The northcountry is beautiful this time of year. I drove up the northway to Washington County and it really was lovely, all the leaves are turning gold, red, deep blue. Okay, no blue, but you know what I mean. Anyway, today was what the DA called “perv day”. The calendar was solely devoted to sex offender registry hearings. These hearings determine what sex offender level you are (you, meaning the ubiquitous you, not like you, dear reader). At this hearing the now convicted sex offender gets a chance to say no, I’m only a minor sex offender or the DA can say dude, you are a wicked sex offender. So, today there were about 15 cases on the calendar dealing with these sex offense issues. There was one guy who came up and had some sort of card that he showed the judge to indicate he was being shipped off to Iraq. Does this somehow make him less of a threat? Or, is it just that its okay if he goes off and diddles little kids in Iraq? I dunno, I’m not particularly political, but it might be bad press to be sending over convicted sex offenders. . . . maybe I’m wrong.

I handle a significant amount of sex cases and I’m not squeamish. But, once they’ve been convicted, I know I get sort of prosecutorial. Or, maybe that’s just normal. I don’t mean to be all eww, get away from me about certain classes of people (namely, convicted sex offenders) but I can’t help it and I really don’t love doing sex registry hearings. I did one about a year ago in another county up north. The guy was convicted of molesting all three of his daughters from the time they were a year old until they were about 12. All of his daughters were there in court supporting him, they love him blah blah blah. The DA said he should be a level 3 (the baddest of the bad) and I went in and argued he should be a level 2 (middle of the road, a lot of people are 2’s) I’ve never felt like god was going to strike me dead because of what I do for a living. . . until then. It just felt wrong and I’ve really never felt like that before, and I haven’t felt like that since. Well, the judge agreed with me and made some really witty comments about how the whole family was sick in the head and this guy is awful but the legislature has provided that he is to be a level 2. Goodie for me. I win because he doesn’t molest strangers’ kids, only his own.

Anyway, so its perv day and there is a woman there – a white woman probably in her forties with blonde hair. Looks like she could’ve been a school teacher but for the NYS Department of Correctional Services getup and the shackles. I asked the DA what she did (allegedly) and he tells me that her first sex conviction was in 1992 when she was doing it with 12 year old girls and making these 12 year olds walk naked up and down stairs in front of men named after car parts, like crankshaft and I don’t know car parts but he named some other ones, maybe axle and lugnut? This time she’d had sex with a 15 or 16 year old boy. I’m still on the fence as to whether that should be criminal consider the nature of 15 and 16 year old boys but hey, who am I to judge these things.

Again, I know none of this is funny since its all smarmy gross out stuff, but still, this is what I do with my life and dammit, it amuses me.