Correa’s Bill to Strengthen Sentences for Sex Offenders
SACRAMENTO, CA- State Senator Lou Correa (Orange County) has introduced Senate Bill 1037 (SB 1037) to allow courts the ability to order full term sentences, particularly in certain aggravated cases involving violent sexual offenders.
“A crime against a child is despicable, especially sex violent crimes in which young victims’ lives are lost or change beyond repair, are morally reprehensible,” said Senator Lou Correa. “We need to make sure that we do everything we can to keep violent child predators off the streets and enable our justice and law enforcement systems with laws that will serve justice to victims and their families.”
In 2005, Jessica Marie Lunsford, a nine year old, was kidnapped, raped and then buried alive in Homosassa, Florida, by her neighbor across the street, John Couey, a 47-year-old previously convicted sex offender and pedophile. Two months later, the Florida House of Representatives passed unanimously (118-0) “The Jessica Lunsford Act”.
California Proposition 83, “The Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act: Jessica’s Law”, was approved by voters on November of 2006 and enacted in 2007. This law prohibits convicted sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks. Jessica’s Law provided California’s law enforcement authorities with tools to manage elusive sex offenders, by mandating Global Positioning System (GPS) for life.
Although “Jessica’s Law” was enacted in California “to strengthen and improve the laws that punish and control sexual offenders,” a drafting error actually limited application of the statute to only offenses involving the “same victim on the same occasion”. Prior to “Jessica’s Law” enactment the discretionary full term consecutive sentencing provision for forcible sex crimes statute applied more broadly.
As of last year, there were 83,000 registered sex offenders living in California, the highest population in the nation. According to the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (CDCR), this population is growing and protecting the public from sexual offenders is becoming “increasingly complex.” Although California leads the nation in terms of sex offenders on GPS (over 7,000), personnel and funding shortages due to the current budget crisis constrains sex offenders’ management implementation. According to a report released last month by the California Sex Offender Management Board (SOMB), 70 to 75 percent of the state’s parolees are unsupervised at any given time.
According to the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are 704,777 registered sex offenders in the Unites States. A “nation within a nation,” as ABC Nightline’s reporter Terry Moran described it in a recent news report titled “Chelsea King’s Disappearance: Who is Watching California’s Sex Offenders?”
In early March 2010, Chelsea King, a 17-year-old girl from San Diego County, was found dead in a shallow grave several days after she went missing. Chelsea was a “straight-A” senior at Poway High School. Based on physical evidence, San Diego County authorities charged convicted registered sex offender John Albert Gardner III with first degree murder and forcible rape in King’s case. In 2000, Gardner, a 30-year-old Lake Elsinore resident, pleaded guilty to molesting and committed a forcible and lewd act to his 13-year-old girl neighbor. She managed to escape and testified against Gardner. He was eligible to serve a maximum of 11 years in prison; however, he served only five years out of a six-year term under a plea agreement.  When he was released from prison, Gardner was registered on the Magan’s Law website, but operated “under the radar” when he often stayed at his mother’s home near an elementary school. According to authorities, Gardner is also linked to two other cases in the San Diego area: an assault in late 2009 on Candice Moncayo, a 22-year-old woman who was jogging in the community park where Chelsea King’s car was found when she disappeared, and in the disappearance of Amber DuBois, a 14-year-old girl who went missing on her way to school in February 2009.
The proposed legislative fix in SB 1037 (Correa), in collaboration with Orange County District Attorney, Tony Rackauckas, would return the law to its pre-“Jessica’s Law” state, where the discretionary sentencing provision applied to all forcible sex crimes, without the requirement that the crimes involve the same victim on the same occasion. This will give the courts the discretionary sentencing tool needed, particularly in cases of high risk sex offenders and sexually violent predators.
In closing, Senator Correa added, “As a father, I can only imagine that the loss of a child can be the most painful experience a parent can bear in life, but a loss of a child to a sex violent predator, is a place no parent should never had to be if we have the laws in place that would keep our children safe and out of the hands these criminals. Let’s never forget that the loss of innocent children like Jessica Lunsford, Amber Hagerman, Megan Kanka, Chelsea King, Amber DuBois, Adam Walsh and thousands more are lessons to or society that sexual violent predators are real and they are in the lookout of innocent preys if we let them. I urge my colleagues in the Legislature, Governor Schwarzenegger and parents in California and across the nation to support legislation that will protect the precious lives of our children”
The Senate Committee on Public Safety will hear SB 1037 within the next few weeks.
Senator Lou Correa represents the 34th District, which includes the cities of Anaheim, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Stanton and Westminster.

Senator Yee Issues Statement on Historic Health Care Vote
SACRAMENTO – Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) issued the following statement regarding the passage of health care reform by the United States House of Representatives:
“I congratulate President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Congressional Democrats on this historic moment and finally bringing meaningful reform to our failing health care system.   The President and Congress have ensured that an additional 32 million Americans will have access to the health care they need.  The United States finally joins ever other advanced nation in providing universal health care coverage.
While this legislation falls short of the single-payer system our citizens deserve, there are several benefits of which we can rejoice.   Access to health care is now clearly a right and not a privilege for all Americans; no longer can insurance companies deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions or becoming sick; no longer will premiums discriminate against women; now small businesses, the self-employed, and the unemployed will have the help they need to afford coverage; seniors will have greater access to life-saving prescription drugs; and our nation’s debt will be decreased by billions of dollars.
This historic vote and the President’s signature honor the cause of late Senator Ted Kennedy’s life.  As he so eloquently wrote before his death, at stake are ‘the fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.’  This legislation brings us one giant step closer to fulfilling these hopes and as Senator Kennedy said, ‘the great unfinished business of our society.’
I will continue to fight on behalf of all Californians – especially our children, seniors and the disabled – for an affordable, single-payer, universal health care system.”

