Listen to RM206: Modifications to AWA (SORNA) Regulations Adopted
https://www.registrymatters.co/podcast/rm206-modifications-to-awa-sorna-regulations-adopted/
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Andy 00:09
Recording live from FYP Studios, east and west. Transmitting across the internet. This is episode 206 of Registry Matters. Good evening, sir. How are you?
Larry 00:19
Good evening to you. I am doing wonderful.
Andy 00:23
Can you give us a few minutes of your training session with your furnace?
Larry 00:29
Yes I can. I can indeed. It has gotten very cold last night. It was like 18 in the valley. And similar temperature expected tonight. And it still hasn’t started despite my request. So I’m using my auxiliary heat, and I’m going to teach it that I can do without it.
Andy 00:50
How are you teaching it? Are you using a carrot and stick? Are you beating it? Are you talking to it? What are you doing?
Larry 00:59
Well, I do periodically say I wish you would start up, but it just ignores me. So I’ve used my alternate heaters and the heck with it.
Andy 01:06
Okay, then. Alright. Um, and this is gas though? (Larry: Yes.) I kind of think gas would be… I don’t know, from just like space heaters, I got to think the gas would… whole house heating would probably be more efficient than space heaters I would think.
Larry 01:21
Probably so but right now gas is artificially high because of factors that are unique to New Mexico gas company.
Andy 01:29
Okay. Well, then, with that being passed, can you give us an idea of what we’re covering tonight? Because I’m sure I have a really good idea what’s coming.
Larry 01:39
We are going to cover some very important topics. We’ve got some listener submissions. We’re going to be talking about the now final modifications to the Adam Walsh Act regulations that became effective on December 8. And we’re going to be going back to a couple of cases we talked about on episode 205 of Registry Matters.
Andy 02:05
Okay, well, I guess we will dive right in because you have said that we have like 17 hours of content. So let’s hit question number one that comes from a person. Says, if I visit Phoenix for seven days next year, do I need to appear in person at the county sheriff’s office within three business days only to find out they won’t register me? How do I get this in writing? What if I call them ahead of my visit and confirm that they only will register me if I plan to stay in the county for more than 10 consecutive days? I’m sure some Sheriff there will say Sure, I’ll register you. Where’s your $250 initial registration fee? And oh, by the way, you can’t stay at that hotel. It’s within 1000 feet of a school. What do I do then? Right? This is this is definitely something that people talk about when they go visit some foreign land.
Larry 02:54
I didn’t do any research on Arizona law. So I don’t know what it specifically says. But I suspect that it’s related to the AWA regulations we’re going to be talking about later. Because everybody imagines that the three days applies if they travel. But in terms of Arizona specific, I don’t know how long you can be there, per statute. But really all he can do is what he’s talking about doing if he’s determined to find out. if you call the registrar for the jurisdiction you’re going to be in, and they tell you don’t have to register, they’re not going to send you an email in all likelihood. And you’re not going to have a document. I mean, it’s gonna be that you called, and I guess you would have your cell phone log that showed that you called a number affiliated with the registration unit. But you’re not going to have anything that says we wouldn’t register you. I just tend not to get nearly as worried about that as people do. But I understand their concern. It could be a serious charge. But for the life of me, I have not ever heard of anyone prosecuted because they were an hour longer than whatever the perceived time limit is in Arizona. And I didn’t even know they had a $250 fee. That’s something I’m not aware of if that is in fact the case in Arizona.
Andy 04:07
So a little story… I was still on probation. So this is a little bit different I’m assuming that this individual’s condition. I go visit a foreign land, the state of Pennsylvania, and I was told to go register when I get there. And I go there, and I go talk to some sheriff or police officer, whatever the hell they’re called. And he goes, not doing it. I’m sorry, you’re what? He goes, I’m not registering you. You don’t need to. But they told me to. Yeah, but you don’t have to. Look, man, that puts me in a really bad spot. They’re expecting to see your signature. And if I don’t go home with your signature, they’re gonna be mad at me. And he goes, I’m not doing it. I was like, oh god. So how do you prove that you went other than here’s my GPS logs that I stood in the sheriff’s office. I took pictures. I took some selfies with the police. Like what are you supposed to do?
Larry 05:00
That’s really all you could do. And nothing’s gonna come of that. If they won’t register you, there’s nothing the state of Georgia could do. Now there is one thing they could have done, which they can no longer do. They could have said, well, if you can’t find a way to register while you’re there, we just won’t let you travel anymore.
Andy 05:18
Right. Fortunately, for me, it didn’t go that way. And it was no big deal. No one ever asked me for any paperwork of that sort. But it was just like, that puts me in a really, really awkward spot that I can’t prove that I was here because I don’t have the registration paperwork that you signed it. And whatever. Alright, well, so what are you then telling him to do? If he calls them and they say, you don’t need to, don’t go? And just go be on your merry way?
Larry 05:45
Well, I’m a documenting freak. So I would document that. I would try to figure out who I talked to. Certainly the agency I spoke to and the time and the date. I would get your phone record. But I would actually try to make some kind of contemporaneous entry in a journal of some type if I were that concerned. never was one to worry about that. But people do. And I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong for worrying. I just don’t have any history of someone being prosecuted for being a few hours over. I just have not seen that in my experience. But people still carry that fear because the consequences are significant.
Andy 06:24
Okay. All right, then we’ll move over to question one, the second time. And it says. Dear Registry Matters. Hello, my name is Tim, and I am a new subscriber to the NARSOL newsletter and saw your ad for free sample transcript that I’d like to receive and having enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope. Thank you very much for that. That makes it super helpful for you, I would imagine, Larry. I also wanted to ask about purchasing transcripts. I see you offer, like monthly subscriptions. Do you offer or sell your transcripts individually for each episode? And do you have a library of previous podcasts sorted by topic available for purchase? And then finally, I’m looking for specific topics to answer questions I have regarding my own situation, which is… but anyway, so the podcast, generally, is about an hour long, Larry, and let’s say it’s 200 words per minute. So that’s like 12,000 words that we say in the course of an hour for the podcast. And so how are we going to index that by topic? And that’s very technical and complicated. And perhaps we will get there in the very near future. But that is asking a lot to have every topic. Did we talk about probation in Texas? Did we talk about interstate travel going to this way? There’s a lot of work involved in that. So we don’t have it quite that detailed. But for the low, low cost of what Larry? What is it for a month?
Larry 07:53
$6.
Andy 07:55
Okay, for six bucks, you get 12,000 words, roughly, printed four times a month or five times sometimes, and you get a mountain of content, and you would receive everything that’s going on. I think that’s a good bargain.
