Finally! A crack in the armor!!!

@ThoughtAsWeak: Thank you for posting the news.

@Rewdiazepam: I agree 100%. We can only make progress at a state level. Well said! FAITH is critical. We must stick together.

This is great!! It looks to be from May of this year.

How long until we know the outcome?

While the registry (barely) existed when I was convicted technology didn't as it does today. Back then someone would have to go to each station and request the info. There was no 'web' as we know it today.

For that reason it wasn't as huge of a deal to me the first 5-7 years. Then technology changed. Phone apps started with maps and alerts. Sites that weren't run by the state archived and emailed info.

What may have been regulatory became punishment in the form of shaming.

Then add on all the other restrictions. Parks, schools, trails, land owned by the park district, private places that the public can access, restrictions on celebrating holidays... All that came after my conviction. All very punitive in my mind.

Really we need courts that ruled early on or used the early rulings to take another look.

I hope this is the start!!

IvyDog, in all the briefs that I have read, not one of them mention the fact that when many of these older sentences were handed down there was little to no internet in many places. I think of all the people that were convicted before 1995 and those that were retroactively put back on the registry or their time extended should all be filing suits... not sure where the money will come from... but dang!

I should do a search on the WI list that I currently have... see how many were retroactively put back on the registry...

wisconsinrsol, if you check and a group of them can get together on this and maybe do/bring a class action suit to bear? the more people that are willing to sign on to a class action suit the better.

as it stands right now, even with some good news? we can only hope the best that we can, that now that the rsol's are going thru a gauntlet, that they can and will be if not struck down, at least lessened/eased, or changed a great deal!

the problem many times isn't getting people to participate, but the money need to hire the attorney... this isn't like an injury suit... I am looking into the number of offenders that were retroactively applied... they will be a group that will be in the best position to do something as their convictions are old and their lives established.

Right now IL has raised $10,000 in their legal fund but I'm not sure that will go far.

Not just those convicted prior to '95. I'd argue it was was early 2000's before the web was mature enough to pose a real shift in who could access and be immortalized.

I think IL put theirs online in 2002?

Once online not only does that change the dynamic of the registry but now I can never be unregistered. Always on some archive my name will appear. Another item I didn't sign up for.

i wonder tho if it would be worth a try in finding a lawyer for it tho? it just might be worth their time if enough are willing to come forth and sign on to it?

Well if they are going to do it pro bono, which most attorneys I know wouldn't do because like me, their time is worth money for their expertise. If someone asked me to come in and set up their file servers and network, do it on my own time and then on top of it do it for free, it would be unlikely that I would be willing. Because I have learned in my experiences that anything for free has no value, so after being burned myself I can't even bring myself to even ask an attorney anymore to help me for absolutely nothing.

There would be nothing in it for them in a suit like that, unfortunately. It would be different if there was some sort of damages that could be had that could be used as a carrot, but with a filing like this, either you take a long time and do it pro se and then ask an attorney to review what you have done and give you some pointers, because you are more likely to get help if you have done most of the initial heavy lifting.

Once you start reading all the legal briefs and court decisions, you begin to realize why an attorney is paid like they are, it is dry, sometimes the wording isn't as clear as one would hope and there is a lot of referencing that goes on that you have to also read to understand how and why those references were used.

The reason I put the dates that I did, is because WI has had online registry since June 1, 2001, but the public registry itself has been around since 1996. Those that have convictions from back then weren't subject to fees or lifetime registration in the public view with smartphone apps to track them. Those things were gadgets on Star Trek and Star Wars, fictional and part of the imagination. They are also all before the nasty hype really heated up and after the shit in the 1980's, so the majority of them if not all of them are not on supervision, they have established lives and stability and have, in most cases, not committed any more crimes of any sort. Which means if they were retroactively put back on, then forced to pay an increasing tax without representation, there is some teeth to a case like that.. especially after reading Mueller v. Raemisch, 740 F. 3d 1128 - Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit 2014, http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7980017693374495462&q=740+F.3d+1128&hl=en&as_sdt=3,50&as_vis=1

When dealing with the court system and judges... they are puppets, they have to 'comply' so they are not free thinkers necessarily and have to follow the laws that someone else set up regardless if they agree. BUT, if you can argue well enough and come at the issue from the right angle, give them something they can hang their hat on, they will then be able to do what they may wish... Now you get some judge that doesn't already agree with you, you will still have to do the same thing but even better so they have no choice but to hang their hat on your argument.

As for the 10,000 for an attorney, that is when you start shopping for someone hungry enough to go after it, down to earth enough to work with, and someone that is willing to let you help them with it, delivering documents to the court, researching case law, coming up with angle ideas that pertain to the US Constitution since this kind of thing needs to be taken to federal court and when you go there it has to be about the Constitution. No taxation without representation. So you start with the folks that have been on there a long time whittle the list down... show the public that the thing is diluted to the point of being useless. Then start on the punitive issues that surround it, because to bring something up in court, damage has to have occurred to the plaintiff. (one of the reasons why the obamacare hasn't been challenged successfully in court yet, no one has been 'taxed' yet on their return, which means no one has been harmed yet by the law itself.)

I am so glad I didn't become an attorney.... heh