|
Megan's Law has Unintended Consequences
A 15-year-old girl is accused of distributing nude photos of herself to other minors, and one state legislator is questioning whether she should be labeled a sex offender.The Licking Valley High School student was arrested Friday after school officials discovered the materials and brought in the school's resource officer for a police investigation. After spending the weekend incarcerated, she pleaded deny Monday to both charges: illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, a second-degree felony; and possession of criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony. The child pornography charge for a convicted adult requires a Tier II sexual offender classification, but for a juvenile of this defendant's age, the judge has flexibility, said Jennifer Brindisi, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. "There's a part of juvenile section of Senate Bill 10 (Ohio's version of the federal Adam Walsh Act) that says if the child is a first-time offender and age 14 or 15 that the judge can decide not to make her register," she said. State Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, wrote the state's Megan's Law bill, the predecessor of the Adam Walsh Act, and said this case was not something the legislature envisioned. "Clearly it was in an illegal act," he said Tuesday. "Clearly it was an unacceptable act, and there needs to be consequences from that, but we need to make sure the punishment is a reasonable punishment." Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-10-15 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=252749 |