my compassion is really for the victims of these crimes.”
Flores, asked to respond to Worthy’s view, snapped back at even the suggestion that he has any less compassion for victims of crime.
“No. I have compassion for the scars that are left and the victimization,” he said. “I have so much compassion that I don’t want to insult them by putting their case next to something that’s not like it. I don’t want to put them in a sex offender registration that doesn’t mean anything.
Flores added: “I don’t disagree with her. I just think we’ve done it the wrong way.”

January 7, 2010:

http://michiganmessenger.com/32878/an-ornery-judicial-view-of-mich-sex-offender-laws

An ‘ornery’ judicial view of Mich. sex offender laws

Retiring judge says 'root problem is that our registry includes so many more people than it needs to include'

By David Alire Garcia
Retiring Van Buren County Circuit Judge William C. Buhl is a rarity among Michigan’s mostly reserved black robe set.
“When things bother me, I get tired of people talking and saying this is horrible and not doing anything about it,” he said near the beginning of an in-depth interview covering his frustrations with the state’s sex offender laws.
In his southwest Michigan county, after nine elections — and never even drawing an opponent in any of them — you might think Buhl is mostly immune to the political considerations of taking on an unpopular cause. And you’d be right. But that immunity to the raw political consequences of his views has also convinced him that he has no choice but to speak his mind.
“I figure after all these years on the bench, people actually sometimes listen to you,” he mused. “I’ve got a voice and I can speak out when others can’t.”
It’s not that his fellow jurists are mute, Buhl added, just that when it comes to criticizing how Michigan handles sex crimes and especially the state’s burgeoning sex offender registry, most other elected judges legitimately worry about losing their jobs if they do likewise.
That same temerity goes for elected lawmakers, Buhl said. He cites an educational event for legislators in Lansing sponsored by the Coalition for a Useful Registry last spring. Buhl sits on the coalition’s professional advisory board. The March event featured several different information stations, each one aiming to give state senators, representatives and their staff a better understanding of how the current system works — and its shortcomings.
“I heard repeatedly, ‘Oh, we’ve got to go slow on this. We can’t do very much. Oh, it’s poison. We just don’t dare,’” Buhl said in a mocking tone. “They’re all just scared to death of it.”
Raw politics
It’s that fear that has pushed lawmakers to include anyone convicted of any of the state’s criminal sexual conduct laws on the online registry, as well as many other enhancements since the registry was created in 1994. Today, the state’s registry stands as one of the country’s broadest and most inclusive.
He said he’d like to narrow the scope of offenses that currently land individuals on the registry for a minimum of 25 years — and he said he’s not alone.
“I think that I speak for a majority, the vast majority of the judiciary,” Buhl asserted.
The reason Buhl speaks for a mostly silent majority of elected judges in Michigan — if you believe his assertion — can be summed up in one word: politics.
“It’s just scary stuff when it comes to people going to the polls and opponents will happily exploit any position you take on it that can be twisted to look like you kinda like pedophiles,” he said.
In fact, that’s what he says happened to former State Rep. Alexander Lipsey. In 2002, Lipsey, a Democrat, was defeated in an election for a Kalamazoo-based seat in the Michigan Senate by Republican Tom George, now a candidate for governor.
“George’s supporters were beating up Lipsey because he voted against going public with the registry,” Buhl recalled, noting that George himself refrained from the attack. Buhl said Lipsey was right to vote against the catch-all registry, but that didn’t matter in the end. “They unfairly accused him of being on the side of child molesters and he was defeated.”
Five years later, Lipsey was appointed to a vacant circuit judge position in Kalamazoo by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, but that Senate race became part of what Buhl calls his personal “growth process” on the flaws with the current law.
A view from the bench
The cases that regularly came to his courtroom were also part of that process. He describes one that he said made the biggest impression on him.
“I had a 17-year-old who was socially immature with a 15-year-old girlfriend that was just in love with him. And she pursued him. And the parents on both sides didn’t want them together. But despite their wishes — and this girl was far more mature than he was — they got together, and then, of course, had sex,” Buhl said.
