Sex Offender Registry Keeps Michigan Man From His Business

BATTLE CREEK, MI — Convicted sex offender Reece Adkins’ predicament isn’t likely to evoke much sympathy from his neighbors. He was convicted 17 years ago of sexually abusing a minor under the age of 13 and placed on Michigan’s sex offender registry for life. But staying on the right side of a law a federal appeals court says turns offenders into “moral lepers” means he can’t legally work, shop or even go into the Cereal City Food Auction he and a business partner plan to open in Battle Creek later this month.

The Michigan sex offender law establishes safe zones for kids, and because the planned business is within 1,000 feet of two schools, it’s off limits to Adkins, Battle Creek officials have determined. So he either has to walk away from the business or find a new location that is far enough away from schools and day care facilities that he remains in compliance with the law.

The controversy in Battle Creek illustrates the difficulty some of the most reviled of criminal offenders have rebuilding their lives. Some recent court decisions signal reform of laws that civil libertarians and others argue do nothing to prevent recidivism, instead driving offenders to the fringes of society and actually making repeat offenses more likely. (Click here to find your local Michigan Patch on sign up for newsletters and real-time news alerts; if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Cindy Dian, Adkins’ partner in the food-auction business, told the Battle Creek Enquirer she wasn’t aware of Adkins’ record as a sex offender until reports surfaced in the media, but the public relations damage is “irreparable” and she’s not sure the business can survive with Adkins still on board.

Adkins told The Enquirer he doesn’t know what his next steps will be, but he thinks he has paid his debt to society and shouldn’t have to defend himself against the conviction for the rest of his life.

“I’ve done my time,” Adkins said. “I deserve a chance.”

Brett and Melanie Hall, who own the Hall of Toys shop next door to the planned business, wrote on Facebook that they “understand the concerns voiced by the community,” but are hopeful city officials and Battle Creek’s Downtown Development Authority will help find a location where Adkins isn’t out of compliance with the sex offender law.

“As parents of young children ourselves, we understand the concerns voiced by the community,” they wrote, but added they “believe that a solution exists that allows the gentleman in question to have a fresh start while also ensuring the families that regularly visit us feel safe.”

Federal appeals courts have issued scathing rulings about sex offender registry statutes in Michigan and North Carolina over the past year.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lambasted Michigan officials on several fronts in an August 2016 ruling, saying the sex offender registry law turns registrants into “moral lepers” and finding that it violates both the Due Process and Ex Post Facto clauses of the Constitution.

The Michigan law is based on “scant evidence that such restrictions serve the professed purpose of keeping Michigan communities safe,” the court ruled, noting that empirical studies have demonstrated that sex offender registration laws have, “at best, no impact on recidivism” and could, in fact, increase recidivism because registrants have difficulty complying with restrictions on where they can live, work and even breathe air.

The court said the Michigan law “brands registrants as moral lepers solely on the basis of a prior conviction. It consigns them to years, if not a lifetime, of existence on the margins, not only of society, but often, as the record in this case makes painfully evident, from their own families, with whom, due to school zone restrictions, they may not even live. It directly regulates where registrants may go in their daily lives and compels them to interrupt those lives with great frequency in order to appear in person before law enforcement to report even minor changes to their information.”

The court also chastised Michigan officials for a statute that is overly broad and does not make a distinction between the most violent of child sexual predators and others who may be ordered on the registry because they had consensual sex with an underage person.

A 2015 case made international headlines after a western Michigan judge ordered a 19-year-old teen to 25 years on the sex offender registry after he rendezvoused and had sex with a teen he’d met online. She was 14 at the time but claimed to be 17 in their online chats, according to court documents. The judge’s sentence sparked outrage around the country, and another judge said the teen doesn’t have to register as a sex offender and re-sentenced him to two years’ probation under a law that gives young offenders a chance to have their records expunged.

In December, a federal appeals court struck down a similarly restrictive law in North Carolina, saying it deprives sex offenders of any hope of re-integrating into their communities once they have served their sentences. And in June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina law that bars convicted sex offenders from establishing social media accounts, saying it violates constitutionally protected free speech.

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