Gimeweb.com

By Bennie Walton
Activist for judicial Legislation Fairness (AJLF)
Thursday, June 18, 2009

As the title of this commentary suggests, Oprah Winfrey uses her social and financial power to leverage against Congressional Lawmakers to reauthorize the Adam Walsh Act (AWA). The Act has been reauthorized through 2014 apparently without any needed changes. This does not take away from the fact that many states do have a problem with some titles and subtitles, and chapters of the Act, and continue to refuse implementation until changes are made. Changes must be made in the following titles and subtitles of the Act from my perspective:

Title I – SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION AND NOTIFICATION ACT
Subtitle A – Sex Offender Registration and Notification.
Title II – FEDERAL CRIMINAL LAW ENHANCEMENTS NEEDED TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL ATTACKS AND OTHER VIOLENT CRIMES.

If the changes that will be enumerated are not changed to encompass rights, and protections within the United States Constitution including the Bill of Rights, then we will see what we have heard and seen in other states trying to implement the Adam Walsh Act through SORNA, a greater mass injustice hidden behind the color of child and its plural children.

This is a court case that was ruled very soundly, and if not overturned by a higher Court will give a serious blow to the various versions of the Adam Walsh Act that some states have adopted, but as seen all too often there is still conflict between judges who correctly rule state versions of the Adam Walsh Act unconstitutional because of the effects and their negative implication with ex post facto, punitive versus civil or regulatory, and the fact when state versions of the Adam Walsh Act are looked at in light of the effect of the law, and where a law is placed, whether in civil codes or criminal codes helps determine that state version as unconstitutional as far as Title I is concerned where the Attorney General under George W. Bush stated the retroactive application in Title I was not unconstitutional.
 
There are judges who still prefer giving deference to stated intent while ignoring the effect of a law, thus in a real sense manipulating the construct of a law to make a criminal law appear to be regulatory or civil in construct.
 
This court case is an interesting read and should not be forgotten. We will see more court cases and the conflict between judges over the constitutionality of state versions of the Adam Walsh Act. One judge and others have applied sound legal reasoning as applied to the Adam Walsh Act clearly shows that residency restrictions are punitive and thus are unconstitutional along with increasing the dangerousness and punitive effects of these laws without due process of law, and making registration retroactive in clear defiance of the US Constitution.

 

With this battle going on between jurists it will be some time before it is a clearly established fact that the Adam Walsh Act Title I, Section A is unconstitutional because no where in that federal statute do we find any penalties that are civil. All penalties in the statute carry a criminal penalty, and state versions of the AWA are normally found in criminal code not civil code, and the statue clearly is not remedial, and that along with other factors stated in the information to follow without a doubt demonstrates that the US Supreme Court was wrong in Smith v. Doe the Alaska registration law referenced by the US Attorney General, Gonzales under G.W. Bush, was wrong in acceptance as constitutional. The fight goes on in many court rooms and battle fronts.
 
We who want real justice without judicial manipulation as hinted by Justice Scalia will have to continue fighting for the unmistaken unconstitutional effect of the Adam Walsh Act and its guidelines SORNA until enough judges have ruled against the constitutionality of those federal statutes [Adam Walsh Act and the guidelines SORNA].