So, it the conservatives in Missouri are indeed pushing hard to change laws involving RSO's who live or are in Missouri and as usual, our State Supreme Court is right there to insure back them up in applying the most conservative view.

In 1997 Edwin F. Carey, who is now 51 years old, was convicted of second-degree statutory sodomy and then in 2002, Missouri passed a law making it felony for sex offenders to be within 500 feet of a park with a swimming pool or playground equipment.

In 2010, Mr. Carey was charged in Green County, Missouri for violating that law but subsequently had the charges thrown out by the Circuit Court on the basis that it violated his rights under the Missouri Constitution that prohibits applying laws retrospectively.

However, the on December 24, 2013, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the law does retrospectively apply to Mr. Carey because the law is a "criminal law" and not a "civil law" and thus, three years after Mr. Carey was originally charged he is now going to be prosecuted for the felony of being within 500 feet of a park.

The Court's majority opinion was given by Justice Zel Fischer in which he wrote that “The General Assembly intended for this statute to punish felons, who had been convicted of committing specific, enumerated crimes, for engaging in future conduct that the General Assembly determined should be prohibited"

Moreover, Fischer wrote that the park law is part of the criminal code, uses the language of a criminal provision and does not depend upon someone’s registration as a sex offender. He said the law also carries a severe punishment.

However, in the one dissenting opinion from Justice George Draper he wrote that "the law is designed to protect the public from harm and derives from the requirement for sex offenders to register, which has been deemed nonpunitive and civil in nature"

In other words, the Missouri Supreme Court contradicts its self (no surprise there) by retrospectively applying the law that prohibits RSO's from being within 500 feet of a park, in criminal cases, even though the Court asserts that registry laws and laws that govern the conduct of RSO's are civil and therefore cannot be retrospectively applied to them.

It is the hypocritical conservative way our Court operates when taking cases involving sex offenders and the laws that govern their conduct.

Now, it is important to point out that in review of court records, Mr. Carey has not been charged with any sex crime since 1997 nor any violation of any sex law governing the conduct of RSO's other than the 2010 charge that was originally dismissed on the basis of violating the Missouri Constitution.

Additionally, State Representative Mike Kelley filed HJR 52 recently which "proposes a constitutional amendment allowing a law to be retrospective in operation with respect to a new obligation, duty, or disability imposed upon sexual offenders"

What's interesting is the recent study that points out: "Even if certain subgroups of sexual offenders can be identified as high risk, they need not be high risk forever. Risk-relevant propensities could change based on fortunate life circumstances, life choices, aging, or deliberate interventions."

The study was done by the developers of the Static 99 test, which measures the risk level of sex offenders to commit new crimes if they remain in or are returned to general society.