This may be one: When people who have been in prison return to society, society wants them to be rehabilitated, commit no more offenses, find employment, and be positive, contributing societal members. Indeed, one would be hard-put to find someone who said he disagreed with that.

And of course, while some with past criminal convictions will not live up to that, many will.

Luke Heimlich did; he had a lucrative career in baseball.

Steven Striegel, an actor, was happy to have even small roles as long as he was working.

Bruce Habowski is an accomplished artist whose work hung proudly in the University of Maine’s art gallery.

And Artimus Pyle, a musician of long standing, has. Once with the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, he has had his own band since 2013, the Artimus Pyle band, and according to venue organizers averages eighteen concerts a year.

Most recently the band is booked to headline one of the nights of the popular Historic Morganton Festival held in September each year in Morganton, North Carolina. However, a petition has been created to remove Mr. Pyle from the program.

In 1993 Artimus Pyle was placed on the sex offender registry in Florida after a no-contest plea conviction for attempted sexual battery, charges that he denies. The discovery of Pyle’s name on the registry prompted the petition, initiated by someone who withholds his name but is identified only as “Concerned Citizen.”

According to statements made by Mr. Pyle to WSOC-TV, he has lost jobs before due to his inclusion on the registry.

If Morganton holds fast to their current status, he won’t lose this one.

Unlike Luke, whose career was destroyed, unlike Steven whose scenes were cut and career ground to a halt, unlike Bruce whose art was pulled from the gallery, Artimus has, at least for now, found a champion.

The board of directors for the festival said that he had been completely open with them about his past. In announcing their decision to keep the Artimus Pyle Band in their festival lineup, they said, “It is significant that many of the concerts, which the Artimus Pyle Band has performed in recent years, have been in public venues such as auditoriums or outdoor stages, all without inappropriate incidents.”

We may all say that we want those with past criminal convictions to build meaningful lives and enter society as contributing members, but the actions of all too many show that to be untrue.

Thankfully, the Historic Morganton Festival, Inc. Board of Directors are showing their beliefs by their actions. They are to be commended.

Those points, which should be obvious, are a sadly necessary corrective to the hysteria that has driven legislators in one state after another to enact indiscriminate, mindlessly restrictive, and covertly punitive laws aimed at sex offenders. ASORCNA, which Watkins calls “the most comprehensive and debilitating sex-offender scheme in the nation,” is a prime example.

The lead plaintiff in this case, dubbed John Doe 1, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure in the early 1990s, when he was living in Wisconsin. He received a six-month suspended sentence for each charge and was not required to register as a sex offender, even after moving to Alabama in 1994. But 14 years later, Alabama expanded its registry, forcing Doe to comply with ASORCNA’s numerous demands and restrictions under threat of imprisonment. Among other things, that meant his driver’s license was marked with the phrase “CRIMINAL SEX OFFENDER” in bold red letters. Here is how Doe describes the consequences of that notation:

I have never felt so embarrassed and ashamed in all of my life. I would not wish showing this on my worst enemy. It makes me not want to go places where I have to show it, and I try not to go places where I know I will have to. But every week, there is some places that ask me to show it, and every time, I get them evil looks from people—like I’m a murderer or something. I done paid for what I did over 25 years ago. Nobody should have to carry this. It ain’t right, but I don’t have a way out.

On Monday, Judge Watkins ruled that Alabama’s branding of registered sex offenders’ identification cards is a form of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment. “The branded-ID requirement compels speech,” he writes, “and it is not the least restrictive means of advancing a compelling state interest.” The state conceded that its ostensible purpose of alerting police officers to a sex offender’s status could be served by a much less conspicuous mark, such as a letter, that the general public would not readily recognize as a badge of shame. “Using one letter would keep officers informed while reducing the unnecessary disclosure of information to others,” Watkins notes.

Another aspect of Alabama’s “debilitating sex-offender scheme” is a requirement that people in the registry report “email addresses or instant message addresses or identifiers used, including any designations or monikers used for self-identification in Internet communications or postings other than those used exclusively in connection with a lawful commercial transaction.” Registrants also have to keep the authorities apprised of “any and all Internet service providers” they use. The information, which includes mundane activities such as logging into a Wi-Fi network outside the home or registering with a website to comment on news articles, must be reported within three business days, and local law enforcement agencies have the discretion to demand that it be done in person.

That requirement also violates the First Amendment, Watkins concluded. “An offender must report to the police every time he connects to a Wi-Fi spot at a new McDonald’s, every time he uses a new computer terminal at a public library, every time he borrows a smartphone to read the news online, and every time he anonymously comments on a news article,” he writes. “Every time he walks into a new coffee shop, he must determine whether opening his laptop is worth the hassle of reporting.” Those burdens “chill a wide swath of protected speech under penalty of felony,” Watkins says, making the law “facially overbroad.”

Watkins notes that the demand for information about online activity applied to Doe and the other four plaintiffs even though their offenses had nothing to do with the internet or children. And like other ASORCNA provisions, such as its restrictions on residency and employment, the rule applies for life, even though the risk of recidivism for most offenders declines over time to the point that registrants pose no greater threat than the average person. “The failure to account for risk is a problem throughout ASORCNA,” Watkins observes. “Not all sex crimes are the same. Nor are all offenders the same.”

That’s a striking statement from a judge who was appointed by George W. Bush just two years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Alaska’s sex offender registry based partly on fictitious recidivism numbers that continue to influence state and federal courts. It’s a message that judges and legislators throughout the country need to hear.

Source: Reason.com