Former Marine jailed in Mexico over gun. Parents fight for release of 27-year-old war veteran

By Kelli Kennedy - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Dec 12, 2012 6:59:01 EST

MIAMI — A South Florida family is fighting to get their son, a Marine veteran, released from a prison in a dangerous area in Mexico while facing charges that he carried across the border a shotgun with a barrel that’s an inch too short.

Jon Hammar and his friend were on their way to Costa Rica in August and planned to drive across the Mexican border near Matamoros in a Winnebago filled with surfboards and camping gear. Hammar, 27, asked U.S. border agents what to do with the unloaded shotgun, which his family said belonged to his great-grandfather.

“They examined it, they weighed it, they said you have to fill out this form,” his father, Jon Hammar, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday from his home near Miami.

But when the pair crossed the border and handed the paperwork to Mexican officials, they impounded the RV and jailed the men, saying it was illegal to carry that type of gun. Hammar’s friend was later released because the gun did not belong to him.

The family’s attorney said Mexican law prohibits civilians from carrying certain types of guns, such as sawed-off shotguns, which can be more easily concealed. Mexican law prohibits shotguns with a barrel of less than 25 inches (63.5 centimeters). Family attorney Eddie Varon-Levy said Mexican officials measured the barrel on Hammar’s shotgun as 24 inches (61 centimeters). It has not been sawed off.

Family members said the gun was purchased at Sears and blamed U.S. officials for telling Hammar he could bring it across the border in the first place.

Varon-Levy also questioned the way Mexican officials measured the gun, because the measurements can differ depending on where they are taken on the barrel.

He said dealing with Mexican authorities has also been difficult. He said Hammar was brought to court a few weeks ago, where officials tried to convince him to plead guilty without a lawyer present. Varon-Levy said he didn’t show up because he was told there was a continuance.

“I am fuming,” he said.

Hammar could face 12 years in prison, but Varon-Levy said that’s unlikely. He wants to get the charges downgraded, hoping Hammar can plead guilty to a lesser charge of carrying an unregistered weapon, which carries only a fine.

Hammar served in Iraq and Afghanistan before being honorably discharged from the Marines in 2007. His mother said surfing helped him cope after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Mexican authorities have fully guaranteed his right to Consular assistance; therefore Mr. Hammar has been in contact with U.S. Consular officers in Mexico who have regularly visited him,” Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy, said in a statement. “The possession of any weapon restricted for the use of the Army in Mexico is a Federal crime, regardless of whether you declare it or not upon entering the country, and must be automatically prosecuted.”

Alday said Harmmar was detained in Tamaulipas “and as any other detainee facing criminal charges he has the right to defense counsel and a fair trial. In addition, his life and integrity are protected by national and international laws.”

Meanwhile, Hammar is being held in one of the most dangerous areas in Mexico.

Matamoros is the long-time headquarters of the Gulf Cartel, which has been engaged in a bloody struggle with its former security guards, the Zetas, since early 2010 for the lucrative drug routes along the eastern end of the Texas-Mexico border. An October 2011 fight among inmates at the prison left 20 dead and 12 injured.

At first, Hammar was held with the general population, filled mostly with members of drug cartels. Now he is periodically chained to his bed in a cell by himself, said his father, who speaks with his son by phone occasionally.

“Sometimes he’s got his head on good. We’re like just, ‘Hang in there. We’re doing everything we can.’ Other days, it’s like, it’s not as good,” Jon Hammar said, sighing heavily and struggling to steady his voice.

In August, the family received a frightening middle-of-the-night phone call from the cartel demanding money, said Jon Hammar, a 48-year-old software engineer.

“‘Lady, this isn’t about the police. This is our house. We have your son. We’re going to kill him if you don’t send us money,’“ Hammar said, recounting the phone call.

The couple planned to wire the money to an account, but officials at the U.S. consulate intervened and contacted prison officials. His son was moved into a private cell the next day, he said.

A spokesman for the State Department said officials have visited Hammar three times, spoken with him by phone and contacted prison officials to stop them from chaining him to the bed.

“The safety and well-being of U.S. citizens is something we take very seriously,” said Peter Velasco.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday, asking Mexican authorities to release Hammar.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also urged the State Department to work incessantly to reunite Hammar with his family and said she’s disappointed the agency has not told her what efforts have been made.

The Miami Republican said she plans to contact the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol about Hammar’s arrest. His mother emailed Ros-Lehtinen and asked for help.

“The Hammar family has suffered a great deal since their son’s unjust incarceration in August and the details they have provided to my office are gripping and a clear abuse of Jon’s human rights,” she said in a statement.

