The Supreme Court of New Mexico is pondering a question that's very important to many California sex crimes lawyers - does a person who has been convicted of a sex offense in California, have to register when he moves to another state?

The case involves 65-year-old Bruce Hall, who pleaded no-contest to charges of child molestation13 years ago. The specific charges against him were misdemeanor annoying and molesting a child.

Hall is still included in California's sex offender registry, but the website does not mention his whereabouts. He later moved to Las Cruces in New Mexico. However, he did not register as a sex offender there.

In 2008, prosecutors in Dona Ana County charged him with a 4th degree felony, and tried to force him to register as a sex offender in that state. He appealed, and the New Mexico Court Of Appeals ruled in his favor, finding that he did not have to register as a sex offender in that state, because New Mexico has no law which is equivalent to the one that he was convicted of violating when he was in California. Now, the state of New Mexico is asking the Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

According to Hall’s attorneys, the law that he's convicted of breaking in California does not exist in New Mexico. In New Mexico, a person must commit at least one out of 11 specific crimes to register as a sex offender. Annoying and molesting children are not among those crimes. However, prosecutors deny this, and say that the State of New Mexico does indeed have a law that is similar to the one that Hall was accused of breaking.

A decision here would determine the responsibilities of a person who is convicted of a sex crime in California and has moved to another state.

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A bill that has just been proposed by a California lawmaker has the interest of California criminal defense attorney’s; the bill would make any kind of romantic relationship between a teacher and a student, a crime. This sounds like a lawmaker’s overreaction to some of the teacher sexual abuse cases that have hit the headlines recently.

Under the proposal by Representative Kristin Olsen, teachers who are dating their students, or are in a romantic relationship with a student, would be charged with a felony crime. The teacher would be charged with a crime even if the student was an adult.

The bill is called the Safe Student Act, and would make it a felony offense for any employee of a public school system to begin any kind of sexual relationship or romantic relationship, or even have excessive communication with any student of any age, even one who is above the legal age of consent.

The bill will be part of a package of bills drafted in response to the Miramonte Elementary School sexual abuse scandal earlier this year. A veteran teacher at the school was arrested and charged with numerous crimes, after it was found that he had photographed children in various situations.

According to Representative Olsen, she was alerted to the need for legislation like this after she became aware of the James Hooker case. In that case, a 41-year-old high school teacher quit his job and left his family after he began a relationship with an 18-year-old student. The two have insisted that their sexual relationship only began after the student turned 18, and no charges have been filed against the man.

According to Olson, teachers, principals and other employees of a school are in a position of authority and power, and as such, it is important to make sure that these persons do not violate the trust that students and their parents have in them.

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A federal appeals court has ruled that juvenile offenders in California can be required to register as sex offenders for at least 25 years. According to the 9th US Circuit Court Of Appeals in San Francisco, a law passed in 2006 that excluded sex offenders aged 14 and above from juvenile law confidentiality protections did not violate the persons’ constitutional rights.

The ruling came in a case involving 3 Montana youths, who were accused of forcible sex crimes on Indian reservations. These persons were aged between 14 and 17 at the time. Because the crimes occurred on American Indian reservations, the 3 were subjected to federal prosecution.

Now, the court has held that the men must register as sex offenders for 25 years after their release from custody. They must register within a month after being released, and must keep authorities aware of their whereabouts.

Their lawyers argued that requiring a potentially lifelong registration requirement for the offenders was cruel and unusual punishment and violated their constitutional rights. However, the Appeals Court has disagreed.

The persons will now be required to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. They will be subjected to all requirements of lifelong registration including informing officials about their whereabouts, and entering their names in the federal government registry, a government database that is accessible to the public.

Conviction of a sex crime is a serious matter, dramatically impacting the rest of a person’s life. As California sex crimes lawyers find, a person who has been convicted of a sex crime may be subjected to penalties that continue long after his prison term has been concluded. Inclusion in a sex offender registry is just one of those penalties. A registrant is required to inform local law enforcement officials about changes in name and address, and also faces restrictions on where he or she can live and work.

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A rule change by the FBI will soon extend the definition of rape to include male victims. The change comes after calls from victims’ advocates who have long protested the narrow definition of rape that only includes female victims.

Currently, rape as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and employed by California criminal defense lawyers, refers to the ‘carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.’ The change will modify that definition to define rape as the ‘penetration of another person regardless of the gender of the person, without the person's consent.’ The new definition of rape will also include penetration of other persons, both males and females, using a variety of objects.

The need for a new definition of rape that takes into consideration crimes against male victims too, has been felt for several years now. In September, a survey that included police chiefs of major cities found that 80% of them believed that the old definition of rape was not adequate in modern times. The FBI director has already approved the new rule change, which is expected to be phased in over the next 3 years.

Victims’ groups have strongly supported the new definition of rape, saying that this will allow for more accurate tracking of sexual assault crimes across the country. Because the current definition of rape does not include male victims and certain types of assault, there has been a discrepancy in the number of sexual assault crimes that are actually committed across the country, and the numbers that are reported to the federal agency.

This difference in the definition of rape has led to discrepancies in federal data. For instance, while the FBI recorded 84,757 rapes in 2010, the National Crime Victimization Survey by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded a total of 188,380 sexual assaults that year. A more inclusive definition will help bring more victims into the fold, delivering more accurate tracking results, and helping prevent such crimes.

