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September 07, 2005

Casualties Of Media

A Washington man is accused of killing two convicted child-rapists.

A man arrested in the shooting deaths of two convicted child rapists tried to plead guilty Tuesday before he had even been formally charged.

Police say that Michael Anthony Mullen might have targeted the men in reaction to a notorious case in Idaho in mid-May in which two children were abducted and one was slain.

This is a tough one.

On the one hand, the Steve Groene case drew saturation coverage - justifiably so, while the children were still missing.

And as a parent, I can't argue too much with the idea of publicizing the locations of registered sex offenders, especially since I live in one of those inner cities where the criminal justice and social welfare bureaucracies warehouse everyone they're responsible for.

Still:

"Mullen also said that he had planned the murders for some time and that on July 13, 2005, he had accessed the Whatcom County Sheriff's sex offender website, and from that selected at least one of the two victims," according to a police news release.
Beyond my normal revulsion at murder, I have to hope that neither of the victims were lower-level offenders with some hope of never re-offending. It does happen...

It also shows the danger of internet stalkers.

Posted by Mitch at September 7, 2005 07:16 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I _do_ support capital punishment in appropriate cases, and would happily support such for child rape. That said, I think that sex-offender registries are an unconstitutional* ex-post-facto punishment of people who have served their time, notwithstanding the poorly reasoned opinions of various courts. Hang 'em, but only if you pass the law before the crime.

It is precisely the high probability of this sort of thing that makes such registries a punishment, and thus unconstitutional.

* See Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, federalized by the "privileges or immunities" clause of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Posted by: Doug Sundseth at September 7, 2005 11:00 AM
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