The boy was given probation for violating the state’s criminal sexual conduct law, but was still required to be placed on the housing- and employment-denying online sex offender registry for a quarter century. “I thought, what a travesty. This kid can’t even get a job at McDonalds.”
Since then, he’s seen many similar cases. “When we have people married to their victims, with children that are a product of their crime, and they have to worry about whether they can go watch their kids’ soccer games at school, it just struck me as just wrong,” he said. “And the more I saw it, the angrier I got about it.”
Fast forward to a current case on the judge’s docket — one that also makes him angry but for a different reason.
“I have a guy right now pending sentence on his seventh failure to register,” he said, noting that registered offenders must check-in quarterly with law enforcement or face further penalties. “I finally said, ‘I want to know what he did to get on the registry.’ Well, it turns out he was a 13-year-old sexually abused child that asked a six-year-old to touch his penis. And he went through the juvenile system, was treated and has never had a sex-related offense since.”
He added that “there’s no indication that he’s a sexual predator or anybody to worry about but he is a blithering idiot that will fail to register again.”
It’s cases that that one, Buhl said, that clutter his courtroom and many others across the state.
Like other advocates for reform, Buhl said part of his efforts are geared toward playing defense, stopping what they consider to be bad legislation. He pointed to two examples from 2009.
The first was a proposal to redefine “school safety zones” to include all bus stops. Registered sex offenders are currently barred from living or working within 1,000 feet of such a zone. “That would have been a nightmare first to figure out,” he said, “because they change every year.”
The second example was a proposal to include all day cares as off-limits school safety zones to offenders.
“The way they defined day care would include almost every church that I’ve ever known,” he said. “If they include churches, they would basically render most communities, most municipalities off-limits for the registered sex offender.”
The current state-of-affairs gets worse, Buhl said, because “nobody goes back to the root problem here and the root problem is that our registry includes so many more people than it needs to include.”
Reforming the system
As for the judge’s wish-list of reforms, he pointed to three main ideas.
The first would institute a new process for evaluating — and treating — underage sex offenders.
“I think we ought to treat them like we do juvenile offenders,” he said. “Have them petition into a court that takes jurisdiction over them like we petition juveniles … and put them through an educational course as to the legal and the life affecting consequences of sex, of child rearing, of child support, of sexually transmitted diseases, and just force them to endure that. Then graduate them and that’s the end of it,” he said. “Because they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna be doing it.”
The “it” Buel is referring to is, of course, underage sex.
For other accused sex offenders, Buhl suggests a new screening process and “have people put on the registry only if they’re people we need to worry about” such as violent rapists or child predators. In other words, Buhl says, “narrow the sex offender registry to people who truly are people we fear.”
Beyond a better process, Buhl said Michigan should junk the school safety zones altogether.
“They’re silly little artificial rings that make it impossible to work with people,” he said. “We have all these people who can’t live here and they can’t work there.”
He said the employment and housing restrictions that go along with the school safety zones often make near impossible to make offenders employable, paying taxes and restitution.
Lastly, Buhl thinks lawmakers should reconsider the uncomfortable but legally significant differences between criminal sexual conduct and “penetration” — an automatic felony.
“I would treat sexual penetration the same way we treat sexual contact, and that is we don’t make it a crime when two 15-year-olds fornicate, we don’t make it a crime two 15-year-olds are all over each other sexually except for penetration,” he said. “The minute there’s any kind of penetration whatsoever, finger, doesn’t matter, bang, you’re into a 15-year felony. Whether it’s contact or penetration, when they’re under 16 it ought not be criminalized.”
Entering the last year of his judicial career, this self-described “ornery cuss” is crystal clear about the problems he sees, and the reforms he’d like to see. But that doesn’t mean he’s unaware of the long-shot odds reformers like him face.
In fact, he almost seems resigned to losing.
“We all know that it’s terrible and yet it won’t be changed,” he said with a sigh. “I figure, OK, I’m jousting with windmills. I know that the odds of getting anything done are so slim. But I can’t sit and do nothing,” he added. “I just can’t.”