Fresh Loaf

1. In the auction for Creative Loafing, the winning bidder is … (… these guys. Hey, they seem pretty OK!)

2. The mayoral ‘machine’ goes haywire, Reed fires back (Memo urges Atlanta’s black leaders to rally behind a single black mayoral candidate — to keep a white candidate out of office.)

3. Wendy Whitaker, symbol of flawed sex offender law, rearrested (When she was 17, Whitaker gave one of the most regrettable blow jobs ever.)

4. Sen. Jeff Chapman’s views on water conservation, water wars (Chapman’s one of the Gold Dome’s greatest enigmas — one of the few Republicans who doesn’t march in lockstep with his fellow pachyderms.)

5. Oxendine: Build an interstate through East Atlanta? Let’s talk! (Um, no.)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Wendy Whitaker, the Harlem, Ga., housewife who was the subject of a 2006 CL cover story about Georgia’s then-new — and constitutionally shaky — sex offender law, has been arrested for failing to register a new address.

Whitaker is the lead plaintiff in a three-year-old lawsuit challenging the law by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights.

In 1997, when she was 17, Whitaker was convicted under Georgia’s antiquated sodomy law — overturned the next year by the U.S. Supreme Court — for performing oral sex on a 15-year-old classmate. She was sentenced to five years probation and has had to register annually as a sex offender ever since.

At the time the suit was filed, Whitaker had been forced to move from her new house because it was too close to a church day-care. The law’s residency requirement prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or other place where children congregate.

Since then, several provisions of the law have been struck down or enjoined, including measures that criminalized homelessness among sex offenders; forced sex offenders to leave homes they’d bought before the law was passed; and prohibited sex offenders from volunteering at church. The bulk of the draconian law — authored by state Rep. Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons — remains in force as the lawsuit languishes in federal court.

(more…)

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This week’s cover story in the Economist is about the U.S.’s ill-conceived and counterproductive sex laws.

The story focuses not just on Georgia, but also on Wendy Whitaker – who is considered a sex offender in Georgia because when she was a 17 year-old girl she was caught performing consensual oral sex on a 15-year-old boy.

It’s an excellent story, and a reminder to re-read Scott Henry’s also excellent 2006 CL story about Whitaker.

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That lovable gnome of a legislator, state Sen. Seth Harp, R-Midland, has finally decided which statewide office he’ll pursue in 2010. We’d heard last week that he was considering the attorney general’s post after current AG Thurbert Baker announced he would run for governor, but Harp has now told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer that he’ll shoot for insurance commissioner.

“I want to make sure the people of Georgia are protected from unscrupulous companies and I want to make sure the good companies are also protected,” Harp said.

Harp has been one of our favorite state lawmakers because he rarely seems to give much thought to partisan point-scoring. During the just-ended 2009 General Assembly, for instance, he fearlessly advocated for Sunday alcohol sales while his GOP colleagues were hiding in the bathroom, getting lost on the way to committee meetings and finding any excuse to avoid voting on the issue. His efforts earned him a coveted Arnie Award this year.

(more…)

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This week seems to have gone by in a whirl, so let’s recap recent developments in various state political races, shall we?

The week began with buzz over an AJC article suggesting that former Gov. Roy Barnes is weighing a bid to reclaim his old office. Certainly, Barnes, a Marietta Democrat with a thriving private law practice, has been dropping hints in recent weeks that he’s eyeing the race. But doubters, who include many Democrats, guess he’d be unlikely to get back into a contest he lost so badly eight years ago, despite an overwhelming financial advantage. One theory has it that Barnes is pulling a Mario Cuomo – enjoying the attention that his Hamlet act is bringing, but will ultimately stay out.

That feeling was reinforced for some with the surprise announcement Thursday that Democratic state Attorney General Thurbert Baker is planning a run for governor. Some political observers believe Baker wouldn’t have entered the race without first clearing the move with Barnes. (more…)

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Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court took its strongest stand yet on the state’s draconian sex offender law, striking as unconstitutional a provision that punished failure to register with life imprisonment.

I welcome lawyers to throw in their two cents, but in my experience, when an appeals court throws out part of a law, it’s typically because of some technical flaw. They usually avoid ruling on the fairness of a law, because that’s a subjective measure that arguably drifts into the realm of policy – and, therefore, politics.

But, in the space of a month, the High Court has twice rapped the law as unfairly harsh. In late October, justices ruled that throwing homeless sex offenders in prison because they were unable to register an address was unfair. While the decision sent a message to legislators that they needed to temper lawmaking with an eye toward justice, it immediately affected a relatively small group.

Tuesday’s ruling, however, sweeps away an over-arching provision of the law that potentially affects all sex offenders. When first passed in 2006, the new sex-offender law changed the penalty for failure to register a change of address within 72 hours, increasing it from three years to life in prison for all violators.

In its opinion, the court described the life-sentence provision as being “grossly disproportionate” to the severity of the crime.

In a concurring ruling, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote that a life prison sentence “should be reserved for society’s most serious criminal offenders.”

