A historic crackdown on sex offenders
05/24/2005
Conrad Defiebre, Star Tribune
May 24, 2005
A year and a half after Dru Sjodin was abducted and killed, allegedly at the hands of a repeat rapist, the Legislature on Monday overwhelmingly approved a historic crackdown on sex offenders, including life in prison without parole for what one senator called “truly the worst of the worst of the worst.”
“Minnesotans can sleep a lot safer now,” said Rep. Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove. “There won’t be a wave of victims behind these sexual predators.”
Final agreement on the increased penalties came after two full legislative sessions of haggling between the House and Senate over the long-term costs and effects of locking up hundreds, if not thousands, of sex offenders for good.
In the end, Senate negotiators significantly scaled back the House’s lock-’em-up proposals, focusing life without parole narrowly on particularly heinous violent rapists. Many other sexual felons would face indeterminate sentences up to life in prison.
Meth and more
The sex offender provisions are part of a sweeping $1.685 billion omnibus crime bill that also would guarantee funding through June 2007 for state courts, prisons, public defenders and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).
In addition, the bill would:
• Allow popular cold remedies such as Sudafed that also are used to make the illegal stimulant methamphetamine to be sold only from behind pharmacy counters. Buyers would be limited to small quantities of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine pills each month and would have to produce picture identification and sign a log. The restrictions are set to take effect July 1.
• Hire 10 new BCA agents for methamphetamine enforcement and increase penalties for meth-related crimes.
• Raise monthly telephone bill surcharges for 911 emergency services from 40 cents to 65 cents. Other revenue increases: Traffic ticket surcharges go from $60 to $72, parking ticket surcharges from $3 to $4 and real estate recording fees get a $6.50 boost.
• Broaden the collection of DNA “genetic fingerprints” from those convicted of violent felonies to those charged with such crimes.
• Tack on up to 10 years to prison terms for gang crimes where the victims are children.
• Allow early release from prison of nonviolent drug-possession convicts who complete treatment for addiction.
• Add four new judges in counties across central Minnesota and cap judicial salary increases at 1.5 percent.
• Impose a 30-day driver’s license suspension for gasoline theft.
A few controversial provisions were eliminated from the compromise bill, including House proposals to ban over-the-counter pseudoephedrine sales, to castrate child molesters and to put “predatory offender” markings on license plates of released sex offenders.
Landslide votes
Only seven DFLers, six of them from northern Minnesota, dissented from landslide votes for the bill of 131 to 3 in the House and 62 to 4 in Senate.
The case of college student Sjodin, in which Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. is awaiting trial in North Dakota, had prompted a call to reinstitute Minnesota’s death penalty from Gov. Tim Pawlenty and a House sentencing proposal that was projected to add up to 11,000 inmates to state prisons over the next several decades.
State officials were still calculating the long-term effects of the compromise bill Monday, but it clearly would have a much smaller impact.
Under the bill, the state’s top criminal penalty of life in prison without parole—now reserved for some first-degree murderers—would apply to first-time sex offenders who use force or violence with at least two aggravating factors from a list of torture, great bodily harm, mutilation, kidnapping, “extreme inhumane conditions,” use of a weapon and multiple victims or perpetrators.
The penalty also would apply to repeat serious sex offenses with at least one factor on the list. Other felony sex crimes would carry indeterminate sentences, with recommended minimums to be set by the Sentencing Guidelines Commission and release decisions to be up to the commissioner of corrections.
And, in an effort to balance penalties across the state’s sentencing scheme, all first-degree murderers would serve life without parole. Some now are eligible for release after 30 years.
“We did not overreact and swamp the criminal justice system,” said Sen. Tom Neuville, R-Northfield. “In the long run, this will save us lots of money and protect us better than the current system.”