AUGUSTA – Convicted sex offenders and members of their families called Tuesday for big changes in Maine’s sex offender registry.

But members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee said lawmakers are limited by federal law in what can be changed – even if they agreed that changes were needed.

Maine State Police investigators determined that earlier this year a Nova Scotia man looked at the state’s sex offender registry Web site before he traveled to Maine, where he killed William Elliott of Corinth and Joseph Gray of Milo before killing himself when police were about to arrest him.

Those murders prompted the review of Maine’s registry law that led to the hearings.

“The addresses should not be listed there for vigilantes to come to their homes and murder them outright in their doorway,” said Shirley Turner, Elliott’s mother. He was shot and killed on Easter Sunday at his home.

She urged lawmakers to change the current sex offender registry to remove offenders like her son, who she said had had sex with his underage girlfriend, and limit the information posted on the publicly available Web site.

Several witnesses repeated the theme that Maine’s law treats all offenders the same, regardless of the risk they pose to the community.

“He is not a sexual predator or a rapist or a violent sexual criminal. He is a young man that fell in love with a girl who lied about her age,” said Steve Perry of Raymond of his son Joshua. He said his son is serving time at the Windham Correctional Facility for having sex with his underage girlfriend.

“I would ask you to please change the registry so that other young men are not put on this list,” Perry said.

Several sex offenders testified that their lives have been ruined because of what they did, even when it was a one-time mistake and not a long-term pattern of behavior.

“What the sex offender registry in the state of Maine does is to allow persecution of registered offenders,” said Basil Rehill of Brownfield. “Registrants are murdered and discriminated against.”

Rehill was convicted of “open and gross lewdness” under Massachusetts law while living in that state. He told lawmakers his conviction was the result of “pornography addiction” and that he has never been a violent sexual predator.

“But that is what people think because I am on the sex offender registry,” he said.

While some called for lawmakers to abolish the registry or limit its access to law enforcement, Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, co-chair of the committee, told the hearing a new federal law limits what states can do.

“We are going to have to comply with federal law, and it says we must have a registry,” he said.

Rep. Pat Blanchette, D-Bangor, the House co-chair of the committee, agreed, but said in an interview she believes lawmakers need to make changes to reflect the risk an offender is to the public and not treat all offenders alike.

“We have ticking time bombs that will look at you and say, ‘The first thing I will do when I get out is re-offend,'” she said. “We have to balance between the public safety and fairly treating offenders.”

Blanchette and Diamond said the Legislature passed a resolve earlier this year directing the Department of Corrections to develop a new procedure for handling sex offender cases that could lead to sexual predators being locked away for life.

“This is very important legislation that has not gotten much attention,” Blanchette said, “and it may address many of the concerns we have heard about making sure the true predators are kept locked up.”

The “forensic board,” as it is described in the legislation, would be composed of a group of psychiatric experts in the field of sex offenders who would use the latest assessment tools to determine the danger a person may pose to the community. If the board decided a person were a danger, the person could be committed to a mental health facility until the board concluded that person was no longer a risk to society.

The measure is controversial because the assessment tools are not precise and there are concerns about continuing to jail someone who has completed a sentence even when he or she is still considered a danger to society.

“This is an issue that the next Legislature will have to deal with,” Diamond said. “It won’t be easy.”