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It’s a little rare for California criminal defense attorneys to come across a possession of child porn case involving witnesses. A University of Utah professor has pleaded not guilty to charges of watching child porn on his laptop aboard a Boston-bound flight.

Professor Grant Smith is a professor in the University of Utah's materials science and engineering department. He was arrested on Saturday, soon after he disembarked at Boston airport. He was seated in the first class section on the flight when a passenger seated right behind him, found Smith watching child porn images on his laptop. He became concerned, and took cell phone pictures of the professor in the act. The man then informed the flight attendant. The flight attendant e-mailed a relative, and asked the person to inform police. Police were waiting for the professor when the plane landed.

According to prosecutors, when the flight attendant told the professor to turn off his laptop, he became concerned and tried to delete the images of child porn. Police checked the contents of the laptop at the airport, and found several images of nude and semi-new children, including girls as young as 6 years old.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, the penalties against Professor Smith have already begun. Smith has no criminal record, and has been an employee of the University of Utah for the past 14 years. The University has already placed him on administrative leave. If convicted, the university is likely to fire him.

In California, persons who have been convicted of possession of child pornography can face up to one year in a county jail and up to 3 years in state prison. The most devastating consequence may be mandatory registration in a federal sex offender registry for life.

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A Hawaii-based entertainer, who was arrested last month for sex crimes in California, has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual abuse of minors. Sixty-six-year-old Cecilio Rodriguez has been charged with abuse of children under 14. The suspected abuse occurred in the 1990s.

Rodriguez is a renowned entertainer in Hawaii, and is part of the musical duo, Cecilio and Kapono. He was arrested in September after one of the victims admitted the abuse to her father, who then contacted the police. The women were apparently family friends of the entertainer. If convicted, Rodriguez could face a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

Sex crimes are some of the most serious offenses, and persons who are convicted of these offenses can be sentenced to imprisonment, and required to register in a sex offender registry. Registration can severely limit a person's options for living and working. For instance, a person who has been convicted of a sex offense cannot live close to a school, park or any other place where children gather, once he is released or paroled. Since the definition of “where children can gather” can include a vast number of locations, this severely limits the accommodation options open to those convicted of sex offenses.

No one denies that it's important to keep children safe from sexual predators. However, such protection should not come at the cost of incarcerating innocent people. Unfortunately, in sex crime cases, Los Angeles sex crimes defense attorneys often find that persons are presumed to be guilty until proven innocent - a gross violation of their rights.

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A new book by Roger Lancaster, professor of cultural studies at George Mason University, is forcing the review of popular attitudes towards sex offender registries. In the book, Lancaster argues that these registries are not just ineffective in preventing sex crimes, but as California criminal defense lawyers also find, also unfair to the millions of people who are included in registries with barely any violation to their name.

In the book, Lancaster talks of the unfairness of a registry system that prevents sex offenders from living or working within 2000 feet of a school, playground or any other place where children gather under Jessica's Law. Such restrictions dramatically reduce a person's chances of living a normal life after incarceration, and defeat any attempt to reintegrate the person into society. According to Lancaster, we should rethink this approach, which resembles techniques of governance in authoritarian or even totalitarian states.”

He also compares the sex offender registry system in the United States with that in Britain, which also requires sex offenders to register themselves. However, in Britain, the number of persons actually on sex offender registries is much more limited, and is a much smaller proportion of the population.

In order to understand how sex offender laws in the United States have run riot, consider this - in the United States, the ratio of registered sex offenders to the general population is 228 per 100,000. In Britain, the ratio is 46 per 100,000. Additionally, in Britain, the majority of offenders are classified as minimal risk, and require low supervision. Information from the registries is closely guarded, and can be accessed only by parole officers, law enforcement officers and other interested parties.

This is unlike in the United States, where anybody can access a sex offender registry, and make uniformed assumptions about a person's character based on his inclusion in the registry. Further, in the United States, a substantial chunk of sex offender registrants are those involved in relationships simply because one of the persons involved in the relationship was under the age of eighteen.

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Los Angeles criminal defense lawyers expect charges to be filed soon in a California case involving a possible sex crime that was revealed after the distribution of a high school yearbook. 

The alleged crime came to light when a photograph showing a 17-year-old male student at Big Bear High School with his hand inside the dress of a 15-year-old female student, was published in the yearbook.  The two were in the background of a photo of a school dance.

According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office, it is likely that a sex crime had taken place, because penetration likely occurred.  Whether charges of sex crimes will be filed against the two or not, may be left to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.  The boy in this case may be charged with either a felony or misdemeanor.

The 2011 yearbook at Big Bear High School was distributed about two weeks ago.  The photograph was brought to the notice of the high school authorities, at which point, the yearbooks were recalled.  The high school then notified the sheriff's office about the photograph.  All the students were asked to bring in their yearbooks, so that the photograph could be removed from the books.  Those students who failed to bring back the yearbooks could even be charged with possession of child pornography.  Most of the yearbooks have been returned, except two.  Those two students have been contacted by the school, and have been ordered to bring their books back.

If the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office finds that there are grounds for charges to be filed against the boy in the picture, then he could be possibly facing charges of sex assault of a minor.   If convicted, the boy could even have to register as a sex offender.  There may even be additional charges of possession of child pornography against those who fail to return their yearbooks.

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