Sanity prevails in the courtroom. as a federal judge says Nebraska cannot list at 13-year-old boy on the state’s sex offender registry.
The boy was 11 when he was adjudicated for criminal sexual conduct in Minnesota. He subsequently moved to live with family in Nebraska, and state officials said state law required him to register. The boy’s family filed a lawsuit to prevent that from happening.
A ruling in the case was issued on Monday.
Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf said if the boy had done in Nebraska exactly what he did in Minnesota he would not have been required to register as a sex offender “and he would not be stigmatized as such.”“It therefore makes no sense to believe that the Nebraska statutes were intended to be more punitive to juveniles adjudicated out of state as compared to juveniles adjudicated in Nebraska,” the judge wrote in a 20-page order.
Read the full story in the Lincoln Journal-Star.