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Exception Ruled in Sex Crime Law by
ROBERT HANLEYNew York Times, July 18, 2001 -

10-Year-Old's Crime Tests Limits of Megan's Law

RENTON, July 17 - New Jersey's highest court ruled today that children who are found guilty of sexual offenses before age 14 are not automatically subject to decades of public warnings about them and their crimes.
The State Supreme Court ruled in the case of a Mercer County youth, now 17, who admitted that when he was 10 that he had sexually assaulted an 8-year-old cousin. The boy, identified in court documents only as J. G., was classified as a sex offender under Megan's Law. He was required to register with the police and have schools near his home notified of his presence. Similar sanctions would have continued into his adult years.
But in what it called an effort to reconcile the public-safety provisions of the sex-offender law and the privacy protections of the state's Code of Juvenile Justice, the court said today that offenders found guilty before their 14th birthday should have a chance to escape those sanctions at 18, by presenting evidence that they do not pose a risk of committing another sex crime.
New Jersey has been a pioneer in creation of laws providing public warnings about sex offenders. In 1994, it became the second state, after Washington, to enact a Megan's Law, named for a 7-year-old girl, Megan Kanka, who was murdered by a sex offender who lived across the street from her home in Hamilton Township, N.J. All 50 states now have their own version of Megan's Law. Although the New Jersey Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction outside the state, lawyers familiar with the case said its ruling could provide guidance to courts in other states dealing with a legal challenge similar to J. G.'s.
Justice Gary S. Stein, who wrote the decision, said he found it "implausible and anomalous" that a 10- year-old faced the same sanctions as an adult under Megan's Law, even though the state's juvenile justice law requires that all juvenile records except jail terms be expunged when a delinquent turns 18. The court also accepted the arguments by J. G.'s lawyers that the sanctions should not apply to those under 14, the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults.
Still, the court rejected arguments that the classification of juveniles as sex offenders was unconstitutional.
Megan's Law already gives all sex offenders a chance to clear their records after 15 years.