Megan Kanka was a typical 7-year-old, full of fun and life and excitement for the surprises that came with each new day. On July 29, 1994, she spent the morning riding her bike in the summer sunshine. She was excited when her neighbor offered to show her his new puppy. A day later, New Jersey police found Megan's battered body in a nearby park. She had been raped, beaten and strangled with a belt.
Three years later, in 1997, Megan's 36-year-old neighbor Jesse Timmendequas, a previously convicted sex offender, was sentenced to death in a New Jersey courtroom. Outside the courtroom, Megan's grief-stricken parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka met the press. "He will never, ever, ever get out to harm another little girl," Megan's mother said.
From that horrible tragedy was born Megan's Law which, in California, requires convicted sex offenders to register with their local law enforcement agency. The law makes it possible for citizens to obtain information about the identities and addresses of registered sex offenders through an internet database. The California Megan's Law site is administered by the Office of the Attorney General. It allows people to locate registered sex offenders by name, address, city, zip code and county. It also locates registered sex offenders who live near parks and schools.
In California, you must register as a sex offender if you are convicted of sexual battery, rape including sodomy without consent, kidnapping or assaulting a person to commit rape or certain other sexual offenses, prostitution involving a minor, sexual acts with a child under the age of 14 including sodomy, incest, possession of child pornography and indecent exposure. Offenders must register "within 5 days of being released from prison and then any time they change their address or name, explains criminal defense attorney Stephen Rodriguez. Registrations must be updated at lease annually, more often for those considered violent predators. In California, Megan's Law also requires juveniles convicted of similar crimes to register as sex offenders. However, as Rodriguez points out, juvenile "registration information cannot be disclosed to the public unless the juvenile is a threat to the community."
For complete information about California's Megan's Law, access to the Attorney General's registered sexual offender databases, links for locating sexual predators in other states, and information on how to protect your children from sexual predators, visit criminal defense attorney Stephen Rodriguez's Megan's Law website.
In 2007, New Jersey abolished the death penalty after a state commission ruled it "inconsistent with evolving standards of decency." Jesse Timmendequas, now 47, was one of eight men waiting on death row whose sentences were commuted by Governor Jon Corzine to life in prison without parole.
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