Senate approves sex offender law

The state Senate today unanimously passed the Democrats' favored version of the Jessica's Law proposal. The AP has the story. Senators unanimously approved a Democratic version of the Jessica's Law sex offender proposal Thursday, with Democrats saying it avoids flaws in the initiative that voters will consider in November. Republicans welcomed the two-bill package, though they denied there are any fatal problems with their initiative, which would force many sex offenders to wear satellite-tracked monitoring devices for life and bar them from living within 2,000 feet of a park or school. The bills and the pending initiative would give California some of the nation's toughest laws for released sex offenders and would boost penalties for offenses ranging from possession of child pornography to using the Internet to lure minors for sexual purposes. "Californians are going to be able to get the best of both," said Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, who sought the ballot measure with his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, after similar legislation proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger failed last year. Schwarzenegger is backing their measure, which qualified for the fall ballot in February. Other Republicans had positive things to say, as well, but cautioned against not passing Jessica's Law, This is from Sen. Chuck Poochigian: The Senate’s passage of a substantial improvement over California’s current sex offender statute is the result of bi-partisan cooperation, and pressure from election year politics, but represents a good step forward. 'Poison pill' provisions to strike the bill from the books if ‘Jessica’s Law’ is adopted were removed, and amendments were taken to help address concerns from law enforcement. SB 1128 isn’t a perfect bill, but includes many important protections, and provisions that I have fought to see incorporated into law. This measure is complementary to ‘Jessica’s Law,’ but is by no means a substitute or alternative.