The state Senate today/yesterday passed a bill that will require hundreds of sex offenders to be added to Tennessee’s on-line sex offender registry.
Senator Doug Jackson says the bill adds those who were convicted of sex offenses from 1994 through 1997. When the Internet registry was made public in 1997, state attorneys thought making it retroactive might run afoul of constitutional protections.
Jackson says lawmakers no longer have that concern.
“Since then a number of jurisdictions have applied it retroactively and courts have reviewed that and they have opined that it’s not retroactive punishment.”
Another Senate bill, working it’s way through the legislature, would bar incest-offenders from being able to get their names expunged after ten years.
Jackson says incest should be considered a violent crime because it’s carried out by an authority figure.
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