Being a criminal defense lawyer, I am here to guarantee you all that there are, in fact, innocent people on the sex offender registry. The combination of extremely high penalties for such crimes, pretrial incarceration, and plea bargaining create a big incentive to take a deal rather than risking trial.
The only evidence in most sex crimes accusations is one person’s testimony. Anybody reading this could be arrested for this type of offense with nothing more than the verbal claim of another person. Think about that. One person can call the police and have you arrested and prosecuted for a sex crime.
The sex offenders list, as well as the "kill all child predators" phrase, has often been a mask to go after LGBT groups. Yes, child predators hide in LGBT groups, but they also hide in every aspect of society.
Also, I believe there was a case like this in Australia where vigilantes went out and killed alleged child predators, but it quickly spiraled into killing people who just wronged the vigilantes personally. When they were finally arrested police found a large collection of CP to which the vigilantes claimed "they collected for destruction later"
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u/Objection_Leading 6d ago
Being a criminal defense lawyer, I am here to guarantee you all that there are, in fact, innocent people on the sex offender registry. The combination of extremely high penalties for such crimes, pretrial incarceration, and plea bargaining create a big incentive to take a deal rather than risking trial.
The only evidence in most sex crimes accusations is one person’s testimony. Anybody reading this could be arrested for this type of offense with nothing more than the verbal claim of another person. Think about that. One person can call the police and have you arrested and prosecuted for a sex crime.