Final weeks to focus on purposes, offense, offender, sentencing and post-sentencing for sex offenders

A number of stories I have recently covered on my blog leads me to conclude we would usefully bring our semester to an informative and challenging close by giving special attention to the uniquely dynamic purposes, offense/offender, sentencing/post-sentencing issues raised by an array of sex offenses and offenders.  Though I will assign some formal readings from our casebook on these topics on Tuesday, I will kick off this final segment of the course by urging everyone to cruise through the Sex Offender Sentencing archive on my main blog looking for stories they find especially interesting and thus worthy of in-class discussion.

To highlight how dynamic and challenging sex offender sentencing issues can be, consider these posts concerning notable sex offender sentencing rulings and stories making headlines just in the past few weeks and months:

Distinct goals/purposes issues:

• Depressing news that sentencing toughness is doing little to deter child porn offenses
  

• California Supreme Court rules blanket sex-offender residency restriction fails rational basis review
  

• Yet again, Sixth Circuit reverses one-day sentence for child porn downloading as substantively unreasonable

 

 Distinct offense considerations:

• Based on "discovery violation," Florida appeals court reverses convictions for defendant given LWOP sentence for first child porn possession conviction

• Controversy surrounding California judge who sentenced 19-year-old child rapist way below mandatory minimum 25-year-term

• Oregon Supreme Court to consider constitutionality of LWOP sentence for public pubic promotion

 

Distinct offender considerations:

• "Reality check: Is sex crime genetic?"
  

• Should age matter at sentencing of elderly child molester?

• Did serial rapist, former NFL star Darren Sharper, benefit from celebrity justice in global plea deal?

 

Distinct post-sentencing consequences and concerns:

• Can a sheriff prohibit sex offenders from a church that is sometimes a school?
  

• Federal judge finds unconstitutional "geographic exclusion zones" for sex offenders in Michigan
  

• First Circuit creates hard and firm standards before allowing sex offender penile plethysmograph testing

I would be especially grateful if student come to class on Tuesday having reviewed many of these linked stories and with an opinion about which aspect(s) of sex offender sentencing they would like us to focus particularly upon in the final weeks of class.