Larry 08:09
Me too. I know it’s a good bargain because our hard costs are really above that. This is actually not paying for itself, which will give me a chance to tell people if we don’t get the subscription numbers higher, we’re gonna at some point have to evaluate the efficacy of this transcript service because if you’re paying a transcriptionist to cover 40 weekly newsletters, the cost per unit is considerably more than if we have it gone to 100 or 150. People. The transcriptionist spends the same amount of time. Now we would have additional print and postage and envelopes costs. But the actual preparing the transcript and getting the content in shape enough where you can understand what we talked about, that is where the real cost is. So we need for folks in prison to promote this and let’s grow this list.
Andy 08:59
Someone asked in chat says can he backorder transcripts? He most certainly can order backorder them, but someone would have to go to the site. So the way the transcript side works is that’s all posted on the website also. Not on the podcast page, but there’s a link to it there. You could certainly do some creative Google searches to find where we have spoken specific words, which is why I did the transcript to begin with. We talked about heaters this evening, Larry, so if you do a Google search, specifically against Registry Matters for teaching your heater a lesson, I would imagine there are a handful of episodes that show up, especially also talking about showerheads. And the whole reason why I started doing transcripts to begin with was to make sure that Google saw those keywords and then we could find timestamps for it and if we needed to reference back to it, we could find them. But if someone wanted to go do a search for some handful of keywords for you to figure out what subject you’re trying to cover, then you could certainly either download them directly and not worry about involving the print side of it, or you could order them I guess? But we’re not set up to, for someone to say, hey, Larry, can you send me episode 142? Like, we’re not set up for that either, really.
Larry 10:11
Well, we actually could do that. We’re going to be PDFing and all of our transcripts that we have since we’ve been doing this, which started episode 137. We’re going to be going back and making sure those are available, and they’re actually going to be put on our FYP educational website in the not-too-distant future, I hope. But we would be able to do that. I haven’t figured out what the cost would be because that’s labor intensive when you have to go prepare one. So that’s something that requires time.
Andy 10:39
Absolutely. All right. Well, then we will continue on to what would actually be question number two. Says, Liberty and Justice- so I assume that this went to you people out your way- My name is Armando. And I am writing concerning my registry being changed from a 10- to 20-year to a lifetime registry. A change in my requirements I feel is in violation of my constitutional rights. By this change in my requirements, my charges were criminal sexual with a minor fourth degree, blah, blah, blah, and two criminal contact of a minor per plea deal. I served six months in county on work release and 18 months’ probation starting in 2002. And completed it in 2004-2005. In 2006, I picked up a failure to register. It’s a fourth-degree charge. And I pled out for 18 months’ probation finaled in 2007, and was registering every six months until 2012 or close to when all of a sudden, Deputy so and so of Chavez County Sheriff’s Office in Roswell, New Mexico, advised me of a lifelong 90 Day registry. And I am asking you to please look into this matter on my behalf. I am going for three years Department of Corrections plea deal on a failure to register CR something or another. Thank you for your time and consideration. So he’s actually already been sentenced to going to go visit his local Department of Corrections?
Larry 12:16
Well, this case is a little more complicated. And we encourage people not to overwrite. And they’re in a catch 22 because he either deliberately underwrote because there’s a whole lot more here he did not tell us. But being this is in my state, I and with the assistance of our FYP researchers, we have looked into this. So the first sexual offense he had was in 2002. And from all appearances in the public records, he was not off supervision and completed that sentence in its totality by June 30th, 2005. And that being the case that’s what it appears to be, anybody who was serving any part of their sentence for a registerable offence, the laws changed on them on July 1, 2005, which most of the offenses went from once a year for 20 years and some small number of offenses once a year for 10 years. Those 20-year offenses went to four times a year for lifetime. And I think one or maybe two of the 10-year offenses also went into that category. So, if he was serving any portion of his sentence, and that includes community supervision, on July 1, 2005, his requirements changed. And that’s part one. Part two, he has three failure to registers pending in Chavez county right now. Not one, but three. The other part of that is he has possession of a controlled substance pending in Chavez County right now. So he has multiple felony charges pending. Now, for the listening audience who believe that probation is so rare, now did you hear that on his first failure to register he got a probated sentence? In his original charge- now this is almost 20 years ago, 2002- he also got what was essentially a community sentence. He had work release. So all you folks that are so convinced that everybody goes to jail, they actually don’t. But anyway, he’s had difficulty staying out of trouble in the intervening time. So, what’s gonna likely happen in this case is that his current felony charge with the drug possession and his failure to registers, it looks like one of them has already been nolled by the prosecutor. You remember that, nolle prosequi that we talked about? (Andy: I do.) It looks like one of those has already been dismissed by the prosecutor. But what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna roll this. And I have not spoken to the attorney. I just got this letter today. But what’s going to happen is they’re going to roll that into consolidated plea. And he’s going to get concurrent time. So when he gets his sentence, since he has a previous conviction for failing to comply with registration, it has a self enhancement mechanism in the state where it goes from a fourth degree felony carrying a maximum of 18 months, it goes to a third-degree felony carrying a maximum of 36 months. So, they’re going to consolidate that in all likelihood with the drug offense, and he’s going to get concurrent time rather than consecutive time. That’s going to be his inducements to plead guilty. But this is a lesson about plea bargains. People always say, well, why would I plead guilty? Well, here’s one of the reasons why you would. You’ve got at least two and possibly a third failure to register and they’re all seconds. So that’s 9 years of jurisdiction right there. And then you’ve got the drug possession, which I didn’t look up. But that’s got to be at least a third degree felony. So he’s looking at about 12 years of stacked time. Which if you don’t do the plea, all that time could be stacked. And then he’s looking at habitual enhancement, and I’d have to do the research, but there could be some additional time for habitual enhancement. So, what they will get him to do, the plea agreement will be that he will admit that he’s habitual offender. They will probably give him a sentence far less than the 12 years. And that will end this case, and then he’ll serve whatever prison time and come back out on supervision again. And he’ll get a second chance. This case, if he were trying to challenge it, I have worked with an attorney in the Appellate Division of the public defender’s office here where we’ve litigated this very issue in that that very court in Travis County with Judge Romero, who’s now retired, and judge Romero didn’t want to hear anything about registration having been evolved to impose more punishment, because we don’t have residence restrictions. We don’t have all these things in our state. We don’t have any limitations. You can live anywhere you want to, you can work anywhere you want to. And so, judge Romero didn’t see it. We appealed it. The Court of Appeals didn’t see it. They didn’t see any distinguishment that made it no longer civil regulatory. And the state Supreme Court refused to hear it. So, although Romero’s off the bench, I would just about bet if you litigated again in this trial court in Travis County, you would get a similar outcome. Without a significant amount of proof that registration has evolved. And you would cite the cases like Michigan. Well, we don’t have any of those restrictions, or you could cite Tennessee. We don’t have any of those restrictions. So we have a lot weaker cause to say how punitive our registry is. So it’d be an uphill climb for us. This guy is going to need to work out a plea agreement and try to comply with his conditions of supervision when he gets out of prison. He will be doing some prison time in all likelihood based on his prior record.
