New SC law lessens penalties on sex offenders

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford signed a new sex offender bill into law in June that makes it illegal for a convicted sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare, church, or playground.

The law also reduces the penalty for sex offenders who fail to register with county sheriff’s offices, which state law requires offenders to do on a yearly basis for the rest of their lives.

Under Jessie’s Law, which Sanford signed in Myrtle Beach in 2006, the penalty for a convicted sex offender failing to register was a mandatory 90 days in jail, with no part of that sentence suspended.

The law signed in June, that penalty moves the charge from circuit court into magistrate’s court and will allow a magistrate to sentence an offender anywhere from one day to 30 days in jail, or fine him $500.

The new law won’t go into effect until 90 days after the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division implements mapping software into the state’s online sex offender registry that would allow uses to type in a street address to see the offenders living around that address.

SLED said it did not have the funding to add the mapping software and didn’t have any timeline when the software would be added.

Two state representatives from Horry County, Alan Clemmons and Thad Viers, sponsored the latest law and helped push it through the General Assembly and onto the governor’s desk.

Clemmons said the June law, also known as the Brady Bill, was a step toward strengthening offender laws and making South Carolina’s offender laws some of the toughest in the nation. “We work tirelessly to make sure that the public is protected, particularly with regard to the most vulnerable of our state,” Clemmons told News13.

Prosecutors and authorities working to track, register and prosecute sex offenders said the penalty passed with the Brady Bill was a sign that the legislature was softening the state’s sex offender laws.

“Anybody that were to take the Joan Brady Bill and call that a lessening of standards in South Carolina for sexual offenders is totally off point,” Clemmons said.

Clemmons said he wasn’t aware of the penalty included with the bill and that it was likely added when House and Senate members met to finalize the bill before presenting to the governor.

Clemmons said he still wasn’t aware of the penalty change when News13 asked him about it on Nov. 7.

“I wasn’t part of the conference committee. I really don’t know if it came from the Senate side, from the House side, if it was in conference where that particular language came from. But, the bottom line is, if we have backed up, and it appears we have backed up, we need to take a cold, hard look at it as we go forward in the next session,” Clemmons said.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster told News13 he supported the 1,000 foot rule in the Brady Bill, but “the message it sends is that we’re not as serious about it as we were when it had to go to circuit court and it had a penalty of 90 days,” McMaster said.

McMaster said lessening the penalty would hurt the progress law enforcement agencies have made in enforcing the state’s offender laws and would give offenders no incentive to follow them.

“The way to keep that from happening is to have a penalty that means something, that’ll put some fear into their hearts, that they’ll know that if they violate this law, they’re going to be punished and it’s going to be severe,” McMaster said.

“In this state we’ve taken, over the years, a very strong approach to this and we have no tolerance for these kinds of people,” McMaster said.

Clemmons said he plans to introduce new legislation that would increase the penalty for failing to register back to a 90 day mandatory sentence.

Clemmons also said he’s working with local victim’s advocates and sheriff’s offices to look for ways to tie up loopholes in the state’s sex offender laws that have allowed some offenders to go years without registering.