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An ex post facto law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; it may extend the statute of limitations; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed.
Dru Katrina Sjodin was an American woman who was abducted from the Columbia Mall parking lot in Grand Forks, North Dakota, by Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., on November 22, 2003. Her disappearance and murder garnered great media coverage throughout the United States and prompted the creation of the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry.
Debra Jean Williams, better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a convicted sex offender who formerly taught at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to lewd or lascivious battery against a teenager. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in mid-2004. Lafave's plea bargain included no prison time, opting for three years of house arrest due to safety concerns, seven years of probation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender.
Bruce Robert Jacob is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Florida during the early 1960s. He represented Louie L. Wainwright, the Director of the Florida Division of Corrections, in the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright, decided in March 1963, regarding the right to counsel of indigent defendants in non-capital felony cases in state courts. The attorney representing the Petitioner, Clarence Gideon, was Abe Fortas, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who later became a Justice of the Supreme Court. The previous 1942 Supreme Court case of Betts v. Brady required the appointment of counsel for an indigent defendant at state expense if there was a “special circumstance” present in the case which made it necessary for counsel to be provided for the defendant to receive a fair trial. For example, if the defendant was indigent and was extremely young, or lacked education or experience, was unfamiliar with court procedures, or if the charges against him were complex, the trial court was required under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to appoint counsel. Jacob argued against any extension of the defendant's right to counsel. The Court in Gideon overruled Betts and required state courts to appoint attorneys for defendants in all felony prosecutions.
Brian Gene Nichols is a convicted murderer known for his escape and killing spree in the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 11, 2005. Nichols was on trial for rape when he escaped custody and murdered Rowland Barnes, the judge presiding over his trial, a court reporter, a Fulton County Sheriff's deputy, and later an ICE special agent. Twenty-six hours after a large-scale manhunt was launched in the metropolitan Atlanta area, Nichols was taken into custody. The prosecution charged him with committing 54 crimes during the escape; he was found guilty on all counts on November 7, 2008, and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
Jessica Marie Lunsford was an American nine-year-old girl from Homosassa, Florida, who was murdered in February 2005. Lunsford was abducted from her home in the early morning of February 24, 2005, by John Couey, a 46-year-old convicted sex offender who lived nearby. Couey held her captive over the weekend, during which she was raped and later murdered by being buried alive. The media extensively covered the investigation and trial of Couey.
Jessica's Law is the informal name given to a 2005 Florida law, as well as laws in several other states, designed to protect potential victims and reduce a sexual offender's ability to re-offend which includes a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring when the victim is less than 12 years old. A version of Jessica's Law, known as the Jessica Lunsford Act, was introduced at the federal level in 2005 but was never enacted into law by Congress.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is a federal statute that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006. The Walsh Act organizes sex offenders into three tiers according to the crime committed, and mandates that Tier 3 offenders update their whereabouts every three months with lifetime registration requirements. Tier 2 offenders must update their whereabouts every six months with 25 years of registration, and Tier 1 offenders must update their whereabouts every year with 15 years of registration. Failure to register and update information is a felony under the law. States are required to publicly disclose information of Tier 2 and Tier 3 offenders, at minimum. It also contains civil commitment provisions for sexually dangerous people.
Wilson v. State, 652 S.E. 2d 501, 282 Ga. 520 (2007) was a Georgia court case brought about to appeal the aggravated child molestation conviction of Genarlow Wilson.
The Texas attorney general is the chief legal officer of the U.S. state of Texas. The current officeholder, Republican Ken Paxton, has served in the position since January 5, 2015.
Nancy Ann Grace is an American legal commentator and television journalist. She hosted Nancy Grace, a nightly celebrity news and current affairs show on HLN, from 2005 to 2016, and Court TV's Closing Arguments from 1996 to 2007. She also co-wrote the book Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System. Grace was also the arbiter of Swift Justice with Nancy Grace in the syndicated courtroom reality show's first season.
Yale Lance Galanter is an American lawyer and legal commentator. He is currently a criminal defense attorney based in Miami, Florida. He is best known for representing O. J. Simpson through his 2008 Las Vegas robbery case.
State of Georgia v. Allison was a Georgia court case. In Georgia vs Allison, Janet Allison was convicted of sexual offenses for allowing her daughter, aged 15, to have sexual intercourse in her home. The events took place in the year 2000. The young couple later married and had a child of their own, but Allison's name has been entered into the sex offender registry, with various adverse consequences for her life and that of her family.
Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that juvenile offenders cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses.
Rosemarie Elizabeth Aquilina is an American judge. She is a judge of the 30th circuit court in Ingham County, Michigan. Previously, Aquilina was the 55th District Court Judge, where she served as both a Sobriety Court Judge as well as the Chief Judge. She is best known as the judge who sentenced Larry Nassar in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Georgia. Georgia reintroduced the death penalty in 1973 after Furman v. Georgia ruled all states' death penalty statutes unconstitutional. The first execution to take place afterwards occurred in 1983.
Marilyn Mosby is an American politician and lawyer who served as the State's Attorney of Baltimore from 2015 to 2023. Mosby gained national attention following the killing of Freddie Gray in 2015, after which she led a highly publicized investigation and unsuccessful murder prosecution of the police officers who arrested and transported Gray.
Sex offender registries in the United States exist at both the federal and state levels. The federal registry is known as the National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) and integrates data in all state, territorial, and tribal registries provided by offenders required to register. Registries contain information about persons convicted of sexual offenses for law enforcement and public notification purposes. All 50 states and the District of Columbia maintain sex offender registries that are open to the public via websites; most information on offenders is visible to the public. Public disclosure of offender information varies between the states depending on offenders' designated tier, which may also vary from state to state, or risk assessment result. According to NCMEC, as of 2016 there were 859,500 registered sex offenders in United States.
Gundy v. United States, No. 17-6086, 588 U.S. 128 (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that 42 U.S.C. § 16913(d), part of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA"), does not violate the nondelegation doctrine. The section of the SORNA allows the Attorney General to "specify the applicability" of the mandatory registration requirements of "sex offenders convicted before the enactment of [SORNA]". Precedent is that it is only constitutional for Congress to delegate legislative power to the executive branch if it provides an "intelligible principle" as guidance. The outcome of the case could have greatly influenced the broad delegations of power Congress has made to the federal executive branch, but it did not.
Philip Andrew Holloway is an American attorney and legal analyst known for his work in criminal law, juvenile law, and law enforcement issues. Holloway is a legal analyst for Fox News, CourtTV, and SiriusXM.
References
- ↑
- ↑ "Ruling: State Can Dump Non-Sex Offenders into Registry". Wired.
- ↑ "State of Automakers; Unregulated Web Imperils Privacy; CPR Made Easier". CNN . 2010-07-30. Archived from the original on 2020-11-06.
- ↑ "CNN.com - Transcripts". Edition.cnn.com. 2010-11-16. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
- ↑ "With little to lose, Murray should've skipped the courts – in Session - CNN.com Blogs". Archived from the original on 2011-10-12. Retrieved 2011-10-04.
- ↑ "Chances are, Ponzi schemer won't get maximum sentence". www.gainesvilletimes.com. Archived from the original on 31 July 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
- ↑ "Disorder in the court: What's a judge to do when defendants act out?". Archived from the original on December 12, 2010.