Andy 17:59
Can you remind me what prosequi means? And can you spell it again?
Larry 18:03
I can’t spell it.
Andy 18:06
What does it mean?
Larry 18:09
It means that the prosecutor elects not to move forward. It’s an effective dismissal.
Andy 18:14
Okay, all right. Um, I think I had another question for you in there. But I don’t remember what it is now. And but the person is writing asking- I’m going to kind of be critical of the individual for a second Larry. The person’s writing to you without full information that you went and went and looked up more information on the person, but kind of minimizing all that has been going on. When you say there’s one, written it says there’s one, but there’s actually three. Like, the prosecutor is going to be like, I don’t have to try very hard to get a conviction out of you. Why would the person even be trying to fight this when they have all this stuff stacked against them?
Larry 18:51
Well, that’s why it’s gonna go into a consolidated plea. You don’t have much to work with because of some of these charges, he would be convicted if he went to trial with the drug possession, the possession of controlled substance. And when he goes to trial, and he gets convicted, all bets are off for sentencing. So it’s just the maximum statutory limit. And there’s nothing that prevents consecutive sentencing. So therefore, that’s why people plead. I know that you guys out there think that you should just abolish all pleas and everybody should go to trial. But this is an example of why you’re not gonna do that. And this case is not going to resolve itself by going to trial. There’s going to be a plea with this. It is likely going to combine with the other case with the controlled substance.
Andy 19:36
Okay. For the next pretty big block of time we’re going to be covering… wait for it… SORNA! Hmm. Who would have ever thought that this was going to come up again Larry? They said that were finalized and they would go into effect. Is it January 7? Is that when they’re coming up again, or going into effect?
Larry 19:57
Sometime in January. I don’t recall the date.
Andy 19:59
Thought that’s what it was. And obviously everyone has their panties all in a wad and the hackles are up. Everyone’s asking questions. What does this mean for this? What does that mean for that? So, we have another flurry of questions to talk about SORNA. And the first one comes from someone named Sandy. I think this is a neat question too. Is there any way to predict with any reasonable degree of accuracy which states might be the most likely to utilize the new provisions? And if so, what are they? Conversely, which states might be the least likely to go along with these new regulations? I think that’s a neat question, Larry. But that probably goes to a whole lot of speculation and whatnot. Can you read the tea leaves? Larry?
Larry 20:42
Well, I don’t know if I’ve been given that skill, but without reading the tea leaves, there’s actually information that would help you figure that out. What we know, despite the fact that only 18, or whatever it is, states have been deemed substantially compliant, we know that many states have submitted compliance request packages to the feds, to the SMART Office The Sex Offender Monitoring, Apprehension, Registration and Tracking office in DC. We know that. So what we could do to predict the likelihood that the states would use this as an opportunity to maybe do an administrative implementation is we could look at the states who have submitted compliance application packets, and look at where they’re deficient. Because the review of their application is, last time I looked, on that website. And you can see where they are deficient. Like, for example, New Mexico’s, it’ll say that they need to add additional offenses to the universe of registerable sex offenses, they need to shorten the time between initial registration. It’s three days by federal standards. We have 10 days for older convictions, and it’s down to five business days for newer convictions when we’re not registering juvenile offenders. Things like that are on the list of deficiencies. So, what that tells you, if you have an open mind, is that those states would like to comply. Otherwise, they would not submit an application now would they? (Andy: Okay, right, right.) Okay, so we have that information of the states that are attempting to comply. Those states that are attempting to comply are going to look at this with a fine-toothed comb saying how can we accomplish some of this stuff administratively? So that would be a relatively easy thing to predict, in my opinion, by looking at does your state want to comply? If your state has said we have no intention of complying, then that changes that paradigm. Which I think there’s been a couple states that have said we’re not going to comply. California, I think, is one. I think Texas is another. Texas is already so bad, you know that complying might actually improve the situation in Texas. Because in many regards, Texas is worse than the federal standards. Same thing in my state. Some of the requirements we have for like the possession of child porn, the federal standards are less than what we require under our current law. So if we were to merely mirror what’s required a whole lot of folks that are lifetime would no longer be lifetime. And I get all kinds of spitballs. You know what we did in school? When you put the spit ball in the straw. I get all kinds of spitballs shot at me when I say that.
Andy 23:19
I do that at you every night while we record this podcast.
Larry 23:25
So people say that. But I tell them if the state, in particular the southern states, where they have far exceeded. If you could just get them to adopt the requirements of the AWA, you would actually improve your state. And they really get angry when you say that. But in terms of the flip side of that question, what states will be the least? That’s harder to predict. I think the states that have said we have no intention to comply may be less zealous. But the state like Maryland where the Supreme Court has said that no disadvantage can be imposed, because it’s in their state constitution and their declaration of rights, Maryland would probably be very unlikely to risk it because their court has spoken twice on this. They haven’t seen it differently on any of the two previous decisions about registering. So therefore, if they try to get cute in Maryland, they’re going to get slapped down. And I think the Maryland public policymakers would recognize that. So that would be how I would look at is who has tried to comply and failed. And who has said that they don’t intend to comply. That would be a good clue.
Andy 24:31
Can we take just the tiniest little bit of a detour about Maryland for just a minute? We’ve brought this up and we’ve talked about this a number of times through the whole history of this podcast. Maryland has that special language. Can you remind me what it is?
Larry 24:44
“No disadvantage.”
Andy 24:48
So they can’t do something that gives an extra special disadvantage to someone from a law and that protects the citizens of Maryland from a whole lot of extra egregious crap that Alabama does to their people, right?
Larry 25:01
That’s correct, because their ex post facto provision is broader than the US Constitution. And this should be a lesson, you can do more than US Constitution and be a state. You can’t do less. So Maryland chooses to provide more protection. So do a number of states. Our state has a constitution that provides greater protections than the US Constitution. It’s okay to do that. It’s just not okay to do less. Same thing with the federal SORNA standards. These are recommendations to the states. Recommendations. If you want to be fully funded, without any loss of funding, you will do at least these things. You can do more, but you’re not supposed to do less.
Andy 25:46
My intent with the example is that we have- I know it’s an extreme way to word it- but we have 50 individual little countries with this federal umbrella that provides for the certain specific things that the federal government is supposed to do. But we have 50 individual states plus all the extra territories, but each one of them is able to self-govern. Right?
