A veteran Montgomery County lawmaker plans to introduce legislation that would require only individuals convicted of sexually motivated crimes to register as sex offenders in the state.
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| Sen. Stewart Greenleaf |
Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Upper Moreland, confirmed Friday that he is drafting a bill that would restrict so-called Megan’s Law registration obligations for four offenses that currently require individuals to register as a sex offender even if the crime was not sexually motivated. He cited data provided by the state’s Sexual Offender Assessment Board as supporting his proposed legislation.
Those findings show nearly half of the 23 cases the board assessed since Dec. 20, 2012, where individuals were convicted of false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, kidnapping of a minor or attempted kidnapping of a minor, and interference with custody of children, or some combination of those offenses were “clearly not sexual in nature.” The state’s current sex offender registration law, which includes those crimes, took effect on that date.
The board is responsible for determining if a convicted sex offender meets the definition of a sexually violent predator, which means they pose the highest risk for re-offending.
Since the current law took effect, the board has assessed 11 individuals convicted of false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, kidnapping of a minor or attempted kidnapping, and found in five cases there was no sexual motivation. Of 12 individuals convicted only of interference with custody of children, five of the cases involved no sexual motivation.
The state’s version of the federal Adam Walsh Act provides parents and legal guardians of victim children registration exemptions for three of the four offenses, but not for interference with custody of children. That changed earlier this year when it was included in amendment that tweaked Pennsylvania’s sex offender registration law. The state Supreme Court had found parts of the law were unconstitutional, and the changes were made to keep an estimated 12,000 ex-sex offenders on the registry who otherwise might have been removed.
Last year an investigation by this news organization revealed that at least 34 of 45 Pennsylvania residents convicted of interference with custody of children, a crime that carries a 15-year mandatory sex offender registration obligation, had no known record of committing a sexual crime; at least one quarter of those 34 offenders were noncustodial parents convicted of violating a court order or otherwise improperly taking their own children. Other offenders were convicted after committing crimes such as stealing a car with a child passenger.
Since Gov. Tom Wolf signed the stop-gap into law in February, the names of 28 of those 34 offenders convicted of interference with custody of children have been removed from the sex offender registry. Overall, the number of active sex offenders on the registry has dropped from more than 22,000 to 19,174.
Earlier this year at a hearing on a proposed bill to change the sex offender registration law, Greenleaf, who chairs of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concerns about “unintended consequences” — such as individuals convicted of crimes with no sexual components being forced to register as sex offenders — as a result of expanding the number of offenses requiring registration under the federal Adam Walsh Act.
Greenleaf, who is retiring at the end of this year, expressed optimism that his fellow lawmakers would support with his proposed bill.
“I’m not going to give up on it,” he said. “They’ll have a hard time defending those four matters particularly.”
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