JUDGE: NASSAU SEX-OFFENDER LAW ‘INVALID’

newsday.com/Sid Cassese

Judge Valerie Alexander, a District Court judge of the First District Court in Hempstead,has ruled that Nassau County's law barring convicted sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet ofa school is invalid because it is inconsistent with state law.  Alexander said the state lawtakes precedence over Nassau.  State law requires that only registered sex offenders on paroleor probation be required to live beyond 1,000 feet of a school.  In Nassau's law, there is nodistinction between sex offenders on parole or probation and those who are not.  In a casebrought by Michael Diack, a Level 1 registered sex offender who had been living about 500 feet fromthe Lawrence-Woodmere Hebrew Academy in Woodmere, Alexander dismissed the charges that he hadviolated the county law.  Diack's lawyer, Salvatore Marinello, argued that the county law wasinvalid because Diack was not on parole or probation when he lived near the school.  Thestate law of 2005 bans all supervised...sex offenders whose victims were minors from knowinglyentering or living within 1,000 feet of a public, private or vocational school below college,Marinello said.
(New York)