Child molester wins appeals court ruling

[alp227]

A federal court reinstated an appeal Monday from a former San Jose music teacher who pleaded guilty in 2000 to molesting five children and was sentenced to 210 years to life in prison.

Michael Briseno said he would not have pleaded guilty if his lawyer or the Santa Clara County judge presiding over his case had told him each of the 32 charges against him carried a mandatory 15-year sentence, which could be imposed consecutively. He was barred from raising that issue in his appeal, however, because his lawyer did not ask the state courts for permission to do so.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/20/BA441GTDNN.DTL

[damntexdem]

1. Well, maybe he has a point -- hell, cut his sentence in half.

Yeah, 105 years to life should do it. ;-)

[mntleo2]

2. When are they going to realize this is a mental illness?

I am not trying to excuse the damage done but it concerns me that this is a mental illness and is something that has been proven it could be treated in a better way. We also confuse the different types of sex offense, clumping them all together into one bin instead of seeing that sex offenders are vastly different.

There are good statistics that say when many offenders receive therapy they have a very low re-offending rate. The lowest re-offenders surprisingly, are early child molesters who show an average of 3% re-offense. Violent rapists, show 90%. They are now saying these (mostly) men who prefer children have something in their brain that attracts them to small children that can be managed if given the proper therapy.

As many therapists note about therapy, to say "there is no cure" for sex offenders could be a misnomer and that the patient's problem can be managed with the proper care. Indeed many medical doctors will say this about ANY illness. How many "cures" are there out there for other issues? Depression? No cure, just pills to throw at the patient that can also drive them crazy and in spite of trying not to make them "addictive" in fact the definitions of "addiction" for these uptake inhabiters are almost identical. Alcoholism? No cure. Drug addictions? No cure. Diabetes? No cure. Cancer? No cure. On and on.

The point I am making here is you can be as punitive as you want and "hate" the offender, but the truth is that is not going to help him or her stop and this hatred is corrupting your own rights. Hatred without understanding the wide scope of sex offenses corrupts the entire legal system. While isolating an offender may be necessary in some instances, the legal uses of the taking away of personal freedoms is seeping into other legal and citizens rights, because if you can do it Constitutionally with these folks, then it can extend to others (accused citizens who are simply called "terrorists" that you can imprison without any due process anyone)? These laws come directly from the sex offenders laws because they are using case law and got around the Constitution to do it.

Also the scariest thing is that now, all anyone has to do is accuse you and point the finger and and your life decimated simply because someone SAID you are a sex offender. Anyone at work want your job? Simply pick up the phone and call CPS and anonymously tell them they know you are molesting your son, daughter, grandson or granddaughter. Whether innocent or not you will spend every penny you have, lose your home and family and whether or not you "win", you spend the rest of your life with it on your record in one of their databases for anyone to access.

We really need to get a little more educated about this issue because it has undermined rights for other issues. If you think that remaining ignorant is helping anyone or protecting you, you are wrong. Hating the child sex offender is not doing anything but corrupting our own rights.

Just sayin' ...

Cat in Seattle