LA- Father who shot molester is freed from prison early

4-10-2003 Louisiana:

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Gov. Mike Foster granted early release to a man imprisoned for shooting his 13-year-old daughter's molester, saying the father should not serve more time than the girl's attacker.

Foster gave Allie "Bo" Johnson double credit for good behavior, allowing him to go free after serving nearly three years of a seven- year sentence for attempted manslaughter.

"This does not mean I condone his actions," Foster said in a statement. "I do not support taking the law into your own hands."

The case has drawn widespread attention, including a petition drive calling for Johnson's release.

In 1998, the girl told her parents that Donald Wayne Spears had taken her and two other girls into a wooded area and molested two of them.

Johnson said he and his wife, frustrated by the pace of the Beauregard Parish Sheriff's investigation, lured Spears to an out-of- the-way road, where Johnson shot him.

Spears survived the shooting and later served two years and eight months in prison on two counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile. ..Source.. by Deseret News Publishing Co.

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Shooter of alleged molester may go free

4-2-2003:

The state Pardon Board voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend that the governor release a man serving time for shooting his daughter's accused molester.

The decision by the Louisiana Board of Pardons means Allie "Bo" Johnson, 47, can leave prison now if Gov. Mike Foster signs off on the recommendation.

Johnson, who has been in prison for almost three years, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to attempted manslaughter.

He shot Donald Wayne Spears in May 1998, after their daughter accused Spears of fondling her and another young girl while a third girl was forced to watch.

TX- Death-row inmate stabbed 54 times, listed as stable

11-5-1998 Texas:

Convicted capital murderer Robert James Anderson remained in serious but stable condition Wednesday after he was stabbed 54 times Tuesday by prison inmates.

Anderson was sentenced to die in 1993 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 5-year-old Audra Ann Reeves of Amarillo.

The 32-year-old death-row inmate was found bleeding in his cell in the Ellis Unit at Huntsville at 12:15 p.m., said Huntsville spokesman Larry Todd. Anderson was transported by ambulance to a prison hospital in Galveston where he remained Wednesday, Todd said.

After the attack, the Ellis Unit wing where Anderson and other death-row inmates are housed, was locked down, Todd said. The lock-down was over at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Internal investigators spoke with several suspects and are holding two suspects in solitary cells while the investigation continues, Todd said.

Twenty-three puncture wounds were counted on Anderson's left arm, 15 in his chest, 11 in the abdomen, four in his back and one in the head, Todd said.

Investigators said blood was found in the hall outside Anderson's cell, and a shank, possibly made from a fence, was found in a nearby trash can.

Reeves' body was found on June 9, 1992, in an ice chest that had been dropped in a Dumpster in Amarillo.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a motion for rehearing the case in 1996.

The court had upheld his conviction and death sentence a month earlier. ..Source.. by HOLLY PARKER, Globe-News Staff Writer

Fake Notices, Illegal Publicity in NJ

3-20-1998 New Jersey:

Dozens of phony notices were circulated in a New Jersey housing development in early March, falsely accusing a high school guidance counselor of being a convicted sex offender.

The county prosecutor has begun an investigation, and sent letters to every resident of the housing development saying that the fliers were fake. (New York Times 3/20/98)

Earlier this year, a local New Jersey paper printed a front page story containing information, including a photograph, from a flier distributed under the state's notification act.

The state's attorney general denounced publication of the information by the press as improper and said that vigilantism as to known sex offenders would not be tolerated.

Governor Christie Whitman claimed that such incidents were not within the intention of those who had supported passage of the law. (AP, 1/21/98) ..more.. by March 1998 Defender News from NYSDA's Public Defense Backup Center REPORT

Neighbor arrested in Megan's Law vigilante case

7-1-1998 New Jersey:
LINDEN, N.J. (AP) -- Soon after Jimmy Johnson received a flier notifying him that a high-risk sex offender lived in the neighborhood, he shot a gun five times into the house where the man lived, police and a family friend said.

Johnson, 23, was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault and weapons offenses in the June 16 shooting of sex offender Frank Penna's home.

No one was injured in the shooting.

"A lot of children are in this neighborhood, and he doesn't want anything to happen to these children," said family friend Ramone Hamilton. "He did something that he felt was right."

After hours of questioning at the police department Tuesday, Johnson eventually confessed to firing five bullets into Penna's home, said Police Detective Frank Leporino.

The bullets pierced windows and walls of an upstairs apartment, some nearly hitting a woman living there.

Johnson was held on $150,000 bail at the Union County Jail and was to appear in court on Thursday or Friday.

Penna, 55, had lived in the basement of his childhood home since 1992, after he was paroled from a 99-year sentence for raping two teen-age girls in the 1970s. Neighbors were notified in fliers in early June that he was a high-risk sex offender.

Megan's Law, passed in 1995, is named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl raped and killed by her neighbor. It requires authorities to notify neighbors when a high-risk sex offender is living nearby.

The law's notification provision has been challenged in state and federal courts by critics who say it amounts to extra punishment and invades the sex offenders' privacy. A federal appeals court upheld the law in August and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal this year.

