Tagged: sex offender

 A federal judge’s ruling is opening the doors of Michigan’s homeless shelters to registered sex offenders.  

 Two years ago, a 51 year old homeless man was found frozen to death in Grand Rapids.  He was turned away by a   local homeless shelter because the man was a registered sex offender.   The shelter was less than a thousand feet from a school, which would have been a violation of a Michigan law barring sex offenders from living that close to a school.   

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit says it has placed a 66-year-old priest on leave after finding "sufficient substance" behind a complaint that he engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor early in his ministry.

The 1.3 million-member archdiocese announced Sunday that the Rev. Gary Schulte went on administrative leave Friday from St. Sylvester Parish in Warren. The Associated Press left a phone message Sunday for Schulte.

The archdiocese says its victim assistance coordinator received a complaint in September. The archdiocese says it "found the complaint to be of sufficient substance" to require restrictions on Schulte's work as a priest, including barring him from celebrating Mass.

Schulte was ordained in 1972 and also has worked at parishes in the Detroit suburbs of Clawson, Beverly Hills, Royal Oak and Madison Heights.

The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that inmates are not necessarily entitled to Miranda warnings when they’re investigated for alleged law-breaking in prison. Typically, warnings that a suspect has the right to remain silent and have an attorney present have to be given once a person is detained and no longer free to leave.

We have more from Michigan Radio’s Rick Pluta:

“In this case, suspected gang member Burton Cortez was handcuffed and questioned after guards found two metal shanks in his cell during a lockdown search of the state prison in Carson City.

With a recorder running, Cortez acknowledged the blades were his, and admitted he sold a third shank to another inmate. Prison officials say the main purpose of their interrogation was to gain information to help restore order following a string of gang-related fights, and to root out a plot to murder a guard.

That was enough for the trial court – and the Court of Appeals – to deny Cortez’s motion to suppress his confession and the tape. The courts say Miranda warnings are not necessary when prison officials’ top focus is to keep the peace, and not to determine whether a crime has been committed, or who is responsible.”

For months, I’ve been corresponding with a lady named Virginia Hernandez, whose twenty-three year old son Elio is on Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry. He was accused of accosting a minor for immoral purposes, and pled guilty on the advice of his court-appointed counsel. His mom believes he is innocent, and was pressured into a plea. She says his attorney told him that he was poor, uneducated, and black, and a jury would never believe him.

A new study suggests posting the names and addresses of sex offenders online increases the chance the offenders will commit new crimes.

According to the study by the University of Michigan Law School and Columbia Business School, posting sex offenders' information online makes life so difficult for the offenders they may commit new crimes because they no longer consider prison a threat.

U of M law professor J.J. Prescott co-authored the study. He says offenders are likely to re-offend when they have nothing to lose.

“We got to give them something to lose if they’re going to commit another offense. I mean, as it stands right now, they’re already pariahs in their community, they can’t get a job, it’s very difficult for them to live, prison doesn’t sound so bad," Prescott says.

The Sex Offender Registration Act of 1994 requires Michigan State Police to post the names and addresses of sex offenders online.

Allison Lyons

A Michigan Supreme Court says homeless sex offenders must report their home address to the state even though they don’t actually have homes.  Paroled sex offenders are legally required to provide their home address to the state sex offender registry. But what if they’re homeless?   

Randall Lee Dowdy is a convicted rapist.  He was paroled in 2002. But he was arrested again a few years later after he gave the address of a Lansing non-profit as his ‘home address’. Dowdy was homeless at the time.  

Lower courts ruled Dowdy couldn’t be charged with violating the law since he didn’t have a home address to report. 

But the Michigan Supreme Court says homelessness is no excuse. In a 4 to 3 decision, the high court ruled the lower courts had not taken the ‘intent’ of the law into account, adding homelessness doesn’t prevent sex offenders from complying with the law requiring them to report their ‘home’ address to the state.

The dissenting justices describe the majority’s opinion as defying ‘common sense.’