House Fire Victim is Registered Sex Offender

5-30-2007 Texas:

Investigators don't think past related to blaze

DONNA - NEWSCHANNEL 5 uncovered new details about a man whose home was destroyed by fire.

William "Bill" Voight and his wife purchased a home off 12th Street in Donna last January. The house was destroyed by a fire over the weekend. Voight was visiting a VA hospital in San Antonio at the time.

The fire department is continuing to investigate how the blaze was started. They suspect arson.

We did some digging into Voight's background after a call from a concerned viewer. We've learned he's not only a veteran, but he's also a registered sex offender out of Alamo.

He has a criminal record that dates back to 1983. That's when he was convicted of raping a six-year-old girl. He served about eight years in prison, until he was paroled in June 1991.

Registered sex offender beaten with aluminum bat

5-29-2007 New York:
Two Watertown teens were arrested early Monday for the beating of a Calcium man.

The victim, Tyler G. Grill, 20, of 25059 County Route 138, was beaten with an aluminum baseball bat in the head, hands and middle fingers. While on the ground and being hit with the bat by one suspect, another suspect was kicking Grill in the head.

The attack occurred about 4:00 a.m. Monday in the 100 block of Katherine Street in Watertown.

Grill and witnesses identified the suspected attackers as Gary A. Wheeler, 18, of 220 Hamilton Street, Watertown and Justin M. Anzalone, 19, of 420 Prospect Street, Watertown.

Wheeler is facing charges of Assault 2nd Degree, Menacing 2nd Degree and Possession of a Weapon 4th Degree.

Anzalone is charged with Assault 3rd Degree.

The victim, Mr. Grill, is familiar to local law enforcement agencies.

In March, Grill was charged with Criminal Contempt 1st Degree and Aggravated Harassment 2nd Degree for allegedly violating an order of protection when, during a phone call, he allegedly threatened to shoot Shanae M. Lavere of Watertown and cut the throat of her six month old daughter, Rylee Grill.

In February 2006 Grill was arrested on a charge of Rape 2nd Degree. He was accused of having sex with a 14 year old girl on at least three occasions in January 2006.

Grill later plead guilty to a reduced charge of Sexual Misconduct, served 30 days in Jefferson County Jail and placed on 6 years probation. He was also required to register as a sex offender. ..more.. by WWTI Newswatch 50

Inmates attack a child molester

5-26-2007 Michigan:

Battle in courthouse lockup lands offender in hospital

Minutes after being sentenced Friday, a Detroit man who made national headlines for molesting boys he'd met on the Internet was assaulted inside a Wayne County courthouse lockup, resulting in hospitalization.

Ken Gourlay, 29, was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison on 13 counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a 14-year-old boy, who is now 16 and lives with a foster mother in Harper Woods. Gourlay molested the boy from December 2004 to May 2005.

Gourlay made national headlines last year in a sexual assault of a California teen who he met on the Internet and lured to Michigan. That case was highlighted by the New York Times and resulted in congressional hearings in which his victim testified.

On his block, a molester

12-6-2006 California:

MY neighbor was a child molester.

I know because of the signs.

Michael Miletti's face, name and address appear on posters lining Wapello Street in Altadena, with the admonishment: "Leave Our Neighborhood Now Child Molester." Up since May, the signs are staked into lawns, taped to trash cans and nailed to tree trunks.

I live around the corner with my wife and 7-year-old daughter. Suddenly, an issue that had seemed abstract became deeply personal.

These days, convicted sex offenders can't hide. A state website lists 63,000 of them, searchable by name, address or ZIP Code.

The site, which includes child molesters and offenders whose victims were adults, evolved from the passage of Megan's Law a decade ago. Sex offenders must register their current addresses,something they wouldn't have to do if they had been convicted of dealing drugs, or even killing a person.

The database is meant to give parents, especially, information that will help them protect their children. But as my neighborhood shows, it can also open residents to fears and resentments they previously never had to confront. For some of them, there was only one solution: They would try to drive a neighbor away.

