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Sheriff Grady Judd Takes on the First Amendment

The recent arrest of Phillip Greaves by Florida authorities has constitutional advocates asking The Question.

Is free speech free?

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin regarding Greaves controversial book:

"It's repulsive and awful. But I don't think they can go forward because the book is clearly protected by the First Amendment," Toobin said. "This book, as awful as it is, it is only words."

Words on a page or over a computer screen gets a person arrested here in Florida. A conviction can result in sex offender registration.

(...)

Toobin pointed to a similar case that went to the Supreme Court in 2002 where cartoons depicting children in acts similar to ones in Greaves' book were deemed protected by the Constitution.

"Certainly the sheriff and I disagree about the constitutional issue, but I agree with him that the issue of child pornography is a very serious one and I'm certainly glad that law enforcement is taking an active stand against it," Toobin said.

Arresting officer Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd rebutted Toobin with the rationale behind the arrest.

(...)

"This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with obscenity," said Judd. "We had a law in Florida that applied. We only needed jurisdiction."

Judd said his detectives were able to establish jurisdiction by conducting an undercover operation and purchasing and receiving a copy of the book through the mail.

"He mailed this book to us. It was a how-to book of how to sexually abuse children," Judd said. "It clearly violated Florida law. "There's too much hand-wringing across the nation. When we can't stand together as a nation and say you can't write a book with real stories of children being sexually abused, then it's time to change the law."

The "mailed book" is the "opening of the door"method sting operations have utilized for years to obtain arrest warrants. Judd justified the Greaves arrest by citing "...a Florida obscenity law that says that it is illegal to portray children in an explicit sexual manner."

Ironically, the sheriff may have unwittingly opened his own door to inspection of best practices used by law enforcement.

With the high profile coverage this case will certainly receive by the press, the spotlight on police sting tactics and what some refer to as entrapment will likely prove intensive.

Upside to a Down Economy

Per Corey Rayburn Yung, associate professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, the economy has kept many states from fully complying with the Adam Walsh Act.

The commentary was offered in response to a viewpoint shared by John Walsh regarding the continued need for public notification efforts currently utilized to inform the community of the residences of those designated as sex offenders.

Notification of the legal sort apparently led to the death of David Morrison of Nevada. A contact card left by a detective at Morrison's home is suspected to have been the motive for his murder by his roommates.

An arrest has been made in the case.

The Nevada Sex Offender Registry provides notification of Tier One"low risk" offenders to "... persons authorized to receive criminal history record information. Typically, this includes law enforcement, prosecutors and courts."

Meaning, the law protects the privacy of Tier One offenders, allowing them to resume some semblance of an ordinary life.

A search on Morrison resulted in the following:

"A search of the Statewide Registry has not produced any information that is available to the public through the Statewide Registry."

Presumably, Morrison was considered low risk or as now deceased, is no longer listed on the registry, which is not the case here in Florida. (Deceased, living under a bridge, incarcerated, it's all public record here in the Sunshine State).

Either way, sloppy procedures and the continued poor education of the public as to how easily an individual can be designated a sex offender contributed to Morrison's death.

David Morrison was thirty years old.

Swallowing a Political Pill

How quickly one's political "passion" can change.

The Buzz, 12/13/2010:

Dave Aronberg, who lost his bid to be the Democratic nominee for Florida Attorney General, is a member of Republican victor Pam Bondi's transition team, advising the incoming attorney general on prescription drug abuse and pill mills. But will he become a permanent member of her team? "It's totally hypothetical," Aronberg said as he was leaving the "No Labels" conference in New York City. "We talked about my joining the office. Nothing is definite yet."

So how would Aronberg feel about having a boss who's fighting the federal health care legislation and the EPA's water quality standards? That's something that would have to be worked out, Aronberg said. "My passion has been fighting prescription drug abuse, trying to close down pill mills," he said. That's an area of common ground for him and Bondi, he said. "Pam Bondi and I agree that the issue of public safety should not be partisan," he said. "We differ on the health care lawsuit."

Aronberg's initial passion was an attempt to establish a statewide 1,500-foot buffer between where sex offenders live and places children gather. In doing so, get-tough sex offender housing ordinances passed by more than 120 Florida communities would have been repealed and faced compliance.

His efforts proved unsuccessful.

Pill mills should prove much more politically palatable to the voting public.

Geotags and Location

Note to self when uploading photos from smart phones to Facebook and other social media sites.

Disable the geotag function.

Apparently, the ability to track down exact location via metadata embedded within the uploaded image is disturbingly easy. (Read Web Photos Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live).

As noted by the U.S. Army, Geotags and Location-based Social Networking:

• Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, video, websites and SMS messages. It is the equivalent of adding a 10-digit grid coordinate to everything you post on the internet.

• Geotags are automatically embedded in pictures taken with smartphones.Many people are unaware of the fact that the photos they take with their smartphonesand load to the Internet have been geotagged

Protect you and yours. Read the full account here.

Nothing is private any longer.