Court Victory for Workers on Hazardous Multi-employer Worksites
SACRAMENTO – On March 19, 2010, in a victory for workers at multi-employer jobsites such as construction, agriculture and refineries, Judge Patrick Marlette of the Sacramento Superior Court granted United Association Local 246's petition for writ of mandamus and vacated a legally erroneous decision by the Cal/OSHA Appeals Board in the case of Harris Construction Company Inc.

Oakland-based non-profit Worksafe filed the petition to overturn the Appeals Board's decision which misinterpreted California’s multi-employer law. In California, for years only a direct employer of an injured worker could be cited for a violation of safety laws that another employer on a multi-employer worksite created or failed to correct. In 1999, the legislature added Labor Code section 6400(b) making it possible for Cal/OSHA to hold multiple employers on a worksite responsible for health and safety hazards. Citations for hazardous conditions could be issued to four types of employers: the exposing (direct), the creating, the correcting and the controlling employer.

In the Harris case, an apprentice member of UA 246 was injured while employed on a multi-employer worksite on the campus of Madera Community College. He suffered a career-ending injury when a pressurized piece of pipe attached to a valve broke off and tore through his right calf muscle and an artery. Cal/OSHA cited both the injured worker’s employer and Harris, the general contractor. Harris appealed the citation and an Administrative Law Judge upheld the citation, finding that Harris was the “controlling employer” on the jobsite and responsible by contract and actual practice for ensuring safe conditions at the site. The Appeals Board on its own motion ordered reconsideration and on March 30, 2007 overruled the ALJ decision, dismissing the citation.

At issue in the Harris case was the definition of a “controlling employer.” The law defines a controlling employer as one who has responsibility for safety on a multi-employer worksite and the authority for ensuring that hazardous conditions are corrected. Ignoring the plain language of the law, the Appeals Board in the Harris case held that a general contractor may be held liable only if Cal/OSHA proved it was in a position to know about and correct the specific hazard that injured a subcontractor’s employee. But the law does not require Cal/OSHA to prove the general contractor knew or should have known of the hazard nor does it require the general contractor to have the ability to abate the hazard. The ruling seriously weakened the ability of Cal/OSHA to cite and assess penalties against general contractors, owners of refineries and growers for safety and health violations.

The court agreed with the petitioner union that the Appeals Board could not rewrite the law, holding that the Board could not impose “any requirement that the Division prove, as part of its prima facie case, that Harris was in a position to abate the specific violation in question.”

“The Judge's ruling should be a message to the Appeals Board that it must stop revising and narrowing the legal protections available to workers on construction sites and other multi-employer worksites in California and start upholding the law,” stated Danielle Lucido, a Worksafe attorney who represented the union.

The multi-employer law has a contentious history. In 1994, Fran Schreiberg, attorney with Kazan, McClain, Lyons, Greenwood and Harvey and co-counsel for the union in this case, filed a complaint with Federal OSHA because while well established in federal law, California did not have a multi-employer worksite regulation and the Appeals Board refused to hold any employer responsible other than the direct employer of a worker exposed to an unsafe condition. As a result of the complaint, Cal/OSHA ultimately issued a multi-employer regulation. When the Appeals Board refused to follow this regulation, however, Ms. Schreiberg worked with now Speaker Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg to codify the multi-employer regulation into Labor Code section 6400(b). After the law went into effect, the Appeals Board correctly applied the law and its decision was upheld by an appellate court. But a different Appeals Board in the Harris case, a more pro-employer Board appointed by Schwarzenegger, ignored the prior decision and the appellate ruling and decided that Cal/OSHA must meet an additional burden which that the law didn’t require before issuing a controlling employer citation.

With Judge Marlette’s decision, however, a general contractor may be held liable as the “controlling employer” on a multi-employer worksite for the health and safety violations of its subcontractor if the Division proves just what the law requires: that the employer is responsible, by contract or through actual practice, for safety and health conditions on the worksite. “The court’s ruling,” stated Ms. Schreiberg, “carries out the legislature’s intent in ensuring that general contractors who have ultimate authority on multiemployer worksites take seriously their health and safety oversight responsibility.”

Worksafe (www.worksafe.org) is a California-based organization dedicated to eliminating all types of workplace hazards. We advocate for protective worker health and safety laws and effective remedies for injured workers. We watchdog government agencies to ensure they enforce these laws. We engage in campaigns in coalition with unions, workers, community, environmental and legal organizations, and scientists to eliminate hazards and toxic chemicals from the workplace. To protect the most vulnerable of California workers, we engage in impact litigation and provide legal training, technical assistance, and advocacy support to legal services programs who serve low wage and immigrant workers.