Police hope YouTube can nab suspect

3-23-2007 Ohio:

HAMILTON - Police are using the Internet to try to capture a Mexican national accused of rape in a case that sparked a controversy over illegal immigration.

Alfredo Lopez-Cruz, 27, has been at large since he allegedly snatched a 9-year-old girl off the street June 19, 2005, and sexually assaulted her inside his rented home on Sycamore Street, said Hamilton Police Detective Mark Hayes.

The rape was followed by days of unrest, including the appearance of robed and hooded Ku Klux Klansmen and the torching of the house where Cruz lived.

The rape also ignited a fierce debate that continues over illegal immigrants and what role the Butler County sheriff and other county agencies should play in dealing with them.

Now, nearly two years later, Hamilton police still do not know where Cruz is.

To reignite interest in the case, police plan to create and post a video about it on the popular Web site YouTube.

"This is the first case where we are going to be doing something like this," Hayes said. "We saw something on TV that law enforcement agencies were putting surveillance videos of robberies and stuff like that on YouTube, so we thought we might try something like that with this guy."

Hayes said Cruz is not in the area. "He could be anywhere, so we wanted to get a wider audience," he said. "Hopefully, somebody will view it and know him and know where he's at and we can arrest him."

Counties burdened with sex offenders

3-26-2007 Alabama:

MONTGOMERY | Officials in counties with state prisons say they are being burdened by an unexpected side effect of the Community Notification Act, which requires sex offenders to give authorities a valid address 45 days before their sentence ends.

Under the act, failing to give a residential address that isn’t at least 2,000 feet away from a school or childcare facility is a Class C felony. And offenders whose addresses don’t comply must remain jailed in the county where the violation occurred until they have a valid address.

That usually means offenders -- and their costs -- are transferred to county jails, said Sonny Brasfield, assistant executive director for the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.

“They’re released from the state prison and as they walk into the parking lot, a sheriff’s car is already there to pick them up and take them straight to the jail," he said. “The law makes no provision for them to come back and say 'Sorry, I didn’t know my address was bad.’"

“They’re not going back to inmates to say this address doesn’t work -- there’s not a way for the inmate to correct his problem," Brasfield said.

County officials say there needs to be some recourse for inmates who are homeless or unknowingly give an address that has become invalid while they were incarcerated. Inmates who are homeless are considered violators and charged with felonies because they don’t have a valid address to give.

Ron Smith, chairman of the Bullock County Commission, said so far seven inmates have been taken to the county’s jail under the act and the same has happened in St. Clair and Barbour counties, which are home to other state prisons.

Smith said something needs to be done soon to change the act.

“I think that’s unconstitutional because what are we holding them on? Suppose they never find a good address?" Smith said. “Suppose he was staying with his mother and God forbid his mother died? Now he doesn’t have a place to go. We get no money for housing the state inmates and for a poor county like us, we’re going to suffer."

Inmates taken to the county jails are kept there until they have a date to go before a grand jury on the felony charge.

Bullock County Sheriff Raymond Rogers said jail officials worked with family members and community assistance programs to get valid housing arrangements for four of the seven sex offenders who have been affected by the act at his jail. The remaining three are homeless and are still in the Bullock County Jail, he said.

“The longest one I ever kept in my jail was for four months," Rogers said. “Their loved ones don’t want them. I have to keep calling the county they live in trying to help them find a place. It’s kind of like the jail is turning into a halfway house and we don’t have the people or the money for that."

Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen said the corrections department is aware of the problem and he’s offered to keep the sex offenders in the state prisons while they wait for their grand jury appearance.

But Attorney General Troy King, who pushed hard for passage of the act last year, said a better idea is to force all sex offenders to serve their full sentences instead of giving them less time for good behavior and parole.

King acknowledged the problem would still exist once the offenders served their full sentence, but said it would give them more time to find a valid address. He said the cost of keeping them in county jails is worth it to keep sex offenders off the streets longer.