Larry 26:09
Correct. So Maryland chooses to protect its citizens. Nothing stop you from working for constitutional amendments in your state to provide greater protections. Constitutional amendments are hard, but nothing stops you.
Andy 26:24
That’s what I was getting you to go for. So we could make all of the other 49 states have some sort of extra protections against providing for more constitutional protections at the local state level. Whether that be in this department or that department, but they specifically worded that so that you can’t create a larger disability for the citizens there. And I just think that’s super neat. And it very much highlights exactly how people need to look at this is that California is not New Jersey. And that’s not Minnesota, and that’s not Florida, and they all get to operate under their own rules and restrictions. And they’re all similar, but they get to do their own little nuanced things.
Larry 27:07
That’s correct. We are 50 separate sovereigns.
Andy 27:12
Alright, then we have this big battery of questions that someone sent in. There’s one from somebody else. But most of these come from an individual in Georgia who did a pretty fair amount of consolidating a whole bunch of questions for us. And it says, does this affect every PFR who has ever committed a sex crime or just those who are still required to register under state law? Can we unpack that first? Can we dissect the question to sharpen it?
Larry 27:41
Well, as best I can, I will try. And it has the potential to affect every person who’s ever committed a sex crime. But at the moment, if you were living on December 7, and you survived to December 8, nothing changed. Your life has not changed.
Andy 28:00
You mean January, by the way, right?
Larry 28:03
When the AGs Office said, we are adopting.
Andy 28:08
Oh, okay. Okay. I gotcha. I gotcha. Not when it goes into effect, I thought that’s what you were saying. Gotcha.
Larry 28:13
If you were alive on December 7, and you were alive on December 8, nothing change. If you’re alive on what date did you say it’s going effective?
Andy 28:20
I thought it was January 7th. That’s what I remember hearing.
Larry 28:24
That’s probably what it is. Your life will be exactly identical to the way it is today. Nothing will change. But there is the potential for an awful lot of things to change. For example, under the federal definition of a person required to register, it does include anyone who has ever been convicted. So it could be that you were convicted a long time ago, and you never had to register. In the provisions of the Adam Walsh Act, one of the things that’s in your compliance package is do you have a reach back provision that will go back and capture people who enter the justice system? They don’t go out looking for you to try to find you. But if you happen to pick up a felony level conviction, or a sexual offense of any type, whether it’s a felony or not, that state is supposed to welcome you back. Now, if you pick up a new sexual offense, that would itself welcome you back into the system. But if you picked up a felony, like a drug possession, and you had an old sex offense, the state is supposed to call you back in and say welcome in, we’d like to have you registered. So if that’s not in your state statute, it doesn’t magically become law. So, your state still has to adopt it, either through a statutory change or through a regulatory change. And I would argue that in most cases, a regulatory change of that nature defining a sexual offender would be unconstitutional, but the answer is we do not know. If the Georgia Bureau of Investigation promulgates a regulation that says that anybody who was defined as a PFR by Federal law has to register, well, is that constitutional? we’ll have to test it in court. But there is that reach back provision. But the reach back provision, it’s not as bad as people think. It’s bad, not minimizing it. So listen carefully. It’s bad. But it’s not as bad as people think. Depending on the age of the conviction, they do not have to start you out fresh from today. So, if it’s a tier one offense, and more than 15 years have elapsed since that offense, you don’t have to register even though they could adopt the reach back provision. They could say, well, 15 years have passed. So therefore, you still don’t have to register. But there has to be expertise on the ground when they’re considering that to explain to them that within the framework of the AWA, you can give credit for the time that has lapsed, that the person didn’t have a duty to register. If it were a tier two, if 25 years or more have lapsed, then you could still say, yes, you do have old conviction. You were convicted for something happened 27 years ago, it would qualify as a tier two if you did it today. But you don’t have to register. Go off, have a good life. They don’t have to do it that way. But they could do it that way. They could do it the other way. They could say you owe us 15 years as a tier one. They could say you owe us 25 years. Now, unfortunately, for those whose offenses would qualify as a tier three, if you’re alive, and you fall into that recapture group, they’re supposed to recapture you and have you register. So a true tier three, if they’re living and breathing, they would have a duty to register if the state adopted that. That’s the horrible thing, because the states are so willy nilly about putting things in tier three that don’t really need to be in tier three. So they look on their chart, they say, well, Andy looks like here on this list, the way I see it, it says you’re a tier three on our list. And even though it happened 30 years ago, and even though you’re 74 years old now, you’re gonna have to register. We’ve given you notice right now that you need to be on the list. That’s what they would do under that. So yes, the answer is nothing immediately. But yes, it could.
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Andy 33:03
Ok. If Georgia or insert any state decides to further abide by SORNA, will Georgia, or fill in whatever state, have to evaluate all registering PFRs? We know the great majority in Georgia, as I haven’t been since moving here in 2013, have not been tiered. Yes, this is true. There’s probably like 17,000 of the 25 and change that are not leveled.
Larry 33:28
Yeah. And see, that’s what makes this such a great question. Because I get to explain to you, again, leveling and tiering are not the same thing. (Andy: Right. Right.) Leveling in Georgia is actually done as an individualized risk evaluation. And that’s the way it’s done in Arkansas. That’s the way it’s done a number of states where they have the risk-based model. Under the Adam Walsh, that is not the way it’s worked. It would be a categorical approach, meaning that they would put a list of offenses together. And if you were convicted of that offense, it would be a tier one. If you’re convicted of this offense, it’d be a tier two. And if you’re convicted of these offenses, it’d be a tier three. So the only question would be for those, if you had a Georgia conviction, they would just simply be able to look at the list. Maybe the title of an offense may have changed over the intervening years. That could have happened. But there would be history that would show us what that statute as it was named and what the number was as it existed previously. So we could still figure that out. Where it would be more problematic would be if you came into Georgia with a non-Georgia conviction, trying to figure out what your tier would be. Not your level, but whether you would be tier one, tier two or tier three. So if Georgia wanted to move in that direction, then there could be some expense and some complexity into tiering the non-Georgia convictions. But for the Georgia convictions, it wouldn’t be that difficult. We’d just look at the list. It wouldn’t be all that complicated at all.
Andy 35:05
Because the way that you’re describing it, what tiers are from the federal side is if you are- I know you’re going to love this- felony jaywalking, you’re a tier one. But in Georgia, if they’re doing it risk based, they might not even have something that says this or they might have it say that it’s a level two or three just because of the name. They didn’t go evaluate you.
Larry 35:28
Yeah, correct. It’s just a categorical approach. Very simple. It means the offense itself determines how it’s tiered. A risk-based system looks at, you may have had seven offenses, and you may still be a level one, because you may have gotten sufficient treatment, you may have aged out of that type of behavior, and they may still level you as a low risk. So, it’s really not as complicated as people make it. Tiers are categories of offenses, leveling are individually assigned.
