Murder is one thing. Rape is another. But they’re both the same in the eyes
of the state of Illinois, which is requiring some criminals to
register as sex offenders even though they’ve never committed
a sex crime. Angel Diaz, who’s serving a 30-year
sentence for murder, thought the state had made a mistake when he
learned “Sex Offender Registry Required” was bannered
across his mug shot on the Illinois Department of
Correction’s Web site. In a letter to the Illinois Times, Diaz says the
sex-offender label has him “emotionally and mentally
distraught.”
The state’s categorization of Diaz as a
sex offender is no mistake, even though it’s not true. Under
state law, criminals convicted of unlawful restraint, kidnapping,
and murdering someone under the age of 17 must register as sex
offenders, regardless of whether their crimes had any kind of
sexual overtone. The requirements were instituted during the 1990s
with little or no dissent in the Legislature, which, it seems,
can’t seem to crack down on sex offenders hard enough. Alan Mills, lawyer for a Chicago prisoner
advocacy group called the Uptown Peoples Law Center, says
that a gang member, even though he may not be the nicest person in
the world, shouldn’t be labeled a sex offender thanks to a
drive-by shooting in which the victim was never touched by anything
except a hail of bullets. He also questions whether requiring
criminals to register as sex offenders when they’re really
not dilutes the effectiveness of the registry. But register they must. Otherwise, a felon on
parole can be sent back to prison. The phenomenon was first
reported last month in the Chicago
Reader, which highlighted the case of a parolee who killed a teenager during a
botched robbery nearly 30 years ago and is now forced to register as a
sex offender, which carries a stigma even worse than homicide, in the
eyes of some. Cara Smith, policy director for the state
attorney general’s office, recalls a killer she encountered a
few months ago in a halfway house while she was helping with
compliance checks to ensure sex offenders had registered as
required by law. “There’s this person who kept
repeating over and over again: ‘I am not a sex offender,
I’m a murderer — for the record,’ ” Smith
says. “I finally said, ‘Please, sir, sit down. I get
your point.’ We’ve really come a long way in Illinois
where we have murderers saying, ‘I am not a sex
offender.’ ”
Smith says recent publicity over non-sex
offenders being required to register “obviously” raises
issues, though she can’t say what legislators may or may not
do. Attorney General Lisa Madigan last year convinced lawmakers to
widen the registry net by requiring murderers who’ve killed
someone under the age of 17 to register for life, regardless of
when they committed their crime. Previously, only murderers
who’d killed prior to 1996 were required to register. Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the Illinois chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union, says he believes a legislative fix
is needed rather than a court challenge. The ACLU isn’t sure how
many felons are affected, Yohnka says. “The goal here is a noble one: We want
to make sure that children and society in general are
protected,” Yohnka says. “Instead, what’s
happened is we sort of expand this to the point where it becomes a
catch-all for a lot of things. I think it undermines the argument
of efficiency and effectiveness that are made about such
lists.’
Diaz, who’s scheduled for release in
five years, couldn’t agree more. “Sometimes, the legal system gets so
busy trying to do the right thing that it gets discombobulated and
ends up making something worse instead of better,” he writes.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2005.