Serving the full sentence merely stalls the problem until a later date, when even then they will be jailed because no one will tell them the address is bad. This speaks of a conspiracy of lawmakers and law enforcement to drain the public coffers. It also smacks of one constitutional violation on another. eAdvocate

“We put people in prisons to punish them. I think most people would say if I can keep a predator away from my children, away from hurting my grandchildren by paying to keep them in prison, I’ll pay to keep them in prison," he said. “Yes, we’re spending (taxpayer) money, but I don’t think anybody would say that’s not a good investment."

Allen said plans are already in place to expand programs that help inmates transition from prison to life outside the corrections system. Part of the program will be assisting inmates with housing and that will help them avoid giving addresses that aren’t in compliance, he said.

Bullock County attorney Johnny Waters said he’s eager to see what will be done to resolve the problem.

“You may have a man who’s been in prison for 15, 16 years on a rape charge. Now his family’s disowned him, momma and daddy says he can’t live with us, and he’s got no other family. He doesn’t even hardly have bus fare to get home," Waters said. “What does somebody in that scenario do? Nobody can answer that question for me. He’s basically thrown to the wind.

“There’s pros and cons to the law. Mainly it’s to keep people protected and I can understand that side of it. But on the other side you’ve got a person trying to do right. Somewhere there’s got to be a better answer." ..more.. by Desiree Hunter

LAPD skid row searches found unconstitutional

A judge orders a change in tactics used in the city's crime crackdown.
4-25-2007 California:

A federal judge has ruled that some Los Angeles police tactics in patrolling downtown are unconstitutional, raising questions about the city's successful campaign to dramatically reduce the number of crimes and homeless people.

U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson found that officers question — and at times search — parolees and probationers without evidence that they might have committed a crime, which the judge said was unconstitutional. He ordered the LAPD to change its practices.

City officials strongly disputed the judge's decision and said that police were acting within the law. If the city appeals the ruling, a higher court ultimately would have to decide the legal issues in the case.

The Los Angeles Police Department is in the midst of a major crackdown on downtown crime, having made 6,000 arrests in the last six months and recorded a 35% drop in crime. The crackdown has corresponded with a drop in downtown's street dwellers, from 1,800 last September to fewer than 750 last week, LAPD statistics show.

The changes come at a time when the once-blighted city center is undergoing gentrification. The LAPD has vowed to stop the rampant drug dealing on and around skid row, an area in which 20% of the city's drug arrests are made.

City officials have struggled for years to devise a policing policy for downtown that passes legal muster in its treatment of homeless people. A federal appeals court last year found the city's anti-camping ordinance to be unconstitutional, scuttling LAPD efforts to prevent the homeless from sleeping on downtown sidewalks at night.

Some legal experts said that Pregerson's decision had established another serious roadblock to the LAPD's drive to clean up downtown.

"It's an important decision," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. "It sort of resolves an argument percolating out there, that … the LAPD would have permission to stop anybody."

The ruling, she said, reaffirms "the right of the homeless not to be subjected to unwarranted, suspicionless searches. Even if they don't have much to their name, they still have their constitutional rights."

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit that Pregerson ruled on, maintained that police officers routinely stopped people and questioned them about their parole or probation status. Officers often handcuffed them and searched them without any reasonable suspicion of a crime, the organization charged in court papers.

The ACLU in 2003 won an injunction that barred the LAPD from stopping or searching skid row residents without reasonable suspicion that they had committed a crime or were violating parole or probation.

But after the crackdown began last year — with the LAPD adding 50 officers to patrol downtown — the ACLU and some homeless rights advocates charged that officers again were violating the rights of skid row residents by searching people improperly.

"These aren't just isolated instances where an officer was overzealous and crossed the line and searched in a situation where he or she shouldn't have," ACLU attorney Peter Bibring said.

