Ohio sex offender residency restrictions

Ohio’s Northern District Court, last Tuesday, held that Ohio law prohibiting sex offenders from residing within 1,000 feet of a school, playground, or daycare center was “unconstitutional as an ex post facto law if applied to (to the particular defendant in this case). At least that’s the position the Ohio Attorney General is taking while advising prosecutors that the statute is constitutional and the case most likely to be appealed. (Decision)

According to the Attorney General’s press release, the Northern District Court ruling exempting a convicted sex offender from the state’s offender residency requirements, is “based on a unique set of facts & circumstances presented that Court, and applies only to that defendant’s case.” The defendant’s attorney thinks it’s more extensive, and so the stage once again is set for debate.

The subject of the “fairness and effectiveness of Ohio’s residency law has heated up in the past year as county prosecutors began telling offenders who live near schools & day care centers that they have to move,” an Enquirer article said yesterday, and it’s resulted in a number of like cases, including one pending in the Ohio Supreme Court that’s certified the conflict between lower state courts. Now we have the same situation federally.

The Southern Ohio District Court, last year, took an almost exactly opposition position as Tuesday’s Northern District’s in denying registered sex offenders’ motion for injunctive relief in challenging the constitutionality of the statute.

Also last year – on the same day – while the 1st. District Court of Appeals here in Hamilton County was deciding that the 1,000-foot rule wasn’t ex post facto in nature even though it was “intended to be applied retroactively,” the 2nd. District Court of Appeals in Miami County held “it affected a substantive right—specifically the defendant’s right to maintain the residence he owned & had resided in for years prior to the enactment of the law.” Those are the cases which have certified to the Supreme Court and scheduled to be heard next month. (See Here)

Meanwhile…. While Canal Winchester, a suburb of Columbus, unanimously approved an ordinance restricting residency of sex offenders, Grandview Heights, 15 miles northwest, rejected a similar measure, making it the first central Ohio suburb to vote down such undertakings, according to a Columbus Dispatch article yesterday. Canal Winchester, the article states, is among a growing number of cities, towns & villages going further than state law provisions by enacting their own.