Under old Missouri law, both a serial rapist and a person charged with misdemeanor sexual misconduct (public urination in some cases) would be placed on the state’s Sex Offender Registry for life. The Registry’s burdensome reporting requirements applied to both people, including reporting to a police station four times every year. Everyone was lumped together. It was one of the toughest Registry laws in the country.

Under the old Missouri statute, if you were ordered to register federally, then you were always required to register under Missouri law for life. Period.

But it didn’t work the other way around. If you were eligible for removal from the federal registry, which was a different system with an easier method of removal, you did not have a method to get removed from the Missouri registry. Even though there was a method to get removed from the registry, appellate courts denied removal under the old Missouri statute.  That is no longer the cases, and thousands of people required to register previously are now immediately eligible for removal from the registry.

New Missouri Law

Senate Bill 665 became effective in August, and transformed Missouri’s system from being “one size fits all” to a “tiered system,” which mirrors the federal system.

Under Missouri’s new tiered system, a Tier I offense is eligible for removal after fifteen years of the date of conviction and twenty-five years for a Tier II offense. A Tier III offense is only eligible for removal if it was a juvenile adjudication and is eligible after twenty-five years from the date of conviction. Source.

After a person passes the fifteen or twenty-five year mark, they are not automatically removed from the registry. They must petition the court and a judge will make the final decision.  They must have a completely clean record during that time, and must have been faithfully registering pursuant to law.

Additionally, the new Missouri law changed the reporting requirements based on Tiers. Under the new law, Tier I offenders have to visit law enforcement annually, Tier II offenders will be required to update their information every six months, and Tier III offenders must check in four times per year.

Purpose of the Change

The sponsor of the new law, St. Charles Republican State Representative Kurt Bahr, explained that the purpose of the new law is to “create[] a little less burden on the local law enforcement agency so that they’re not spending all their time on these guys who are typically lower-threat people and they have more time to focus on the tier three offenders.” Source.

With these big changes to Missouri’s sex offender registry laws, there will likely be a huge spike in the number of low-level sex offenders who request removal from the registry in Southwest Missouri.

Springfield Attorney Brad Bradshaw wants to make sure his medical marijuana initiative, Amendment 3, is the only one voters see on ballots for Missouri’s November election.

Bradshaw has filed suit to remove two other medical marijuana initiatives from the ballot, but time may not be on his side. Bradshaw challenged the signature count for Proposition C and the legality of the signatures for Amendment 2.

A Cole County Judge in Jefferson City dismissed the lawsuit against Amendment 2. Bradshaw has appealed that decision to the Western District Court of Appeals.

Criminal Defense Attorney Adam Woody was interviewed by KOLR 10 and noted Bradshaw’s time constraints for challenging the initiatives. The election is only around 8 weeks away. It could take several weeks to get the case before the Western District. If Bradshaw loses in the Western District, he plans to take it to the Missouri Supreme Court, which would take even longer.  The ballots have to be prepared a couple of weeks in advance so Bradshaw really only has about 6 weeks to work the case all the way through the appellate system…an incredibly short amount of time to accomplish such a feat.

Bradshaw’s Amendment 3 is self-funded with $1 million dollars, self-written, and riddled with controversy. It would create a Biomedical Research and Development Institute.  That research institute would then get 15% of the total sales of medicinal marijuana statewide, which is the highest tax on such a product by far across the 31 states who have legalized marijuana for medicinal use.  The head of that Board must have both a law degree and a medical degree and the head of the board hand selects the other board members.  Obviously, Bradshaw is one of the few people in the State to have a J.D. and M.D., so he would likely plans to be named as the head of the board.   Source.

Amendment 2 is sponsored by New Approach Missouri, and taxes medicinal marijuana at 4%.  Those tax dollars would go toward state-sponsored or not-for-profit veterans organizations.

Right now, all three initiatives are on the ballot and it looks like it will stay that way. Stay tuned for more developments on the medical marijuana initiatives.

Click here to watch the full interview.

All eyes were on Southwest Missouri this summer when 17 people died while riding the ducks on Table Rock Lake. Predictably, families of those killed began filing lawsuits against Ride the Ducks and its owner, Ripley Entertainment.