Andy 36:07
Alright, well, then let’s move along. If a PFR manages to move out of the US, will they be obligated to provide travel notification to the US when traveling from a non-US country to another non US country? I gotta think that that would be like a big flipping the two fingers at the US. If you’re living in Germany, and you’ve fled or left, why would you tell the US anything?
Larry 36:33
That is correct. Now that would be the case out of the Philippines where they extradited the guy back to Kansas. You remember the case we laughed about.
Andy 36:40
Yeah, yeah, they went and got him.
Larry 36:44
So the US would have no further jurisdiction over the person in terms of requiring them to report. Now, when you leave the US and you’re only temporarily absent, that raises new questions that we don’t know the answer to. Because sometimes, because of your immigration status, you’re not allowed to stay in a country indefinitely. You have to go back to your home. And since I have not traveled internationally, I’m woefully inadequate to explain that. But we had a guy in Maryland that used to go to Latin America, and he had to come home periodically to reconnect with the US. But if you’re permanently gone from the US, and I do not say renounce your citizenship, but if you’ve permanently moved out of the US and you’ve got permanent residence in another country, there would not be any jurisdiction unless that country says since you have a US conviction, we want you to keep staying in touch with the US. But otherwise, there’d be no jurisdiction.
Andy 37:37
I can’t see any other way to noodle around in that one, Larry, to try and tease out anything more from that. So, we’ll move along. Does Larry still think the US is the greatest country on Earth? Encourages Larry to search best country to live in, just saying. Um, and I did some searching just what we were talking about for the library conversation. I’ve looked up to see if you have said that. I didn’t capture anywhere where you have specifically said the US is the best country to live in. But I will back up. Is it, like, is it in the top tier of countries to live in? You and I would both agree that it is. This would had to have come right after we did the episode with River from Germany. The US certainly has its flaws. It’s up there as far as one of the better places to be, but is it the best? I don’t know if it’s the best.
Larry 38:28
Well, let me put it into context. What happened was that I was making snarky remarks about the Make America Great Again slogan. And I said that I was always confused by the slogan of needing to make America great again. Because prior to 2016, and folks, that means prior to Trump running for president, if anyone had ever said America wasn’t great, they would have been criticized as being unpatriotic. So therefore, magically, it was okay to say make America great and you weren’t unpatriotic starting in 2016. So, I said something to the effect that why would we need to make America great again? America is great. But I don’t think I ever said it’s the greatest country. America is a great country. Now I’ll tell you why America is a great country. America is a great country because we have a large amount of mobility in this country that other countries don’t have. And I used to do property management where I had people from dozens of nations around the world. And you have freedom of mobility. You can go to enter any state, any territory without having to get permission to enter the state. You have upward mobility in this country where you can advance. You don’t have a caste system like in India where you’re mostly relegated to where you’re born. In this country, you can rise through the ranks, and you can become something beyond what your wildest dreams were in this country, compared to many other countries. In this country, you do have due process of law. It may not be a perfect process, but it’s a due process of law. In this country, you have so many things. I mean, we have prosperity. We have lots of problems also. We have uneven healthcare, we have a huge amount of homeless people that are really suffering, and we have bad outcomes on infant mortality. I think we have one of the highest infant mortality rates, not in the whole world, because the third world, the less developed countries have higher. But in terms of the industrial countries, we have a very high infant mortality rate. We have problems. But America has opportunity. And I judge it by the passport. If you look at the passport rankings, the American passport is in the top five or six passports of the most countries it will get you admitted to. That tells you something about what the rest of the world thinks of Americans. The last thing that tells me this is a great country is people are still coming here by the 10s of 1000s. And according to the news media now, they’re coming in by the hundreds of 1000s. They come on boats, they come on rafts, they come on any way they can to get to the United State. If the United States was as bad as… I mean, if it was such a horrible country, they wouldn’t sacrifice and suffer and risk their life to get to a horrible nation. So yes, America is a great country. But I’ve never said it’s the greatest country on Earth.
Andy 41:28
I completely agree with you, Larry, on all the points that you just made. So let’s see how this one goes. So what is necessary to get relief from registering in this state and states we were convicted in? The states which have us on the registry where we live or work. So do we have to file petitions with the specific state that we’re in to get relief? Because after you’ve moved, you don’t have to worry about the state you came from. So it’s where you are now as far as getting your relief on the registry? I think that’s what that question is asking.
Larry 42:09
It did kind of meander around. I didn’t realize it was that meandering when I first read it. But when you get relief from the obligation to register, the obligation to register is different by a longshot than being listed on a website. When you’re listed on a website, that is a historical marker of what happened. So if you were to visit Florida, and you were to be listed on Florida’s website, and you leave Florida, even though under the present practices of Florida they’re not going to continue to impose any obligation on you, but that image of you and your crime and that fact that marker will have happened. That is not the same thing as registering. When you register, you have to give a whole lot of information that’s continuously updated. And you have to be subject to paying fees in many of our states. You have to be subject to limitations on where you can live, where you can work. And I just can’t see how anybody can say that it’s the same when it isn’t. So what you’re trying to get rid of is the obligation and duty to register. That’s the priority number one. And that obligation is imposed by your state. So if you petition off Georgia, and you’ve been to Florida at sometime, yes, you may be on the Florida website. And I feel bad about that. That wouldn’t be something you want coming up on a Google search. But Florida doesn’t have any more control over you at that point. You’re not registering with Florida. You have registered in Florida. Is that not clear enough of what the distinction is?
Andy 43:49
They have 50,000 people that are dead on their registry. They have 80,000, or something people on the registry and 30,000 of them are alive. And I don’t know how many, maybe it’s 50,000 that are dead or have moved out. But yes, and yeah, if you’re on the registry in any state at this point, you’re going to show up in a Google search. And if you’ve been on the registry, probably since 2010, you’ll end up in a Google search. It’s very easy to do these kinds of background checks at this point.
Larry 44:17
So now the registry as it exists in Wisconsin, where they say you continue to owe us the $100 annually, and you continue to need to file this report with us, that is closer to having to register. You’re still not subjected to any of Wisconsin’s restrictions in terms of where you can live, where you can work and all those types of things. And I think they may even have some work restrictions. I know they have residence restrictions that are all over Wisconsin, because that’s what the big controversy is about people having to go back to the jurisdiction that convicted them. And the Governor vetoed a bill that was supposed to fix that and all that stuff. But Wisconsin is the only state that I know that tries to do that and I’m dubious about how constitutional that is. But remember what we’ve established about laws about when they’re constitution and when they’re not.
