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6 | TUESDAY, JUNE 11,2002 | THE TELEGRAPH —Ruling lets states deny privileges to jailed sex offendersBy GINA HOLLANDThe Associated PressWASHINGTON - States may withhold television and other privileges from convicted sex offenders who won’t admit their wrongdoing, a divided Supreme Court ruled Monday.The 5-4 ruling gives states the go-ahead to copy Kansas’ aggressive prison rehabilitation program. Sex offenders who won’t cooperate are put in maximum security, with restrictions on everything from visitors to gym privileges.Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, called the Kansas effort a “sensible approach to reducing the serious danger that repeat offenders pose to many innocent persons, most often children.”The dissenting justices said Kansas was trampling inmates’ Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.The Supreme Court case is the latest to ask if states have gone too far in trying to rehabilitate or track sex predators. Justices will consider this fall how states list former sex offenders on registries meant to help people keep tabs on offenders in their neighborhoods.In Kansas, people convicted of sex crimes are required to divulge all misdeeds as part of an inmate rehabilitation program. Lie detector tests are used to verify the information, and the state won’t guarantee that confessions won’t be used in new prosecutions.Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by the court’s more liberal members, said that the majority’s “policy judgment does not justify the evisceration of a constitutional right.”“We should consider that even members of the Star Chamber thought they were pursuing righteous ends,” wrote Stevens, joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.The Star Chamber was an autocratic former English court whose title hascome to stand for unfair judicial proceedings.The Kansas program was challenged by convicted rapist Robert Lile, who refused in 1994 to sign paperwork admitting guilt in the crime he was convicted of or to fill out a form that listed his sexual history, including names of any other victims. Lile is in prison for raping a high school student, but he maintains the sex was consensual.“Inmates are going to face some coercion,” Lile’s attorney, Matthew J.Wiltanger, said as a result of Monday’s ruling.He said that sex offenders do not want to be moved from minimum security to more dangerous maximum security units.The federal government also has a sex offender program, but unlike the one in Kansas, participation is optional.The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Kansas’ program was unconstitutional. The appeals court said Kansas should consider giving participants immunity.Justice Sandra Day O’Connor joined the majority but struck a more cautious note, saying that states do not have free reign. Also voting with the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehn-quist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
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Nashua Telegraph
Nashua, New Hampshire, US
Tue, Jun 11, 2002
Page 6
Full Page
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Emily S.
NA, 04 Oct 2020
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