Paul Johnson, a 10-year skid row resident, wrote in a declaration that was included in the ACLU's case that a person's parole status was "the first question they ask after asking your name."

The LAPD countered that officers searched a person on probation or parole only when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime — or when the person was caught for a violation such as littering or jaywalking.

But Pregerson disagreed with the LAPD's contention, concluding that ample evidence indicated that the Police Department had a policy "of searching skid row residents without knowledge of any search conditions imposed."

"The law does not allow such searches. Accordingly, the court finds that, even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to defendants, they have admitted to an unconstitutional policy," Pregerson wrote in his opinion.

The LAPD had cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court case in which justices upheld the right of police agencies to search parolees without knowledge that they had committed a crime. Pregerson, however, said that in that ruling, the justices stated that such a search could occur only if police first knew the conditions of each individual's parole.

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Police Chief William J. Bratton defended the department.

"The streets of skid row are much safer today, thanks to the dedication of the men and women of Central Area," Bratton said in the statement. "The LAPD has a clear policy, based on constitutional requirements, on the rules and regulations relating to citizen stops, which are being followed. The department constantly trains officers and supervisors on those rules and regulations and will continue to do so."

Pregerson ordered the LAPD to comply with all state and federal laws — with another review of the injunction set for August.

The decision comes at a tough time for city officials, who have vowed to clean up the skid row area — long the city's center for homeless camping and drug dealing.

Downtown has seen in influx of high-end lofts, condos and retail business on streets long dominated by homelessness and drug dealing.

The LAPD has won wide praise from downtown merchants and residents for cracking down on crime and blight. Since last fall, the LAPD has made 4,166 felony arrests and 1,727 misdemeanor arrests. "The LAPD is saving lives by the work they are doing here," said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., which represents businesses and merchants. "There's fewer people exposed to the violence, ensnared in daily drug markets and the inhumanity of the streets that exposes them to the elements."

It remains unclear to what degree arrests would decline as the LAPD complies with Pregerson's order.

"It reins in the use of probation and parole searches as just another authorization for warrantless police activity that would otherwise be governed by constitutional limits," said Gerald F. Uelman, a Santa Clara University law school professor.

James Hurley of the Homeless Health Care Center of Los Angeles' Harm Reduction program said he had seen a dramatic reduction in the number of people using the center's services. He said that people who used the center either had been sent to jail or were staying away from skid row.

"They still have nowhere to go," Hurley said, "and when they are released from custody or decide that it's safe to return, they will come right back into this community. We have created a much larger problem…. And they aren't creating more shelters. We are going to be right back in that situation when these people start to return." ..more.. by Cara Mia DiMassa and Richard Winton

Man Falsely Branded As Sex Offender

4-22-2005 Florida:

Dispute Started When Man Reported Neighbor For Peering Into His Windows

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A local man says he's been wrongly branded a sex offender in his own neighborhood.

Someone's posting sex offender fliers outside his house, but he's not the man on the flier and he's not a sex offender, WESH 2 News reported.

“It's been difficult, believe me,” said James F. Turner.

Pat and James Turner have been through a lot. Eight years ago, they survived a near fatal car accident. Four years ago, James Turner, a former Marine, had a golf ball-sized aneurysm burst in his brain.

“And none of that is as devastating as this is,” said his wife, Pat.

A flier started circulating in their neighborhood this month. Someone wrote that a registered sex offender from Maitland might now be living at the Turners' west Orlando address. Response was immediate.

“My grandkids were outside and they come in the house crying because no one wants to play with them. The neighbors give me dirty looks,” James Turner said.

Who would do this? Neighbor Marlene Morton admits she did. It started when the Turners reported Morton to authorities for peeking in their windows. Soon after, Morton says James Turner's "strange behavior" led her to check the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's sex offender database.

Admitted sex offender harassed during court hearing

5-4-2007 New Mexico:

FARMINGTON — An 18-year-old Aztec man who admitted to having sex with a 4-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy in December 2004 was harassed by a family member of one of the victims during a Wednesday hearing, according to his attorney, Emet Rudolfo.

