Man grabs girl's arm – now he's a sex offender

WorldNetDaily reported A man who grabbed a 14-year-old girl's arm to chastise her after she walked in front of his car, causing him to swerve to avoid hitting her, must register as a "sex offender," the Appellate Court of Illinois has ruled. Fitzroy Barnaby, a 28-year-old Evanston, Illinois, man was prosecuted for attempted kidnapping and child abduction charges following a November 2002 incident in which he nearly hit the teen with his vehicle. The girl testified Barnaby yelled, "Come here, little girl," when he jumped out of his car and grabbed her arm. She broke away and called authorities. Barnaby says he was merely trying to lecture her for her carelessness. The trial jury accepted Barnaby's version of the story, but found him guilty of unlawful restraint of a minor – a sex offense under Illinois law. As a convicted sex offender, Barnaby is required to be listed on the state's sex offender registry and must keep authorities informed of his place of residency. He also isn't allowed to live near schools or parks. The Illinois Sex Offender Information website, operated by the Illinois State Police, lists those in the registry, along with their photographs and home addresses. Trial Judge Patrick Morse ordered registration reluctantly, acknowledging it was "more likely than not" Barnaby only intended to chastise the girl. "I don't really see the purpose of registration in this case. I really don't," Morse said. "But I feel that I am constrained by the statute.".... The appellate court agreed it was "unfair for [Barnaby] to suffer the stigmatization of being labeled a sex offender when his crime was not sexually motivated," however it sided with the state's attorney who argued it is "the proclivity of offenders who restrain children to also commit sex acts or other crimes against them." "It is [Barnaby's] actions which have caused him to be stigmatized, not the courts," reads the decision.

Normally I dont report items from WorldNetDaily, because sometimes they are not really accurate, but this time three bloggers I respect Professor Stephen Bainbridge, Patterico, and Danny Carlton (aka Jack Lewis) have posted about it.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge blogged Sorry, but basic statutory construction teaches that if a literal construction of the words of a statute is absurd, the act must be so construed as to avoid the absurdity. Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892).

Patterico blogged The Professor characterizes this as an exercise of “basic statutory construction.” For those of you who don’t know, statutory interpretation doctrines, sometimes referred to as the “canons of statutory interpretation,” have developed organically in the common law, and lay down a series of prescriptions, such as “eiusdem generis,” which instructs that hen a general word or phrase follows a list of specific ones, the general word will be interpreted to include only things of the same type as listed.

The problem is that even the most settled and noncontroversial canons are problematic. Various scholars (and judges, such as Alex Kozinski, in his article “Should Reading Legislative History Be an Impeachable Offense?” 31 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 807 (1998)) have attacked them as self-contradictory and imposing no real restraint upon the judges called upon to examine statutes.

What’s worse, Professor Bainbridge doesn’t rely upon one of these non-controversial ones, but rather one introduced in Holy Trinity Church v. United States. This case purports to be about discovering “legislative intent” behind the enactment of a statute. However, as Justice Scalia rightly notes in his book A Matter of Interpretation, legislative intent is simply “a handy cover for judicial intent.”

Danny Carlton (aka Jack Lewis) blogged There are two very serious problems with this outrage. One, children will die, because people will be afraid to help, lest they too be labeled a sex-offender. Second, the title of sex-offender will become less and less the serious label it is now, until it may very well become an anachronism. The result will be that real sex-offenders will become empowered by the overzealous idiocy of courts like these.

My question is, if this is a recent decision by the Appellate Court of Illiniois, why isn’t it listed at http://www.state.il.us/court/Opinions/Uploads.htm