Now, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri is attempting to intervene in the civil cases.

Criminal Defense Attorney Adam Woody sat down with KOLR10 to discuss that move.

Attorney Woody explained that the evidence and witnesses in the civil lawsuits are identical to the criminal investigation and lawsuits. The Government does not want witness statements or other evidence to get into the hands of the possible defendants, which would help them prepare and coordinate defenses in advance of any criminal indictment. Halting the civil cases will prevent both sides of the civil lawsuits from talking to those witnesses or accessing any of the evidence while the Government investigates and decides its next steps. Woody explained that, if the cases are stayed by the Court to allow the Government time to investigate, then he would expect the defense to try to have the cases dismissed for failure to proceed in a timely manner.

Stay tuned to find out whether the Government decides to take further action against Ride the Ducks or its employees.

To watch the full story and interview, click here.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that police must obtain a warrant signed by a judge before they can get cell phone records to track the movements of individual customers. This is a further step in solidifying digital-age privacy protections.  What this means is that police must now show probable cause to believe that a person is engaged in criminal activity before they can access his or her cell phone tracking data from a phone company.  Prior to this ruling, no such probable cause showing was required at all.  Police could access this information any time they wanted to, without any showing of probable cause or necessity.  That practice changed last week with this ruling.  Springfield Criminal Defense Attorney Adam Woody, along with Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson, were featured in a recent KOLR10 news story to discuss the case.  Click this link to watch the story.

This Ruling Effects Everyone.

This ruling effects every American. Chief Justice Roberts noted in the majority opinion that, “There are 396 million cellphone service accounts in the United States—for a nation of 326 million people.”

Anyone who has watched crime shows knows that a cell phone sends signals to nearby antenna towers to connect with the telephone network. As the user travels, it pings on successive towers, and the cell phone companies keep records of the phone numbers routed through each tower. Cell phone companies use this data to sort out billing information, such as routing charges.

But police can use the data to reconstruct a person’s whereabouts over days, weeks, or months by mapping the towers used by a given phone number.

Breaking The Cell Phone Ankle Monitor.

By doing so, “[the Government] achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user. Sprint Corporation and its competitors are not your typical witnesses. Unlike the nosy neighbor who keeps an eye on the comings and goings, they are ever alert, and their memory is nearly infallible.” The ruling held that law enforcement access of these records without a warrant invades the citizen’s reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling still allows police to get cell phone records without a warrant in emergency situations, such as the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protecting individuals threatened with imminent harm, or preventing the imminent destruction of evidence.

It will be interesting to see how Southwest Missouri judges rule on cell phone data accessed without a warrant before the new Supreme Court rule was issued. Stay tuned to see if any major cases are impacted.

Source.

It appears we have seen the last of springfieldmugshots.com.  Last month, the owners of Mugshots.com were arrested on charges of extortion, money laundering, and identity theft. The website used data from police and sheriffs’ department websites, collected names, booking photos, and charges. Then, they published the information online without the person’s consent. To add insult to injury, they charged individuals fees to get the information removed.

The company extracted more than $64,000 in removal fees from approximately 175 individuals. In California, it is illegal to charge people to remove their mugshots. The California AG noted that the “pay-for-removal scheme attempts to profit off of someone else’s humiliation. Those who can’t afford to pay into the scheme to have their information removed pay the price when they look for a job, housing, or try to build relationships with others.”

Missouri Law Criminalizes Pay-for-Removal Schemes

In Missouri, it is a class A misdemeanor for a mugshot website to solicit or accept payment to remove criminal record information and is punishable by up to one year in jail. Each payment solicited or accepted constitutes a separate violation. Additionally, the mugshot website is liable to the subject individual for a loss or harm. The subject individual may be awarded $10,000, or actual and punitive damages. The subject individual only needs to show that he or she was humiliated or embarrassed.

It will be interesting to see if Missouri uses its Pay-for-Removal law to go after mugshot websites. Given the trends noted above, we expect to start seeing more Pay-for-Removal charges. So long springfieldmugshots.com!

Source.