Andy 45:03
They’re probably constitutional until they’re proved to not be. (Larry: Correct.) So they’re constitutional when they’re signed. ,
Larry 45:10
And when the person keeps mailing in the check for $100 and keep mailing in the form, they’re happy to take your $100 and are happy to catalog your fall form and put the data into the computer.
Andy 45:25
I’m going to skip number five, Larry. Number Number Five makes 100% no sense to me. So I’m going to skip it. Moving on to number six, taking a quote from RM 206, which says the courts in the Sixth Circuit where Tennessee is recognized because of a previous precedential decision in 2016, the people are being punished through these laws. And they can’t do that retroactively. So even though the states are recognizing the punitive effect, the federal government does not recognize that and continues to apply amendments to SORNA retroactively. I guess it’s the same as far as illicit drugs are concerned. Let me take a stab at this. If I’m not mistaken, the federal side of it doesn’t impose all the disabilities and restraints that all the states are doing with living and work restrictions. They are requiring more information to be posted within the online aspect. And how much of that is required to be publicly available? Can you disclose that part first, Larry? How much of the online register stuff is required to be public to the public?
Larry 46:31
A bulk of that. But that wasn’t what sunk Michigan’s registry. The 2006 and 2011 amendments were what sunk it and the disabilities and restraints. The government doesn’t require any restriction to be SORNA compliant with the federal recommendations. There doesn’t need to be any restrictions on where a person lives or works. So you can’t point the finger at the big old bad federal government. They’re not causing that. So therefore, all they’re doing, for better or worse, is trying to get the law that was passed by Congress in 2006 and signed by President George W. Bush- maybe should get that Bush name out there because Obama takes so much heat for signing the 2016 IML- but signed by George W. Bush. All they’re trying to do is their job of achieving substantial compliance. That is their job until that law is amended by Congress or repealed. The Department of Justice is tasked with trying to figure out a way to get as many states and territories into substantial compliance. I don’t know what is shocking about people putting their hand on the Bible and saying I’m trying to carry out the law. That was what Attorney General Barr was trying to do when he proposed this in his office. He didn’t have any clue what’s in there. It happened at a much lower level than the Attorney General. All of it gets done in the Attorney General’s name. But all that happened was when the administration handed off, this proposal had been put on hold as we talked about on a previous episode because they were putting all of Trump’s final proposals that happened in his last year presidency up for review if they had not been adopted yet. And they were shooting for environmental degradation. This was something that was placed on hold. There’s absolutely no expectation of a rational person that we’re not going to adopt this. And I explained why. Would you like to hear the explanation again? Because I explained it in a previous episode.
Andy 48:43
Sure, tell me again.
Larry 48:45
Okay, so you’ve got 435 members of the House of Representatives that are facing reelection in 2022. And you’ve got a Democratic party that’s under fire for turning loose a tidal wave of criminality on America. They’re pushing to defund the police. They’re pushing to let criminals out of jail without posting bond. They’re doing all these “horrible” things letting people out and not holding them accountable. The crime rate has been escalating in many of our major cities in 2020 2021. And therefore, the Democratic Party, for better or worse, doesn’t want to be tagged with being soft on people convicted of sexual offenses. So with all the other mortar that’s going to be coming at them in the 2022 midterm elections, they don’t want this. So they’re looking at it and saying, well, it looks pretty good to us. It complies with the law, and hopefully more states will become compliant with the federal SORNA. That’s what any Department of Justice was going to do. Had Trump been reelected… Let’s just ask you this, do you think that Trump, had he been reelected, do think his DOJ would have withdrawn the proposal after the 2020 election? Do you think they would have said well, we put this forward, but now that we’ve been reelected, guess we’ll be soft on the PFRs? Do you think they would have done that?
Andy 50:09
No, definitely not. um, alright, well then let’s move on to… I know how this is going to go. So I proactively emailed the sheriff’s officer in charge of PFR registration, stating Hello redacted, as you may have seen- which probably they didn’t see, Larry- the US Attorney General Merrick Garland has signed amendments to SORNA effective January 7 of 22. These amendments will affect anyone who has ever been convicted of a sexual offense. Is there anything that I, as a person forced to register needs to be aware of? Will any of my requirements under state or federal laws change? Regards, redacted again. And so the question is, did I open up a can or ball of worms? Or maybe acknowledge I now know the new amendments and can no longer claim I didn’t know? Oh, I like the second part of that.
Larry 51:00
I don’t think he really opened up a can of worms because, as I say, on January 8, his requirements will not change. But say, hypothetically, when the Georgia General Assembly convenes- I believe it’s in January or February- when they convene, if they were to want to adopt the substantial compliance, rather than having people come in annually, they would have to have three different reporting periods. They could have everybody be one if they did every three months because the tier threes under federal law are supposed to report quarterly. Now, you can have everybody report quarterly. And that’s at least the minimum, right? If you put everybody at quarterly, then you have met the minimum. But if Georgia being a very responsible state they are, and being frugal with the taxpayers resources, of course they would not want to waste money. So Georgia would be very diligent and they would tier everybody correctly and they would not put anybody in tier two or tier three that didn’t need to be. So that would mean less reporting, because reporting costs the sheriff’s money. Oh, I forget the sheriff’s don’t get funded by the state, they get funded by the local community. But if they were to adopt a change in the registration of Georgia, and that were to be signed by the governor, and become effective July 1, which is their typical effective date, it could change his obligations under the registration laws. That’s one way it could change. Another way it could change would be kind of like what happened in West Virginia, where they sent everybody- they being the West Virginia State Police- they sent everybody a letter and said, By the way, if you’re going to travel internationally, you are required by federal law to give us 21 days advance notice. If Georgia doesn’t already have that in their statute, if they were to either pass it by statute, or if they were to decide to try to sneak it in administratively, which is what this is encouraging. This is actually the motive to try to get administrative compliance. If the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were to direct their sheriff’s registrars- that’s the sheriff’s departments, they conduct registration in Georgia- if they were to direct them to start collecting that information, and they put it in the form and said, when you go into register and they say you need to sign this that you got to give us 21 days advance notice if you leave the country, well, then all of a sudden, you have got notice of the Federal obligation that has been around for years, and years and years and years since 2006. That has been under Adam Walsh Act as passed by Congress. But if your state hasn’t told you to do it, you don’t have anybody to leave the information with because that’s who collects it and passes that on to the marshal who passes it on to the countries around the world that you may be traveling to. So there are a number of ways that things could change. This has the potential to change a lot of things, but nothing has changed yet.
Andy 54:01
Um, a question that one of our patrons asked is if you live in a SORNA state, then they apply otherwise than your state law does. What do you think and maybe some folks may not know the difference between the two if you live in a SORNA state.
Larry 54:19
I have no idea what that means.
