Injustice in the Buckeye State

From Slashdot we have an article about Ohio's new pre-crime registry. When I first read the Slashdot headline, I had in my head a picture of Tom Cruise running from teeny little walking eye robots, but, luckily, it isn't quite that bad. It doesn't involve Tom Cruise or precognition. But it is pretty bad. What we have here is a "civil registry" that tracks people accused of sex offenses under Ohio's Megan's Law. Read that again. It tracks people accused of sex offenses. Not convicted, merely accused.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Megan's Law, and unwilling to check that last hyperlink, it is Ohio's state registry for sex offenders. Once an offender has done his (or her) time, he enters the system with his picture and offense record publicly available on a website. When he moves into a neighborhood, the neighbors are notified by the government of his status as a sex offender. He is barred from obtaining any job that requires licensure. He is prohibited from living in certain places, and anytime he moves, he must alert the state government. There's more to it.

Ohio's new "civil registry" would put an accused sex offender under these same restrictions of liberty, whether or not the case ever comes to trial and, as far as I can tell, even if he (or she) is acquitted. From the article:

A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.
The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.

How is this constitutional? This severely limits the accused's rights to privacy, mobility, and even to obtain a job merely because somebody says they are a child molestor? Even if a criminal trial is never held, these people are punished by the state for a crime they have not been shown to have committed. This is in flagrant violation of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendment guarantees to property security and due process of law, specifically the clause in the fifth stating that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Not only that, it's just plain disgusting and opens the door to all sorts of heinous actions by unscrupulous persons.

Imagine if this had been passed during the recovered memories/Satanic ritual abuse scares of the late 80s and early 90s. So many lives were already ruined on spurious eyewitness testimony that nevertheless endured the full due process of the law. What if those accused could have been punished before the trial even started, and even if acquitted? How many more lives would have been ruined then?

I hate to throw around the phrase, I really do, but this creates nothing less than a witch hunt situation. I'd go so far as to say it creates more than a witch hunt situation. At least in Salem there was some way to avoid punishment, however absurd or unlikely. Here we have a situation where anybody accused can be punished immediately, without trial. All it takes is an accusation and some paperwork, and you're stuck on the registry. If found guilty, you're obviously punished more, but the legally innocent are left to be strangled under the wrenching grasp of Megan's Law.

Fuck Megan. Seriously.

I know it's not her fault. The poor girl was raped and murdered and some reactionaries are now using her name to justify heinous crimes against the innocent. I'm just really at a loss for words. I'm glad I don't live in Ohio anymore. A single word from someone that doesn't like me and boom, I'm stuck working at McDonalds, living in squalor with a sign in my yard identifying me as a sex offender even though I was never given a trial. It just doesn't seem fair, does it?

But never fear, nay-sayer, because there is light at the end of the illegally-punished sex offender tunnel. One can be removed from the list:

A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.

No big deal, buddy. So your neighbor's false accusation put you in the registry and relegated you to menial labor and a life of abject humiliation and constant surveillance. It's only for six years. In six years you can have your life back. If we say so.