Actor pushing child sex offense history bill
NASHVILLE (AP) — Actor and Knoxville native David Keith is lending his voice to ads promoting legislation that would allow juries to learn if someone accused of sexually abusing a child has a past conviction for that offense.
“When a pedophile is on trial, the defense is allowed to parade every Sunday school teacher and friend of the family they can get their hands on to testify about what a model citizen the accused is, while the prosecution’s entire case rests upon the fragile, obtuse, often unavailable testimony of a disoriented terrified victim,” Keith said during a news conference Wednesday on Legislative Plaza. “The jury deserves to know the accused has done this before. Period.”
Keith, who has worked with organizations to assist child abuse victims since 1990, played reporters a copy of a radio advertisement soon to hit the airways urging Tennesseans to contact their lawmakers in support of the bill.
“Protect our children, please,” Keith pleads in the spot funded by the National Association to Protect Children.
The legislation is scheduled for debate Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee and a House subcommittee, but will not be easy to pass.
Several lawmakers say it would undermine the presumption of innocence, which is a fundamental principle of the criminal justice system.
Keith pointed out that the federal government already allows prior accusations as well as convictions to be called into evidence in all sex crimes, and 13 states have laws similar to Tennessee’s proposal regarding child sex offenses.
Another strike against the bill is that it would cost the state an estimated $332,500 to house additional convicted child sex abusers. Most legislation that spends that kind of money goes nowhere because of the state’s tight financial situation.
However, one of the sponsors is Rep. Randy Rinks, the Democratic caucus chairman from Savannah, who said he has been talking with the Democratic governor’s staff about finding a way to fund the legislation.
Also sponsoring the bill is Republican Sen. Tim Burchett of Knoxville, who said he got interested after jurors contacted him about a case last November where they acquitted a man of charges that he assaulted a 12-year old boy.
The man, Robert Charles Druckemiller, had been convicted in Pennsylvania of a similar offense and the jurors told Burchett they would have voted to convict him had they known that.
Burchett said child molesters cannot be cured and “need to be put away so they can never do any harm to anybody else.”
He said he’s afraid that “something’s going to have to happen in a high-profile case to a big shot in our community before this state will wake up and decides to do something about it.”
Keith, whose film credits include “An Officer and a Gentleman,” said the idea that his 2-year-old daughter’s beauty “could sexually excite a predator who is stalking our community in total anonymity is the reason I’m standing here.”
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On the Net:
Read Senate Bill 2473/House Bill 3186 at http://www.legislature.state.tn.us
National Association to Protect Children: http;//www.protect.org