Associated Press Writer Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.

Veterans Day Remembering Those Who Served

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek9sBHz1tnU

The Spy Who GPS-Tagged Me Private investigators who use GPS trackers to monitor suspected cheating spouses are in a legal gray area.

The Spy Who GPS-Tagged Me
Private investigators who use GPS trackers to monitor suspected cheating spouses are in a legal gray area.

By Ryan Gallagher|Posted Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, at 8:33 AM ET

The tools once reserved for intelligence operatives have become increasingly cheap and available in recent years, and perhaps no one has benefited from this more than private investigators who make their money by monitoring suspected cheaters. No longer do they have to sit outside a seedy motel for hours, trying to take pictures of a philandering husband and his mistress entering a room together. They need only attach a GPS device to the suspected adulterer’s car, and the client’s suspicions can be confirmed.

In a landmark ruling in January, the Supreme Court held that law enforcement use of GPS trackers to monitor movements constitutes a “search.” That means the technology falls under the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, making it difficult for police to put a tracker on a car without first obtaining a warrant. But for private individuals, laws around the use of GPS trackers remain patchy, differing state to state.

Take California, Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota. These states allow private individuals to use tracking devices where the owner of a vehicle consents to it being monitored. Where there is no consent, it is considered a misdemeanor that can result in a fine and a jail sentence of six to 12 months. If a vehicle is jointly owned—say, by a husband and wife—and one owner wants to secretly track the other, it’s a murky area that’s as ethically dubious as it is legally contentious. However, that isn’t stopping private investigators—some of whom appear willing to track any vehicle regardless of its ownership.
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In a bid to find out whether private eyes are adhering to the law, earlier this month I decided to dabble in a bit of undercover investigating of my own. Posing as a suspicious wife and using a fake email address, I wrote to a number of PIs in the states with the strictest laws on the use of GPS surveillance trackers. Those I randomly selected were all advertising a GPS service openly on their websites, and I emailed to request a quote for how much it would cost to “GPS monitor movements of my husband's car” over a two-week period.

Of the 20 investigators I contacted, 16 replied, and only one declined to offer me some sort of GPS tracking citing legal concerns. The majority of the PIs said they would do it on the condition that my name was on the title of the car, with some offering to provide a DVD of its movements and others offering “real-time” surveillance of the vehicle for me to watch live via cellphone or computer.

Two separate investigators in California I approached expressed no immediate concern for the state’s GPS tracking law, which unequivocally outlaws tracking a car without the consent of its owner. Still using the fake name and email address, I asked whether the investigators would be willing and able to monitor more than one vehicle at a time. “There is another person who I believe is involved with my husband and it would be useful for me to check her car's movements at the same time as my husband's,” I wrote.

The response from Irvine, Calif.-based Hudson Investigations was a straight yes. “I could do it for $1200 including install and removal,” company boss Rick Hudson, a former Orange County police officer, told me. I received a similarly affirmative answer from Western Investigations, a firm headquartered near San Diego that claims on its website to be one of the most experienced PI agencies in California. “You are looking at a total of $1,800 for 2 vehicles for 2 weeks of the tracking,” Western Investigations’ general manager wrote. “We will give you access to monitor it yourself during the entire course of the investigation. And if you would like a location history report at the conclusion of the investigation, we can do so as well.”

When I subsequently contacted Western Investigations under my real name about this story, I asked whether it was aware the service I requested is classified as a misdemeanor under California’s penal code. “If I gave you the wrong impression then I was mistaken,” the GM wrote back in an email, insisting that the company would not install a tracking device without the consent of the registered owner. Western Investigations’ owner Patrick Schneemann then told me in a separate message, “I can assure you that our company policy is that we do not use GPS in our investigations unless we have consent from the owner of the vehicle.”

Rick Hudson at Hudson Investigations said he was sure he had mentioned the legal constraints in his emails (he didn’t) and said that he wouldn’t put a tracker on any vehicle without signing a GPS agreement with the customer that says that they have the authorization. Hudson added that he gets “so many calls regarding these tracking units that it's crazy.”

Other PI companies were reluctant to directly help me track the vehicles but instead offered to sell or rent me GPS tracking equipment. This would mean any unlawful use of the tracker would be on my shoulders and not those of a PI. In one instance, even after I informed Texas-based LP Dynamics that I was looking to track two vehicles, one of which had no ownership connection to me, I was offered "2 passive GPS units" for $125 each. A company representative emailed: "Just place on a vehicle, remove when you want and download to your computer to see where they have been." When I later contacted the company for this story, CEO Michael Morrison emailed that "we are a licensed private investigation corporation and not an attorney." Morrison rightly stated that LP Dynamics follows Texas law "to the letter" because the penal code covers only the installation of tracking systems but not the sale of the devices. This could be considered something of a legal loophole.