Andy 54:22
I’m sorry. And I copied that directly and pasted. It looks like it made sense when I pasted it there. And I’m very confused on what it says.
Larry 54:28
Well, well, most people they use that term… see, our state- most states refer to their laws as SORNA, the sex offender registration & notification Act. Or they may say call it SORA like Michigan does, or they may call it SORVTA like Tennessee does. The sex offender and violent registration, whatever it is in Tennessee. But I think he means SORNA, being federal SORNA, but read the question again.
Andy 54:51
If you live in a SORNA state, then they apply otherwise your state law does.
Larry 55:00
What he’s trying to say is if you’re living in a state that’s been deemed substantially compliant with federal SORNA, that they’ve gone out of their way to try to meet the federal guidelines, that this stuff applies. I don’t necessarily agree with that either. Because, again, Maryland is substantially compliant. And in Maryland, they will not be able to do this stuff, because their Supreme Court has said, you cannot impose any disadvantage. So therefore, despite the fact that Maryland is substantially compliant with federal SORNA, they will not be able to do these things.
Andy 55:41
Okay. And that is the end of that list of questions. And I think that is everything there. You gave me this other document. Was there anything SORNA in the questions for the night?
Larry 55:57
No, we’ve covered the SORNA questions. We just had the Tennessee case we’re going to double back on if we have time.
Andy 56:02
Yep. Yep, we do, we do. So I just want to make sure that I wasn’t missing something and putting things completely out of order. Alright, so any closing remarks on the SORNA, part three, part of the show?
Larry 56:17
Truthfully, folks, we don’t know. We do not know. Anyone who tells you they know, they do not know. They’re telling you what they think you would like to hear. States will be creative and try to do things to move towards substantial compliance. You could be hit with anything, but we don’t know what you’re gonna be hit with or when.
Andy 56:41
Do you want to speak any to maybe other organizations are almost like using this as a rallying cry of trying to drum up just excitement and get everyone’s hackles up over this when they’re- I’m not saying that there’s not anything here that needs to be worried about- but like, there’s nothing we can do about it. But they’re using this as an opportunity. It’s how I feel.
Larry 57:05
Well, it could be. I don’t know that that’s unusual. I mean, you raise money in anticipation. You may need money. There may need to be a lot of challenges filed as this thing unfolds. But right now, any challenge will be premature until we see what has happened and what is going to be done. And it would be like the International Megan’s Law challenges they were premature. Right now. Your life will not change on January 8. When your life begins to change, we’ll have to take a look at what those changes are. You can’t file litigation in anticipation of something that might happen.
Andy 57:42
Alright. Okay, so we’ll move over and we’re going to double back on some things that we’ve talked about recently. And it says, you two, you people get on my nerves. All your sarcasm, all the time. I’m speaking about the case from the Kansas Supreme Court. You went out of your way to make Mr. Shaffer’s lawyer look bad. I’m sure you could have played something from the 45-minute audio where she was compelling and made coherent arguments. Instead, you deliberately make her look bad. Which side are you on? What was Mr. Schaffer supposed to do? Just bend over and take it?
Larry 58:20
Who the heck wrote that?
Andy 58:21
I don’t know, man. That’s harsh.
Larry 58:26
There’s certainly some anger in this one for sure. We did not go out of our way to make the attorney look bad. We simply played clips of the justices on the Kansas Supreme Court interacting with her. Those were their comments, not ours. I’m not sure that which side we’re on really deserves a dignified response, because I think I’ll let my many years of work on this issue speaks for itself. But in terms of what was Shaffer supposed to do, that’s a bit more complicated, but I’ll do my best. First, he should have challenged Kansas from the very beginning well before he got arrested for failure to update his registration. Remember, they sent him a letter several years ago. And he acknowledge that was one of his selling points that I made in his plea negotiations that he had like seven years of continuous compliance. So for seven years, he was riding the lakes of Alabama and around the country, he should have filed- if he truly believed that he was not being constitutionally required to register- he should have filed a petition for declaratory judgment. And by using that vehicle, rather than trying to challenge within a criminal case, he would have been able to develop an evidentiary record showing how punitive Kansas’ registration actually is, and how it’s become. Second, he should not have done a plea deal on stipulated facts. The stipulation he agreed to did not address the punitive aspects of the Kansas registration regime. And finally, he would do well to listen to those who tried to help him, like me, because the entire matter played out pretty much like I told him it would.
Andy 1:00:04
Well, there’s not much else that can be done then. Let’s drive on over to the Tennessee case that we covered about last week. And this was written and it says, The plaintiffs in this case are individuals who have been placed on that registry and made subject to those requirements despite the fact that when they committed their offenses, the registration scheme did not exist. Under the law of the Sixth Circuit, the policy is illegal. Specifically, the Sixth Circuit published a binding opinion in Does numbers one through five versus Snyder 834 Federal- I’m not reading all the rest of it. You can find it in the show notes. (Does #1-5 v. Snyder, 834 F.3d 696 (6th Cir. 2016) held that Michigan’s highly similar scheme, when applied to individuals whose crimes preceded the schemes adoption, violated the constitutional prohibition on ex post facto criminal punishments. Nothing about the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in Snyder suggested that the states other than Michigan have any greater right to pursue such a policy than Michigan did. Larry, this sounds to me like the judge has telegraphed that Tennessee will not be allowed to continue registering people whose offense predates registration.
Larry 1:01:15
Does it sound that way to you? Doesn’t sound that way to me. The court also said, if you read on, although Snyder did not directly involve the state of Tennessee, the federal district courts of the state have repeatedly concluded the same analysis applies (or, as the procedural posture in each given case called for, likely or plausibly applies) to Tennessee’s own, very similar scheme and policies. But that does not mean that Tennessee could not create a dissimilar registry scheme. What’s making this compelling is because they’re so similar in what Tennessee and Michigan does. What if you had a Vermont scheme in Tennessee? Would this same analysis apply? I don’t think so.
Andy 1:01:59
I don’t think anybody in Tennessee would be complaining about it either.
Larry 1:02:02
The ones on the registry wouldn’t. Tennessee people would be.
Andy 1:02:07
Right, they would want more. I noted in page three, it reads the courts that have applied Snyder in individual Tennessee cases have frequently granted injunctive relief to the plaintiffs in those cases that allowed those plaintiffs to be spared from the registry’s requirements. Nevertheless, Tennessee officials have continued to impose the state’s repeatedly held-to-be-unlawful policy on others. Similarly situated individuals have not yet sought and received such a judicial relief. State officials, of course, are under no formal obligation to agree with the Sixth Circuit order to act consistently with the court’s ruling when not specifically ordered to do so. This confuses me, Larry. Is Does versus Snyder binding or is it not?