Rudolfo said his client, Mitchell Martin, began crying after he was verbally attacked.

"There was an outburst, and someone said, I'm going to kill you,'" the attorney said. "Mitchell Martin started crying. When you see him, he's really timid. These other guys who were at the hearing looked tough and were threatening him. He started crying and didn't look back."

Rudolfo said he can understand the family's concern, adding he has two children of his own.

"It would break my heart and anger me if they were ever molested," he said. "But Mitchell has gone through hell himself as a kid. It doesn't justify what he did, but if that cycle's ever going to break, there needs to be some understanding to let him receive treatment."

Martin previously pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree felony criminal sexual penetration following allegations he raped two young children who were staying at his mother's Embarcadero apartment in Aztec on separate occasions.

The male victim, who was 4 years old when sexually abused, told San Juan County Sheriff's Office deputies that Martin forced him to engage in sexual acts while the two were watching pornographic movies in the teen's bedroom, court documents state.

Martin was also criminally charged following allegations he raped a 4-year-old girl on several occasions, while his teenaged friend twice watched the illicit acts, court documents state.

The victim later told police she never reported the incident because Martin said her mother would "get really mad at her" if she found out about the sexual acts. The girl further alleged that Martin also made her watch pornographic movies.

When police first interviewed Martin about the allegations Jan. 10, he denied the incidents. Eventually, he told officers, "Fine, I did it. Get me some help. I can't remember anything."

Martin's Wednesday court appearance was the teen's first since being ordered to undergo a 15-day evaluation at the Youth Development Diagnostic Center in Albuquerque to determine whether treatment at a juvenile facility would benefit him.

The hearing was continued because defense and prosecuting attorneys do not yet have a copy of the evaluation report, according to Assistant District Attorney Marguerite Carr.

Although District Judge Sandra Price has not yet scheduled a hearing date to determine whether Martin will be sentenced as an adult or as a juvenile, Carr said the judge tentatively set another hearing for May 23.

During that hearing, the judge will determine whether to sentence Martin as a juvenile or as an adult, and also may decide whether to send the teen to jail, prison or a treatment center, Carr said.

Martin could be sentenced as a juvenile because he was 15 years old when the two sexual offenses occurred. If sentenced as a juvenile, he will be released from a state facility in less than two and a half years when he turns 21.

However, if he is sentenced as an adult, he faces at least 30 years in prison. ..more.. by Rhys Saunders

Sex Offender Park

4-30-2007 California:

This new park in Sylmar will not only be a haven for kids, but could actually force sex offenders who live in this motel down the block out.

"They shouldn't be in motels with children walking around here. They should not be here."

There are at least eight sex offenders in the motel behind me. Some are placed here by the state; all of them here legally -- at least for now. But just down the block community members have built a park and once it officially opens, some of the sex offenders will be forced to move out.

People like Tomas Torres, convicted of lewd acts on a child. He could be forced to move because by law, some sex offenders can't live within a half-mile of a park.

Claudio Rodriguez is president of the Tessera Homeowners Association. They donated the land for the park. Rodriguez says at first some people actually were apprehensive.

"What was the fear that the park would do?" "Draw them closer. Some people are ruthless and everybody feared for kids. What would happen? Would my kids be stolen by somebody?"

Last year residents banded together and protested the placement of the sex offenders in another hotel in Sylmar. So it's no secret they're here.

But Rodriguez says it's just a coincidence that the building of the park could force them to move.

"Yeah that would be a plus but we still have to watch our kids." "I know there are a lot of sex offenders here."

The manager of the motel didn't want to comment.

The sex offenders weren't home or wouldn't open the doors when I tried to talk with them.

But other communities are looking at doing the same thing. Building a park that would beautify the scenery as well as the safety of their neighborhood. ..more.. by David Goldstein

See also: Board of Recreation Park and Commissioners report.