Sex offender law revised

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Five months after the Hawai'i Supreme Court declared the state's sex offender registration law unconstitutional, the Legislature approved a new bill that lawmakers say corrects the flaw in the original and restores the public's capacity to track sexual predators.

The bill, which the governor is expected to sign into law, will allow a sex offender's name, aliases, current address, future address, work affiliations, vehicle information, criminal offense summary and a recent photograph, among other things, to be posted on the Internet.

But even if the bill does become law, deputy attorney general Kurt Spohn said it could be awhile before folks can log on to the registry.

That's because the due process additions under the new bill mean that every one of the hundreds of sex offenders in Hawai'i must be given a court hearing in which to argue whether he or she belongs on the public register.

And the state has the burden of proving that the "release of relevant information is necessary to protect the public," according to the bill.

"Of course I'm happy that the bill was passed," said Peter Carlisle, Honolulu prosecutor. "We think that people are entitled to have the information to protect themselves and their families."

Hawai'i's original version of Megan's Law went into effect on the first day of 1996, and the state joined a growing number of others with registries that allow the public to track sex offenders on the Internet.

"Megan's Law" came about nationwide after 7-year-old Megan Kanka was murdered in 1994 by a convicted pedophile who lived in her New Jersey neighborhood unbeknownst to her family.

But on Nov. 21, 2001, the Hawai'i Supreme Court unanimously declared Hawai'i's version unconstitutional because it violated a sex offender's right to due process.

At the time, about 550 registered sex offenders were on the public listing.

The new Sex Offender Registration Bill addresses the Supreme Court's concerns with the original law, Spohn said.

Carlisle was vocal in his opposition to last year's court ruling that shut down the state's online registry site and cut off public access to the information.

But critics of the law said it unfairly punished those who had served their sentences.

ACLU attorney Earle Partington called the new bill a "small step in the right direction."

But he agrees that it probably complies with the constitutional requirements, because it deals with repeat offenders and not those convicted of a single misdemeanor sexual offense.

The Supreme Court did not address the state's sex offender registry — which is still in use by law enforcement agencies.

In a nutshell, the State Supreme Court said that while the registration law is legal, posting the names of registered sex offenders on a Web site violated the offenders' right to due process.

"What they said is that before you can give public notification, the defendant has to be given notice and the opportunity to be heard on the issue of whether he poses a danger to society," Spohn said.

The court overturned the law after an appeal by Eto Bani, who had pleaded no contest to fourth-degree sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl.

Bani successfully argued that he should not have been automatically added to the public registry without being given a chance to challenge the law.

Bani lawyers argued that he posed no danger to the public, and the court agreed.

The trouble with the original Megan's Law, according to Partington, was that the "Legislature really did a knee jerk reaction to a public outcry and did not bother to look at the consequences."

The new bill would exempt anyone "convicted of a single misdemeanor sexual offense."

Every state has some form of sex offender laws, and about three dozen states provide sex offender information either at online registries or local law enforcement agency Web pages. For the most part, sex offender laws have withstood court challenges.

On May 17, 1996, President Clinton signed Megan's Law, which required every state and the federal government to register anyone convicted of sex crimes against children. The information about registered sex offenders was required to be available to the public.

The action was deemed necessary because pedophiles pose a high risk of recommitting crimes against children after their release.

The criteria for implementing the law was left to individual states.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.