Larry 1:02:49
Well, therein lies the issue. The Does v. Snyder decision does not in and of itself magically make Tennessee’s law change. For that to happen, people have to file legal challenges citing this precedential case, which is binding in the territory of Tennessee. But if you keep reading, the court said, this court, however, is bound to honor the precedence of the duly empowered federal appellate court with jurisdiction over this district. And the court continues to find the grounds for distinguishing Tennessee’s scheme from Michigan’s to be unpersuasive, at best, for reasons this court and others have already set forth at length. So rather than reiterating every detail of the same analysis over and over, the court will merely refer to the numerous early opinions on the state’s policy of imposing ex post facto criminal punishments on some sexual offenders is unconstitutional under the currently applicable case law. So again, it is binding when someone takes them to court. This judge said, Yes, I have to follow this. She didn’t say that she didn’t agree with it. But she says I have to follow it. It is binding. But I hate to break it to you. The people that manage the registry, they’re not sitting around looking for a way to terminate the registry or to peel it back. They’re waiting for you to force their hand. They’re waiting to be forced to do this. So they can go to the public… like that article we read a couple of episodes back where they say we have no choice but to do this. So when Does versus Snyder came out, there was no one setting in the Tennessee law enforcement apparatus, saying, hmmm I guess our registry looks kind of similar to this thing up in Michigan. We need to take a look at this. I think I’ll put forth a proposal to go ahead and peel ours back before the courts tell us we got to do it. I mean, that just is not realistic, folks.
Andy 1:04:47
They’re going to wait till someone challenges it. (Larry: Correct.) So I see the reason the injunction was granted to only these eight plaintiffs is that they were the only ones before the court? Is that what I understand to be right?
Larry 1:05:00
Yes, that is correct. The judge says the task here is merely to apply the same frequently reiterate principle to the request currently under consideration. Namely, Does one through nine. And they asked the court to enter preliminary injunction forbidding Tennessee officials from applying the registry statutes to them. And that’s all she could do. She could not say, I don’t really think this ought to be happening to anybody else. So I’m going to issue this broad sweeping order to everybody else. Those cases had not been litigated. The state had not been given a chance to argue why they were different. And this was not a class action. This was a consolidated group of challenges by nine different litigants that were consolidated for appellate review. I mean, for judicial review, not appellate review, but these were consolidated into one.
Andy 1:05:52
And then finally says,, it is hereby ordered that the defendant shall not enforce any provision of the Tennessee sexual offender and violent sexual offender registration, verification and monitoring act against Does one through Does eight, or require those plaintiffs to comply with any portion of the act. Each defendant shall to the extent within his power takes such necessary steps to ensure that Does one through eight are removed from Tennessee’s PFR registry. So does this mean that they can never be forced to register again?
Larry 1:06:23
Unfortunately, it does not. We need to understand that this is an injunction against enforcement of Tennessee’s current version of registration. Again, it does not preclude the state from creating a new version with no disabilities or restraints. Just look at Michigan, just look at Pennsylvania. If they were to do that, they could go back to the judge and request that the injunction be lifted, citing the distinguishing factors of that new scheme versus the previously held-to-be-unconstitutional scheme. So no, it does not at all.
Andy 1:06:57
Um, okay. Anything else on that stuff now that you had a good chance to analyze it? We’re starting to run short on time. But any final thoughts before we kick out of that?
Larry 1:07:07
I think we covered it very well. The body of case law is definitely gaining momentum. That Sixth Circuit decision was huge. And every state in that circuit that has decided to impose all these disabilities and restraints, we’re gonna be coming for you. We’re not going to stop because you can’t punish people with a civil regulatory scheme. You’re gonna to have to get over it.
Andy 1:07:33
Very well. Um, I think that is all Larry. So we are going to talk about our speaker from last week. You know, we did a speaker last week that was somewhat offensive, I suppose. But last week, I played this individual.
Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace 1:07:49
Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. And segregation forever.
Andy 1:07:59
We had a handful of people write in. We had somebody write in, I think it was even before the show was over, of one of the patrons listening to it live who is not here tonight. So shame on you. And that was from Brandon, who was that Larry?
Larry 1:08:12
Was former Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace.
Andy 1:08:17
Um, you want to tell me the context around what he was saying there?
Larry 1:08:23
Well, I think he was… I don’t remember exactly when he did it. I was only 112 at that time, so I don’t remember all the details. You expect me to have a memory from 100 plus years old when something happened?
Andy 1:08:36
You remember some of the most obscure crap, Larry that yes, I would expect you to remember that. I assume with what he’s talking about is some civil rights march or something like that. And this is an individual saying that we are going to keep things separated for as long as we can.
Larry 1:08:51
Yeah, he was pushing back on the integration of the University of Alabama among other things. And he believed in segregation. He ultimately stood in the door of the university to prevent black students from being enrolled. I mean, he was… but to Wallace’s credit, I think he actually repented and he asked for forgiveness. And I think that was genuine. And so now that he’s passed on… that’s an unfortunate chapter of Alabama history. But I think the man actually did change before he passed.
Andy 1:09:21
I mean, would now be a good time to play that other clip from the bigots and admirers?
Larry 1:09:26
No, I think so. We’re already getting enough heat for that.
Andy 1:09:31
Lester Maddox is that one. All right. So then this one, thank you, Al. Al sent in a whole bunch of suggestions. So we’ll be using those for a little while. But if you have any suggestions for Who’s that Speaker? then you can send them into registrymatterscast@gmail.com. And this was Al’s suggestion.
Who’s that Speaker?
I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.
Andy 1:09:59
That’s a neat quote too. I’ve heard that used elsewhere. So if you think you know who that is, and if you think you don’t know who that is, and you want to send something kind of snarky and fun, feel free to send that in. I may read that on the air, but send that into registrymatterscast@gmail.com and title it something like who’s that speaker? WTS. That way I can find them more easily. Anything before we close up and thank the new patrons, Larry?
Larry 1:10:25
I think we’ve done it. We’re over.
Andy 1:10:28
We are. So we had a new signup this week. Ray signed up using the annual subscription and discount. Thank you very much Ray. And since we are running short on time, I will just close everything out and you can find all of the show notes and everything you need to links to go everywhere at registrymatters.co. You can leave voicemail at (747)227-4477. Again, email registrymatters cast@gmail.com. And thank you so very much to patrons who will be receiving this first thing in the morning. And that is patreon.com/registrymatters. Larry, thank you very much. You are always the Master Blaster of all things knowledgeable, and I really appreciate the great way that you explain things.
MacArthur Clip 1:11:09
I agree with you entirely. That is why I am here.
Andy 1:11:11
Thank you again, sir. I really appreciate it.
Larry 1:11:16
Haha. Oh, good night.
You’ve been listening to FYP.