When Charged With a Crime ®

Few laws in recent memory appear to have caused as much controversy as California’s Senate Bill 145 (SB 145) has.

So what does SB 145 actually do? Basically, its goal is to clear up some previously conflicting laws because California was treating statutory rape differently depending on the type of sex involved. Judges have always had the discretion, in what would generally be considered heterosexual (vaginal) consensual statutory rape cases (where the victim is at least 14 years old), not to require a convicted defendant to register as a sex offender. But when it came to sexual conduct that is sometimes associated with the LGBTQ community (oral sex, anal sex, etc.), that discretion did not exist. SB 145 does nothing more than to apply the same standard in those cases, making the registration discretionary with the judge, and not mandatory in all cases.

SB 145 does not change a single thing about which offenses are criminal and which are not. It is still illegal for even a 17-year-old and 19-year-old to have sex. And the punishment is the same. Anyone saying otherwise either hasn’t read the eight-page law, or is deliberately trying to mislead their audience.

It is important to note that SB 145’s provisions, in actuality, should only apply when the minor is over 14 years old. If they are younger than that, different laws apply and so do mandatory sex offender registration rules. Who we are really talking about here are minors between the ages of 14 to 17, who consensually engage in sex acts with adults less than 10 years older than them.

SB 145 has been backed by the California District Attorneys Association, the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys, and the California Police Chiefs Association. For more information, click here or on the photo above.

Is there a difference between factual innocence and not guilty? The answer is definitely yes! In cases of factual innocence, the defendant is saying either that no crime occurred or, if it did, it was committed by someone else. An example, from one of Stefano L. Molea’s cases, involved a man charged with a crime – it was later shown by viewing a surveillance video that the man was somewhere else at the time the alleged crime was committed. He could not have committed the crime in question. Thus, he was factually innocent.

Being found “not guilty,” on the other hand, means that the prosecution was unable to meet its evidentiary burden of proving every element of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution is the only side in a criminal case that has anything to prove. If the prosecution is unable to prove its case – proving every element beyond a reasonable doubt – then the defendant is not guilty. However, just because a jury may return a not guilty verdict does not mean the accused was factually innocent of the crime charged. For example, the jurors may have believed that the defendant was probably guilty, but still returned a not guilty verdict or verdicts since the prosecution had not proven each and every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. To hear Stefano speak about the issue, click here or on the picture above.