The solitary exception was California-based Orange Investigations, run by former military policeman Ryan Garrahy. Of the 16 that responded to me, Garrahy was the only PI to completely stonewall my request. Orange Investigations has previously provided GPS tracking for its clients, but Garrahy said he has stopped doing so “at this particular time” because of concerns about a possible rise in civil suits linked to the Supreme Court decision in January.

Overall, the impression I got was that it was not difficult to find companies willing to help me track any vehicle, which could potentially result in a misdemeanor being committed. Even the investigators who were more cautious, telling me that they would only track a vehicle I had an “ownership interest” in, were on shaky ground. Though a case in Minnesota last year ruled that it was acceptable to use a GPS tracker on your spouse if you co-own the car, there is far from a legal consensus on the matter in other states.

Austin, Texas-based criminal lawyer Ian Inglis told me he thought that the Texas statute on tracking wasn’t constructed with joint ownership in mind. “Even if there’s no criminal liability, there could be some civil liability, and it might look bad in a divorce, too,” Inglis said. “Whether it’s your husband or wife, it’s a bad idea to track anybody’s car without their permission.”

In California, similarly, it’s a gray area. Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he wasn’t aware of any statutory California law that addressed the joint ownership question. Fakhoury referred to Georgia v. Randolph, a Supreme Court case where it was ruled that there needed to be joint agreement for the lawful search of a jointly owned property. According to Fakhoury, the joint consent deemed necessary in Randolph is consistent with other California law and so could feasibly apply to the use of trackers on a jointly owned vehicle. (Californian wiretap law, for instance, requires both parties to a conversation to consent to having the conversation recorded—unlike federal wiretap law, which only requires one party to consent.)

Contentious legal issues aside, what’s clear is that the use of GPS tracking devices is very far from being under control. While law enforcement agencies are now bound to consider the trackers as covered by the Fourth Amendment, in the private domain there’s a lack of clarity when it comes to the regulation. Where there are laws, in some cases they are being ignored, and where there is any ambiguity, it is being exploited—often by individuals who stand to make a profit.

As is frequently the case in the realm of surveillance, the technology is out of step with the law. High-tech tracking tools that would a decade ago have rarely been used outside police and military circles are available today to anyone with a credit card and access to the Internet. The technology is continuing to advance and is simultaneously becoming cheaper. And that’s not going to change any time soon.

SpyBase, a surveillance gadgets retailer based out of Torrance, Calif., has seen in recent years a rapid increase in sales of GPS trackers, a trend that’s continuing. The store’s owner, who didn’t want to be named, told me GPS trackers were his “best-sellers,” and that a sophisticated $299 real-time tracker called the PTX 5 was his customers’ favorite.

“PIs, police, private citizens,” he said. “It’s a very big market.”

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.



http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/11/gps_trackers_to_monitor_cheating_spouses_a_legal_gray_area_for_private_investigators.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Appeals Court OKs Warrantless, Real-Time Mobile Phone Tracking

Appeals Court OKs Warrantless, Real-Time Mobile Phone Tracking

WIRED.com
By David KravetsEmail Author
08.14.12,  4:06 PM

A federal appeals court on Wednesday said the authorities do not need a probable-cause warrant to track a suspect’s every move via GPS signals from a suspect’s mobile phone.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling 2-1, upheld a 20-year term for a drug courier nabbed with 1,100 pounds of marijuana in a motorhome camper the authorities tracked via his mobile phone pinging cell towers from Arizona to a Texas truck stop.

The decision, a big boost for the government’s surveillance powers, comes as prosecutors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower location tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling in January sharply limiting the use of GPS vehicle trackers. The Supreme Court found law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles and monitor their every move.

The court of appeals ruling comes a month after a congressional inquiry found that law enforcement made 1.3 million requests for cellphone data last year alone while seeking out subscriber information like text messages, location data and calling records.
Judge John M. Rogers wrote for the majority: (.pdf)

If a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal. The law cannot be that a criminal is entitled to rely on the expected untrackability of his tools. Otherwise, dogs could not be used to track a fugitive if the fugitive did not know that the dog hounds had his scent. A getaway car could not be identified and followed based on the license plate number if the driver reasonably thought he had gotten away unseen. The recent nature of cell phone location technology does not change this. If it did, then technology would help criminals but not the police.

