Suit fights for homeless sex offenders

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (WOOD) - Gov. Jennifer Granholm, the Michigan State Police, the attorney general and a county prosecutor are facing legal action for a law banning sex offenders from emergency shelters near schools.

The action comes after Thomas Pauli -- a homeless man and registered sex offender -- died in the cold last year. His body was found frozen in a salvage yard. Pauli was banned from staying in a local shelter.

Michigan law prohibits anyone on the sex-offender registry from residing in a place near a school, and Grand Rapids Catholic Central High School is within blocks of all the shelters in the city: Degage, Guilding Light Mission and Mel Trotter Ministries.

But "is spending the night creating a residence?" asked Rev. Charlotte Ellison of Heartside Ministries.

That is the question two homeless shelters and four convicted sex offenders want the court to answer regarding Michigan's Sex Offender Registration Act, which bans offenders from working, loitering or residing within 1,000 feet of school property.

Violators face up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine for the first offense.

A second offense becomes a felony with stiffer penalties. Legal Aid of West Michigan, which represents the offenders, argues the current law -- by banning sex offenders from emergency shelter -- is cruel and unusual punishment. The group also argues staying in a shelter is no different from staying in a motel, which may be close to a school.

Sometimes, shelters do become homes to offenders who stay there on a regular basis.

But "it is a lockdown facility," Ellison said. "They go in in the evening, have dinner and can't leave until morning. And those are the very hours the school kids aren't around, anyway."

Advocates for the homeless say offenders who end up on the streets are put into life-threatening situations due to Michigan's cold winters.

"It essentially creates a situation where there is no place that someone can go and be sheltered in a legitimate vetted homeless shelter without coming into conflict with the law as it is being interpreted," Ellison said.

There is another solution outside of the courts: moving the shelters or the school. Neither side is inclined to do that, so far. The shelters and the school have been at their locations for many years before the law went into effect.

Although there aren't specific figures, about 20 percent of the homeless population is on the sex-offender registry, according to advocates for the homeless.

The Catholic Diocese and the defendants in the suit say they can't comment, but members of law enforcement point out sex offenders can and do seek out environments where they can find victims.