Pedophile Clown Wins Award

LAW OF THE LAND Pedophile clown wins award Judge: County erred in prohibiting molester's act for kids

A federal judge has ordered New York's Westchester County to pay a twice-convicted pedophile $2,500 for violating his rights by refusing to allow him to perform his clown act for children at a local amusement park.

Judge John S. Martin did approve the county's park regulation crafted earlier this year that bars convicted pedophiles from obtaining performance permits if their acts are designed to "entice a child to congregate around" them. The ruling allows the county to bar Richard Hobbs from performing his clown act in the future at the county-owned park.

County officials hailed the ruling as a victory, though they said they were perplexed by the judge's decision to award Hobbs the money.

"The bottom line here is our children will be protected," Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, told the Westchester Journal News. "We're less pleased about the part where we have to pay this guy $2,500."

Hobbs, 48, sued the county in 2000, charging that Westchester had violated his First Amendment rights by refusing to allow him to perform his clown and balloon animals act at the 279-acre park.

his panhandling act would compete with the county's for-profit operation in the only government-owned amusement park in the country;

Hobbs pleaded guilty in 1978 to second-degree sexual abuse after New Rochelle police charged him with luring an 11-year-old boy into his office and fondling him. Four years later, a Pennsylvania judge sentenced Hobbs to nine months in jail for molesting a 14-year-old boy while driving him to church, where Hobbs performed his clown show for children.

Hobbs' convictions came to light in 2001, when he ran for the Westchester County legislature on the Right to Life Party line. At the time, he told a Journal News reporter, "Regardless of the fact of whether I'm guilty or unguilty, there are no children at the county legislature." The party disavowed his candidacy, and Hobbs lost the election.

In December, Martin handed down a decision that the county had a right to ban Hobbs from performing in the park's money-making venues, like the amusement rides, but not from the public areas, like the boardwalk.

In March, Spano issued an executive order that banned pedophiles from performing acts designed for children's amusement. At hearings in April to determine public and private areas of the park, Hobbs' lawyers challenged Spano's executive order.

In yesterday's 25-page decision, Martin said the county's past wrongful efforts to keep Hobbs from performing at the park cost the pedophile clown $2,500 in income. But, he said, the provision against pedophile performance contained in the new order is allowable.

"It is unquestionable that the county would wish to protect children from exposure to potential harm by preventing convicted pedophiles from performing acts that would entice children to congregate around them in county parks," Martin wrote.

One of the most notorious pedophile-murderers in history, John Wayne Gacy, Jr. of Chicago, also lured boys and young men through a clown act. During a three-year-period, Gacy went on to torture, rape and murder more than 30, most discovered under the floorboards of his home and in the local river.

Good news:

Federal Judge Quits in Disgust

Judge John S. Martin, federal district court judge in New York City, is hanging up his robe and walking away from the bench. Thirteen years working in an unjust justice system has left the former prosecutor disappointed in how little good he could do for the criminal defendants who came before him for sentencing.

In an opinion piece in the June 24, 2003 New York Times, Martin despairs over mandatory sentencing guidelines, set by people--few of them judges--handpicked by Congress to implement draconian sentencing laws. Judges are not much more than bean counters at sentencing. Used to be that a defense attorney like myself spent a great deal of time and effort in putting facts before the judge at sentencing--facts that would convince the judge to tailor a sentence that would give the defendant something to live for, something to get out for.

Not anymore. Judges mostly have it all laid out for them in the guidelines. And when they deviate from the guidelines, it is usually because the prosecutor can prove that the defendant did something during the course of the prosecution that renders him deserving of an “upward enhancement” of his sentence. Even if a defendant pleads guilty, he could get time tacked on to his sentence for insisting on his right to counsel, or by refusing to plead at the time the government wanted him to do so.

Martin is particularly bitter about drug sentencing laws. For drug offenses, according to recent data, account for about 60 % of federal prisoners. It is the harsh punishment for drug use and addiction that has driven up our incarceration rate to over 2 million men and women. We incarcerate more people for more crimes than any other country in the world.

And the sentencing is in the hands of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, behold to Congress, beholden to the President. Politics as usual.

The last straw for Martin came earlier this year when tucked into the Amber Alert legislation was a requirement that federal judges who deviate from the sentencing guidelines must report themselves to John Ashcroft.

And heavens know where that is going; it seems as if the errant judges are to be seen as naughty children who must report to their authoritarian father and await their punishment. You can't obey John and at the same time use common sense or demonstrate compassion and decency. For all John's talk of Christianity, he is one mean man when it comes to the weaknesses and suffering of others.

Last week the Supreme Court upheld a government regulation that allows prison wardens to sharply curtail visitation of inmates and, in some cases, to allow it not at all. We don't want them to have anything to look forward to; we don't want them to have anyone to love them. And Judge Martin notes how the harshness of sentencing laws falls heaviest on the families of the defendants

Martin did not have a reputation as an easy judge. In many cases he imposed maximum sentences, wishing he could have given more (in one case, he said he would have favored the death penalty had it been an option). But, he says, he is not in favor of sentencing without common sense or discretion. "I am not in favor of locking up everybody for life," he says--and that puts him out of step with Congress, the White House, and Ashcroft's Department of Injustice.

Martin says he may organize federal judges to lobby Congress for justice in sentencing. For now, though, he has had it with our "unjust criminal justice system."

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