Attorney General Peter Verniero condemned vigilante attacks but defended the law at a news conference on Tuesday.

"Megan's Law is not about violence or retribution," Verniero said. "The law's purpose is to inform those most vulnerable so they might take lawful steps to protect themselves."

Authorities have said the shooting was a Megan's Law vigilante case, but have refused to say what evidence they have. ..more.. by News-Star

Deputies Are Tied to Beatings of Molestation Suspects

2-27-1998 California:

LOS ANGELES | At least six and possibly as many as 14 Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies are under criminal investigation for allegedly encouraging trusties - inmates who have been granted special privileges - to brutally beat inmates accused of child molestation, according to sources and department officials.

The agency's investigation into the deputies' alleged misconduct began several weeks ago, after an accused sex offender told jail administrators that he had been beaten by other inmates. Several trusties later said deputies had urged them to participate in the attacks, the sources said.

The sheriff's internal affairs investigators are looking into a dozen cases in which molestation suspects were either beaten or injured at the jail. The beaten inmates' injuries ranged from bumps and bruises to broken facial bones, said sheriff's custody chief Barry King.

So far, a deputy and a civilian employee have been relieved of duty in connection with the beatings, officials say. More suspensions are expected.

“The deputies would give the trusties the housing location of the inmates so they could go down there and beat the hell out of them,” a source familiar with the investigation said. “Or they would send the inmate into the day room and the trusties would go in en masse ... This is strictly brutality,” the source said. ..more.. by The University of Washington Student Newspaper

Neighbors block sex offender from moving in by buying his home

8-13-1998 Oregon:
DILLEY, Ore. - When people in Dilley learned that a child molester was about to move in, they talked of getting guard dogs, arming themselves, burning down his home, even killing him. In the end, they did something more peaceful: They bought the house out from under him.

At least three families pooled their money and struck a $250,000 deal to buy his mother's house, where he was going to live when he got out of prison.

"If we didn't do everything possible to protect our children, we'd never forgive ourselves if something happened," Christie Unger said. "If all we lose is money, it's worth the peace of mind."

Child abuse experts and law enforcement officials said it's the first time a community has tried to block a molester from moving in by buying him out.

Jonathan I. Hawes, 29, has served nearly five years in prison for sexually abusing two 10-year-old girls in 1993. He had followed them from school to the home of one of the girls, and broke in.

Hawes is due to be released Tuesday, and had planned to move into his mother's house at the bottom of Puma Lane, about 200 feet from a school bus stop. Six families with 10 children live along the winding dirt road.

Over the past few months, the neighbors in this community of 300 to 400 people about 25 miles from Portland looked into buying guard dogs and studied up on when they could legally use deadly force.

"We wanted to persuade him that we hated him so much that people here were bearing arms," said Unger's husband, Paul, whose house at the top of the road is a playground for his four grandchildren, with a pool, riding stables, a trampoline and a collection of gumball machines.

At a community meeting held July 22 to discuss the situation with Hawes' mother, 50-year-old Wendy Brewton, tempers flared.

"The least violent thing I heard was to burn down his house," said Steven Fredricksen, a father of two.

At one point, a community member got in Brewton's face and shouted, "When can I kill him?! When can I kill him?!" Christie Unger recalled.

Cooler heads prevailed.

"It was just something I blurted out: 'We'd rather buy them out than burn them out,"' Christie Unger said.

Eventually, Fredericksen's family and at least two others agreed to pay Brewton the average of two state-approved appraisals on her 27 acres and prefabricated house. Strangers also pledged money to help the deal go through.

"If everyone in the community hates you, wants to sue you, wants to do you bodily harm, do you really have options at this point?" Brewton said.

The neighbors will put down $50,000 and take out a mortgage for the rest. They expect to close on the property by October, then they'll turn around and sell it. Brewton and her son's parole officer admitted they don't know where Hawes will go when he gets out of prison, but it won't be his mother's house.

Under Oregon's version of Megan's Law, the 1996 federal statute requiring states to notify neighborhoods when a sex offender moves in, police can alert neighbors only when the offender is classified as predatory. It has not been determined how Hawes will be classified, but Brewton's daughter told neighbors of his impending arrival.

Parole officer Bob Severe said Brewton's house appeared to meet basic surveillance requirements for freed sex offenders because it sits isolated from children in the middle of 27 acres of pasture. But neighbors say the site - nestled in chest-high grass miles away from the nearest police station - provides perfect cover for a sexual predator.

"They should put him in a place where he can be watched, not be watching us. He's got plenty of old tractors on the land to bury bodies with," Christie Unger said.

Severe said the neighbors' concerns are understandable but exaggerated.

"When you're dealing with a crime like this, you can never say people are cured, but our experience shows that the number of re-offenders is very small," the parole officer said, estimating it at lower than 10 percent in Washington County.

Brewton, an emergency room nurse who, coincidentally, treated one her son's victims, is confident he can be rehabilitated. But the people on Puma Lane don't want to be his neighbors while it happens.

"There may be people who feel they need a second chance," said Darlene Larson, "and those people should come forward with their addresses." ...more... by Hans Greimel