This takes the cake! Now they are not just discriminating against people who paid their debt to society, but against people with mental disabilities!!! Maybe these guys should receive civil commitment for their insane hatred!! How dare they be such blatant bigots!

I grew up in Missouri, in the Ozarks and I miss it very much. If it were not for the ridiculous laws and politicians in that state I'd love to move back. I haven't been able to attend my family reunion because it has been traditionally held in the same park in Missouri for over 60 years and I'm not legally allowed in parks in that state. I live 10 minutes from Missouri and go grocery shopping there all the time, food tax is cheaper and so is chewing tobacco. But yet I can't go to our family church because it has a daycare inside. So yeah I know quite a bit about Missouri and realize it is as ass backwards as it get's when it comes to law and politics. I'm familiar with Nixon's BS and that of his cohorts. And Oh if your in Missouri and on the registry brace your self, A young girl was recently kidnapped and murdered by some guy in Springfield. So everyone on the registry be prepared to be punished for what this guy did.

And as for this bill, I admit the language could be a lot clearer and I am definitely not defending the bill by any means but I just don't want people to get all worried about something that is not going to happen. You can't and won't be detained, evaluated, or committed for simply passing thru or visiting Missouri. If they tried that it would get overturned so fast it would make their heads spin clean off. I'll post this again and this is really the key paragraph in the bill to clearing up this misinterpretation. Read it carefully, read the whole bill over a few times. And then read the very last line of the bill:

""When the attorney general receives written notice from any law enforcement
agency THAT A PERSON..., who has pled guilty to or been convicted of a sexually violent offense and
who is not presently in the physical custody of an agency with jurisdiction ...HAS COMMITTED A RECENT OVERT ACT, the attorney general may file a petition for detention and evaluation with the
probate division of the court in which the person was convicted, or committed pursuant to
chapter 552, alleging the respondent may meet the definition of a sexually violent predator and
should be detained for evaluation for a period of up to nine days. If the person was convicted
in another jurisdiction, the attorney general may file the petition for detention and evaluation with the probate division of the court in the county where the overt act was
committed.""

Last line of bill:
""FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS SECTION >"RECENT OVERT ACT"< MEANS ANY ACT THAT CREATES A REASONABLE APPREHENSION OF HARM OF A SEXUALLY VIOLENT NATURE""

Like I said they can not detain you without you having first committed a "RECENT OVERT ACT". And they would have a pretty impossible time trying to claim that someone visiting or passing thru Missouri creates a reasonable (key word here reasonable) apprehension of harm of a sexually violent nature. As Aladdin mentioned the bill seems pretty worthless and like just something they can slap their name on to make it look like they are doing something.

The Bill [No. 1741] incorporates new language to an already existing state law, RSMo 632.484, to cause three things to happen.

1. To use against any sex offender a conviction of a sex offense committed in this state or "any other jurisdiction" which is to say, any jurisdiction outside Missouri;

2. To give a right to a sex offender being evaluated for civil commitment to have the panel of prosecutors review the evaluation ONLY if the sex offense occurred in Missouri. Therefore, under this new language, a person looses that right if their crime occurred outside Missouri; and

3. To detain any person whose crime occurred outside Missouri for nine days to evaluate them for civil commitment. There is no language in this provision that limits the powers of the State to ONLY residents of Missouri. It is open-ended and therefore, MOST CERTAINLY CAN BE APPLIED TO MERE VISITORS.

TuKanSam -- You are misreading or misapplying the language in the Bill because you are not seeing that the NEW language [see below] is a sentence unto itself and can be applied independent of the other provisions / language.

IF THE PERSON WAS CONVICTED IN ANOTHER JURISDICTION, THE ATTORNEY GENERAL MAY FILE THE PETITION FOR DETENTION AND EVALUATION WITH THE PROBATE DIVISION OF THE COURT WHERE THE OVERT ACT WAS COMMITTED.

ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE in this NEW language is there any requirement that a RECENT overt act has to have been committed by the person subject to being detained.

The aforesaid language is overly broad and ambiguous because it does NOT specify that the "overt act" must have been committed in Missouri and it does NOT specify that the sex offender must be a resident of Missouri for the law to apply. Therefore, a reasonable inference can be made that this NEW language seeks to trap ANY person in Missouri [whether a resident or a visitor] in the web that allows them to be detained for nine days to evaluate them for civil commitment.

Insofar as your assertion that the law would be ruled unconstitutional, I am not so sure it would be held to

However, state officials do not care about this because the burden would be on the person who is detained to challenge the constitutionality of such and most of these folks will not be able to do so as they lack the ability and resources to file lawsuits. State officials know this and use this to their advantage.

Semantics, my friends. You're both right on key points.

I have to say the bill seems rather vague but it seems to imply this is only applicable to those who are in the system. So if a guy from, say, Ohio prison was looking to move to a family member's house in KC, then it would invoke this law.

Recent overt act is defined at the end of the article:

5. For the purposes of this section "recent overt act" means any act that creates a reasonable apprehension of harm of a sexually violent nature.

This is rather vague, since "recent" is not clearly defined.

Also, the bill defines what a sexually violent offense is. Seems like typical AWA horsecrap to me.

This bill has potential for abuse.

I agree that the definition of what a recent overt act is overly broad and ambiguous and it has a great deal of potential if not probability to be abused. The term does not say that a crime has to be committed in order for the person to be subject to the law, only that they have to present a "reasonable apprehension of harm" and herein lays the problem and door way for the abuse to occur.

We all know that there are many incidents of sex offender laws being abused, so it is foolish to think that this law will not be abused. The argument I can see rising is that some law enforcement officer gets wind that a sex offender is going to come to Missouri to visit someone and the sex offender has multiple crimes on their record or violent offenses, so he get's hold of the AG's office and then detains the sex offender for an evaluation.

Insofar as the constitutionality of doing so, there are two arguments I can see state officials to justify what they do, if the law is applied to mere visitors. First, they will argue that the State has a right to protect its own borders and second, the State has a right where sex offenders are involved, as it has a right where illegal aliens are involved. And given the conservative Supreme Court we have in Missouri, I can see the Judges siding with the state.