Sid Landau admitted to sexually abusing ten kids during his child-molesting “career” (do they have vocational schools for that?), crimes for which he has served his time – that and then some. Yesterday saw the start of the third trial to determine whether or not the Orange County District Attorney's Office will release Landau to his sister's custody. Last arrested in 1999, Landau served the maximum time for his parole violation, but was transferred to Atascadero State Mental Hospital rather than released when the DA's office petitioned to qualify Landau as a Sexually Violent Predator, or SVP.
After serving seven years of his initial 15-year sentence, Landau was released to a society which hounded him from residence to residence, making him the Meghan's Law Poster Boy.
Landau's parole violations include pushing a photographer, possessing a photograph of his grand-nephews and failure to meet with a parole officer. Also, he had in his possession some teddy bears with yarmulkes. Teddy Ruxpinsteins, if you will. For such a well-known sex-offender, there can be no true release, no genuine freedom anymore. Not in today's information-rich, paranoia-ridden world. Just ask Gordon Dill-hole over at the Register.
In Landau's case, his most recent trial took four weeks. And after the jury deadlocked 8-4 against releasing him, the judge in the case ordered yet another trial to be held. It's a cycle that could be repeated for years and years.And yet, as D.A. spokeswoman Susan Schroeder puts it, “What alternative do we have? We can't just let a dangerous child molester get out. We can't take that chance.”
So yes, maybe in some situations it wouldn't be fair to keep a guy locked up after he has served his time.But when it comes to sexually violent predators, it wouldn't be fair to their potential victims to do anything else.
Incidentally, the first trial resulted in an 11-1 deadlock in favor of releasing Landau. Perhaps the third trial's the charm? Dillow is concerned about the potential victims of sexually violent predators and seems to be advocating the prolonged imprisonment of not just them, but even those suspected of being capable of violent sexual predation. Frat boys, beware and stay off the Goldschlager.
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Dana Parsons had a more … what's the word … HUMAN take on the situation:
When a person pays his debt to society, it's supposed to mean something. And as long as juries keep deadlocking — even 11 to 1 to release him — Landau could remain in the hospital forever. Ideally, I'd settle for something like this: If one or two or three juries can't decide unanimously on a person's fate in cases like this, an “expert” panel would then be brought in.
Ain't gonna happen, so we live with what we've got.
Expert panels (made up of judges and mental health experts) would arguably be better able to appropriately sentence sex-offenders because their judgment will be (relatively) unclouded by society's violent distaste and distrust for sex offenders, especially child molesters.Still, if one blog commenter's allegation is true, it's doubtful that any OC judge will ever look favorably upon the sad, sad case of one Sid Landau.
Allen t.bentmyer Says:
January 10th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
One of the children Landau Raped was an assistant DA’s nephew. No judge or DA will forget this.
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