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Liquid waste management

Megan Kanka was a seven year old girl abducted and subsequently raped and killed by a neighbor in Hamilton Township, New Jersey on July 29th 1994, a crime that elicited national attention and legal debate. Jesse Timmendequas, a twice convicted pedophile, was the perpetrator of this crime. He had pleaded guilty in both previous cases involving two girls separately, a five-year old and a seven-year old (Shultz). In this third case, he lured Megan into his house purporting that he wanted to show her a puppy; he then proceeded to rape and kill her. Accordingly, using overwhelming evidence, the offender was found guilty of several counts of aggravated sexual assault and felony murder for killing the young girl while committing other atrocities on her. The jury ruled that Timmendequas carried out the crime “purposely” and “out of his own conduct”, propping his eligibility for a death penalty. He was sentenced to death, a ruling that was upheld by the Supreme Court of New Jersey on appeal CITATION Joh10 l 1033 (Scheb, 2010).

This Case was the basis for the adoption of Megan’s law

. With all the controversy surrounding it, it requires that the names of sexual offenders and pictures of their faces be distributed to members of a community in the event that such an offender resides among them. The profiles of these offenders are also available in databases accessible by any interested group or persons (Shultz, 2005). The New Jersey legislature was prevailed upon to adopt the Sex offender Community Notification into law. Eventually, the U.S Congress cemented a legislation that required every State to register certain specified offences and the offenders. It subsequently raised the bar for every State to implement community notification. This law had unanimous approval in most States, with some such as Florida not bothering to debate the positives over the negatives of enacting such a law (Siegel, 2011). However, Courts took a more critical assessment of these laws and struck out parts of the provisions. Scholars of law also had varied reactions and criticism.

. Coming before it was the Weterlling Act enacted by Congress in 1994, stipulating that all offenders charged and convicted with sexual offenses be registered. The Megan Case provided a platform for the improvement of this Act: Emanating from the huge debate it elicited nationwide, there emerged the policy for mandatory registration of all sex offenders, including related offences such as false imprisonment and kidnapping. It would not only stop at that, communities were to be notified if and when a known sexual predator or a previous sexual offender moved into a neighborhood. Another law, the Pam Lyncher Sexual Offender Tracking and Identification Act of 1996 facilitated the creation of a federal database for tracking already registered sexual offenders. Megan’s Law set the precedent for sex-offence laws on other States: they include North Carolina’s Amy Jackson Law, Indiana’s Zachary’s Law and Texas’ Ashley’s Law (Neumann, 2010).

It led to revisions in policies that ensured the rights to privacy and security of every citizen as would be cited by defense attorneys handling such cases. Child Victimization became a more serious offence with Megan’s law entrenched in the Court System. In its entirety, this case highlighted the role of legislative debate towards instigation and formulation of new laws.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY l 1033 Duttweiler, Rudolf. Managing Liquidity in Banks: A Top Down Approach. hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Neumann, Caryn E. Sexual crime: a reference handbook . Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010.

Scheb, John M. Criminal Law and Procedure . Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2010.

Shin, Hyun Song. Risk and Liquidity. oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Shultz, David. Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2005.

Siegel, Larry J. Criminology. Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2011.