(Wrongly Convicted?) Sex Offender in Berkeley Facing Harasment
I came across a very interesting story in the Contra Costa Times about UC Berkeley student Arvind Balu. You should really read the whole thing, but here is a brief description of what is happening:

*"Arvind Balu's friend was said to have raped a 14-year-old girl while Balu cut her arm and licked the blood from it. They were convicted in a Lake County courtroom in 1998." Information about him was then placed on the Megan's Law website, where his neighbors found out about his conviction.

*A substantial amount of evidence came to light after the trial, and "Two years later, an appeals court dropped the most serious of Balu's charges. His friend walked away completely exonerated." Balu's lawyer is now trying to get the rest of the conviction against him overturned.

*Balu was a Berkeley student, and he's returning to school now, and trying to get his life back in order, which is being made substantially more difficult by the reaction from his neighbors.

* Balu's neighbor's don't want him around: "He has no idea about the type of people he's up against," John Ryan said. "I will stand in front of his door to keep him out."

Like I said, go read the whole thing. There is information in the article about how the mentally ill are treated by our justice system. (Balu was diagnosed after the trial). Also, for those unaware, Megan's Law has created an online database where you can search for sex offenders by location. It's kind of creepy to use the website to search for those convicted of sex offenses who live nearby you.

During my time on the debate team, we always delighted in coming up with cases that seemed intuitively like a bad idea, but which we could show actually created a bunch of good. One example of this was attacking the Megan's Law database, which most people assume allows parents to keep track of molesters in their neighborhood, but which ends up having some negative effects. If we were to assume that Balu might have actually been guilty (and the article heavily suggests he isn't) then read the last paragraph, and try to figure out whether the Megan's Law database is making it more or less likely that he will get his life back in order and reintegrate into society without molesting again.Email This Post!