It may be Halloween , but the Tennessee Department of Corrections will be conducting Operation Blackout on those on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry. It has been recently reported about the increased scrutiny that Tennessee Sex Offenders will be facing on  Halloween. For example,  here is a partial list of prohibited activities;

  • No decorations may

 

One of the 2016 presidential candidates has been in the news regarding allegations of groping women and sexual misconduct. Under Tennessee sex crimes laws, is it unlawful to grope or kiss a woman without their permission ?

The American Bar Association published an article on the topic. It caused me to think whether groping would

Charlie Sheen disclosed last week on the Today show that he was infected with the AIDS virus. During the interview, Mr. Sheen denied knowingly having unprotected sex without the other persons knowledge.

Under Tennessee criminal law,  person is person commits the offense of criminal exposure of another to HIV, hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV) when knowing

One of the bedrock principles of our criminal justice system is the defendant does not have to testify in his defense. Corey Batey had to testify for two reasons

  1. Batey had to say the two magic words. I’m sorry.
  2. Batey had to advance the defense theory of his intoxication.

One of the elements of aggravated

The Vandy trial is now well into its second week of testimony. It is a story of college students , alcohol ,  sexual assault and rape on a young student who was passed out. You look at the photo of the defendants and they look like young college kids. They were football players at a top

Stacey Barchenger  reported on last Friday’s hearing in the Vanderbilt rape case. One defendant asked for a continuance in order to obtain an expert witness and one defendant requested the jury to be sequestered. Both motions were denied. The case is set for November 3rd ,2014. I watched a little bit of the hearing on Friday waiting on my

One of the former Vanderbilt Football players accused of rape appears to be ready to put on a defense of  intoxication as a defense. The defense for Brandon Vadenburg has filed a report of an expert where they assert that alcohol  effected his mental state.

Tennessee Code Annotated 39-11-503 spells out the defense of intoxication

Ceelo Green suffered an extreme public relations backlash when he tweeted his understanding of what is rape. After his plea to a charge of giving a women ecstasy , he aired his case on Twitter . Here is a couple of his  tweets;

In posts that were later deleted from his account, Green addressed the case, tweeting, “People

Steven Yoder recently wrote a article of the  same title as this blog post. The central question is do residency bans drive sex offenders underground. Mr. Yoder gives on example where a city in California created a park to drive out 33 registered sex offenders from there homes .Currently , there have been legal challenges

Four former Vanderbilt football players were indicted for five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery by a Davidson County Tennessee Grand Jury. Aggravated Rape is a Class A felony in Tennessee which carries punishment in the range on 15 to 25 years in prison. The definition of aggravated rape in Tennessee