Sex offender legislation requires care

It’s clear that lawmakers in Augusta are anxious to do what they can to protect the state’s children against sex offenders.

Who can argue with such a noble cause?

But as lawmakers this session take on nearly 40 bills pertaining to sex offenders, they should be sure to keep their own emotions at bay and put forth rational and sound legislation.

The focus here should be on information gathering, not only from experts in the fields of corrections and mental health, but also from defense lawyers and prosecutors who will deal with the results of this session in the courtroom each day.

Penobscot County Deputy District Attorney Michael Roberts is looking toward this session with an open mind but a wary eye.

Roberts right now is dealing with three different cases in which mentally unstable convicted sex offenders are on probation and currently living in the area. A proposal on the table that would provide an avenue to keep certain high-risk offenders locked up could be appealing in all three of those cases, Roberts noted.

“From what I understand these offenders would not necessarily be going back to prison but would actually be going to a psychiatric facility. In the three cases I’m talking about, each one has very limited mental resources and probably a very limited ability to correct their behavior. For that reason having them on the street is very frightening, and I think the ability to house them in a psychiatric facility would be a good idea. Expensive, but good,” said Roberts.

Actually it sounds ideal, but there is a not-so-obvious potential consequence of creating such a powerful panel.

“If a defendant knows that there is the potential for his or her sentence to be lengthened indefinitely by such a panel, I’m afraid it may really interfere with our ability to plea-bargain our cases. Defendants and their lawyers are going to be more determined to take their chances in the courtroom with a judge or jury than to agree to a plea bargain,” he said.

Now before you go getting all riled up about the evils of plea bargaining and how such arrangements are simply deals with the devil, think for a moment about the age and emotional fragility of the victim, who very often is the state’s only witness in such cases.

Four-year-olds don’t make good witnesses most of the time, and defense attorneys know that. Prosecutors realize the sad fact that not-guilty verdicts are clear possibilities when sex offender cases go to trial. Plea bargains are sometimes the only way to ensure that an offender does any jail time at all.

For a child victim of a sex crime to get on a witness stand in front of a courtroom full of strangers and describe what happened to him or her is gut-wrenching and ugly and deepens already unfathomable emotional wounds.

These are tough cases for prosecutors to navigate through.

As lawmakers navigate through the dozens of bills before them on this issue, they should be aware that some decisions may seem right and noble, but may have unintended consequences. That happens a lot in Augusta. That’s why bills are discussed, amended, passed and sometimes repealed.

This issue is much too important for mistakes to be made. Lawmakers should not let the politically popular rally of, “We must do this for the children” serve to rush them to judgment.

Loving children and wanting to protect them is easy. Hating sex offenders and wanting to punish them is easy, too. But this is a road that needs to be navigated with care.