Amendment 2 bears close study

Before making any comments about Amendment Number 2, which will appear on the ballot next week, I would like to mention that I think we should be very careful anytime an amendment is being proposed that would change our state constitution.

The point of a constitution is to be something that is solid and extremely hard to change. It is the standard that guides our legislators on laws they can and cannot pass for citizens to follow.

Having said that, the amendment has already been placed on the ballet and a decision must now be made when it comes time to vote. This amendment would affect prosecutors the most because it deals with what evidence can be used in court during prosecution, but here is how I view this possible change through the eyes of a law enforcement officer.

My job is to catch the bad guys, but it is also to make sure the freedoms and rights of the citizens in our county are not violated in doing so. There are many cases where we "know" someone is doing drugs in a house, but until we have the clear probable cause to present to a judge and a warrant is issued suspending that person's rights to not be searched, they are protected by the Fourth Amendment.

In some cases, it appears the Constitution is protecting the criminals, but it is also what protects everyone else from having their rights violated.

In this proposed amendment, evidence from prior criminal cases may be used for prosecutions for crimes of a sexual nature for people under the age of 18 whether charged or uncharged. Here is what I see as the pros and the cons of this amendment.

During investigations of sexual crimes, we often find that the suspect has been accused of such crimes before, sometimes even multiple times, but because of the age of some of these suspects and the nature of the crimes, it can be difficult to gather the evidence needed for a prosecution.

If someone was a suspect before but never charged or convicted, it can be kept out of court. If someone is accused of the same crime by multiple victims, that could be valuable information for a jury to hear or for the prosecution to be able to provide the courts with.

Now from the other viewpoint, if there is not enough evidence to prove someone is guilty of a crime, should it be legal to use non-proven accusations as evidence to convict someone?

I will admit that most of the time when accusations are made against someone over and over again, there is often truth to the accusation. But the problem is the accusation is simply that, an accusation.

With this type of crime, I can say that I feel there is little chance that different victims would happen to accuse the same person multiple times if there was not a crime being committed and this is the worst type of crime imaginable, so of course I would love to have a better way of catching offenders and making sure they never have the chance to offend again.

But I wonder, where would this line of thinking stop? Should the criminal justice system be allowed to use something that has never been proven to prove something else?

This is a complicated issue, and one I hope we will all put a lot of thought into before voting.