(more…)

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Whitaker, the subject of a cover story I wrote in July 2006 concerning the impact of Georgia’s harsh new sex-offender law, has been given notice by the Columbia County sheriff’s office that she’ll be removed from her house on Thanksgiving Day.

Lawyers for the Southern Center for Human Rights, which represents Whitaker’s constitutional challenge against the law, have filed for a Superior Court injunction to block her eviction. But they may be fighting an uphill battle; last week, a federal judge declined to grant a similar injunction.

Loyal readers will recall that Whitaker – who must register as a sex offender as a result of a consensual sex act when she was a teenager – was first ordered from her house in Harlem, Ga., two years ago when the home was discovered to be within 1,000 feet of a church-based child-care facility.

“Forcing Wendy Whitaker from her home is both pointless and cruel,” said Sarah Geraghty, Whitaker’s attorney. “Ms. Whitaker has never posed a threat to anyone and she does not belong on the sex offender registry.”

Why doesn’t she belong? The SCHR explains:

Wendy Whitaker’s offense happened 12 years ago, just after she had turned 17. The other student was three weeks short of his 16th birthday and they were both sophomores in high school. For this single act of consensual oral sex, Ms. Whitaker was arrested and charged with the crime of sodomy.

If Ms. Whitaker had committed the same act that led to her conviction today, she would not have to register as a sex offender at all. Because it occurred in 1996, she must register as a sex offender for life, have her picture posted on the GBI website and comply with all sex-offender residence restrictions and other conditions that treat her as if she was a predator.

As we say in the news business, that’s F’ed up!

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The Georgia Supreme Court today ruled against a Henry County man who argued that he should not have been required to register as a sex offender because Georgia law is too vague. As a result, James Orin Jenkins will spend the next three years in prison.

Jenkins is not a party to the constitutional challenge to the sex-offender law brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights that’s now working its way through federal courts. Instead, he’s one of several Georgia sex offenders who’ve appealed a conviction for non-registration imposed by the state’s draconian new law.

Just last month, the High Court struck a provision in the law that would have sent homeless sex offenders to prison for being unable to register a valid address with their county sheriff’s office. The plaintiff in that suit, William James Santos, had spent a year in a Hall County jail and was facing a life sentence for failing to register his address – even though he didn’t have an address.

As far as I can tell, Jenkins’ appeal was based on much narrower technical grounds, some of which hinged on whether his conviction on charges of attempted rape qualified as a “sexually violent offense.”

Anyway, it seems today’s ruling will have little impact on the Southern Center’s lawsuit. Watch this week’s paper for my update on the latest news from that case and also look here.

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If the name in the headline sounds familiar, it’s because Whitaker was the subject of a cover story I wrote in July 2006 concerning the impact of Georgia’s harsh new sex-offender law. Whitaker, then 26, had been forced out of the house she owned with her husband in Harlem, Ga., on the outskirts of Augusta because the home was discovered to be within 1,000 feet of a church-based child-care facility.

For a while, the couple lived in a trailer park with relatives and she even moved briefly across the state line to South Carolina because the Georgia law bars sex offenders from residing near churches, schools, playgrounds, parks and other facilities, leaving her with few options for where to stay. The penalty for violating the law is 10-30 years behind bars.

Whitaker moved back into her house, however, after the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the law late last year, ruling the residency restrictions made it practically impossible for a sex offender to remain in his own home.

But the law was retooled this spring by the state Legislature and, in July, Columbia County deputies again told Whitaker she’d have to leave her house or face arrest.

Whitaker, who is the main plaintiff in an ongoing legal challenge of the law’s constitutionality, appeared again today before Federal District Court Judge Clarence Cooper. But this time, she left with even less hope.

Cooper ruled that lawyers for the Southern Center for Human Rights had failed to establish that the residency restrictions prohibiting Whitaker from occupying her home did not rise to the level of banishment from the county. Cooper didn’t explain his decision in depth, but it appeared he was swayed by an argument by lawyers for the Attorney General’s office that about 50 other sex offenders had managed to find some form of housing in Columbia County.

On the witness stand, Whitaker indicated that if she and her husband are forced to rent a place to live, in addition to paying their home mortgage, they’ll likely face foreclosure. “It will be bad for us,” she said.

Southern Center lawyers were also in court today to argue that the law imposes an unconstitutional ban on religious practices because many sex offenders have been barred from church activities. More on that later…

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The state Supreme Court chipped away at Georgia’s draconian sex-offender law on Monday by striking a provision that requires homeless offenders to register an address. Under the law, sex offenders are required to re-register with the state every time they move. And listing “no address” is not an option.

The Court ruled that the law is unfair to homeless offenders because it does not provide them with an alternative to having a home address – effectively criminalizing homelessness. Convicted sex offender William Santos, the homeless man who filed the lawsuit challenging the law, faced a mandatory life sentence because he was unable to give an address.

The ruling is additional confirmation that the law, concocted by state Rep. Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons, a former head of the Georgia Christian Coalition, simply was not intended to comply with the real world.

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