The appeals court distinguished this case from a GPS case decided by the Supreme Court. The high court ruled that the physical act of installing a GPS device on a target’s vehicle amounted to a search, which usually necessitates a probable cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

“Here, the monitoring of the location of the contraband-carrying vehicle as it crossed the country is no more of a comprehensively invasive search than if instead the car was identified in Arizona and then tracked visually and the search handed off from one local authority to another as the vehicles progressed. That the officers were able to use less expensive and more efficient means to track the vehicles is only to their credit,” Rogers wrote.

Another appeals court, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is also mulling a similar issue, one involving historical cell-site data. And the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2010 that warrants were required to get cell-site location data. Split rulings generally leads the Supreme Court to step in and clear the conflicts.

In all of the cases, including the 5th Circuit case, the Obama administration maintains that Americans have no expectation of privacy in cell-site records because they are “in the possession of a third party” — the mobile phone companies. What’s more, the authorities maintain that the cell site data is not as precise as GPS tracking and “there is no trespass or physical intrusion on a customer’s cellphone when the government obtains historical cell-site records from a provider.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court loss in January, the government has turned to relying even more on warrantless mobile-phone GPS tracking. In that case, the justices reversed the life sentence of a District of Columbia area drug dealer, Antoine Jones, who was the subject of 28 days of warrantless GPS surveillance via a device the FBI secretly attached to his vehicle.

Responding to the Jones decision, the FBI has pulled the plug on 3,000 GPS-tracking devices, and is seeking to introduce cell-site data, obtained without a warrant, in a bid to keep Jones in prison.
Wednesday’s ruling wasn’t unanimous on all counts, however.
Judge Bernice Donald upheld the conviction, based on the police’s “good faith’ exemption” to the warrant requirement. But Donald wrote that the majority was wrong in its theory of the case.

I would not characterize the question before us as whether society is prepared to recognize a legitimate expectation of privacy in the GPS data emitted from a cell phone used to effectuate drug trafficking. Rather, in keeping with the principle that the law affords the same constitutional protections to criminals and law-abiding citizens alike, the question is simply whether society is prepared to recognize a legitimate expectation of privacy in the GPS data emitted from any cell phone. Because I would answer this question in the affirmative, I cannot join Part II.A of the majority opinion.

 Here's a link to thew 6th Circuit Opinion:  6TH Circuit Opinion

Sentencing Day For Christopher Butler "Dirty Private Eye"

Chris Butler choked up as his sentence was read.

By Lisa Fernandez and Jodi Hernandez 

NBC Bay Area

Tuesday, Sep 25, 2012 

A former Antioch police officer and private investigator was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to eight years in prison following a high-profile string of arrests that disgraced the Contra Costa County California Narcotic Enforcement Team last year.

U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong in Oakland also ordered Butler to pay a $20,000 fine. Butler, dressed in a tan jail jumpsuit, choked up as his sentence was handed down.

"I want to apologize to the community for the anxiety, fear and suffering I caused," Butler said.

He also apologized "to the law enforcement community for the embarrassment and betrayal inflicted on it."

He added a final apology: "I apologize to my family and friends who supported me through all of this."

The sentencing follows his guilty plea in May to six charges, including extortion, robbery and conspiring to deal drugs. His probation officer recommended more than 12 years in prison.

Butler's sentence was much stiffer than what his associate received. Former San Ramon police office Louis Lombardi was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the CNET scandal. Lombardi plead guilty to stealing $40,000 in cash and guns while serving search warrants.

Butler had achieved some fame by hooking a reality TV show contract and hiring "Mommy P.I.s," attractive women whose job was to lure men into cheating on their wives. And in court, he admitted to bribing a Contra Costa County sheriff's deputy, Stephen Tanabe, with cocaine and a gun to make drunk driving arrests of men he was investigating. These have since been dubbed, "dirty DUI" stings, and Butler has earned the nickname, the "Dirty P.I."

Butler testified to a lot: He admitted setting up a massage parlor, which provided sexual services.

And he testified that  former squad commander Norman Wielsch gave him marijuana and steroids, which he then gave to a colleague at his private eye firm. He also said he drove Wielsch to various spots where they took 586 grams of methamphetamine from evidence lockers. One of those pounds, he said, sold  for $9,800. He admitted to taking $30,000 worth of drugs.

Wielsh and Tanabe have both pleaded not guilty to similar charges. 

The drug team, known as CNET, was disbanded last February.

In March, NBC Bay Area was the first media organization to obtain the undercover video showing Butler and Wielsch in an apparent drug transaction at Butler's office in Concord. To see that video, click below.

Sentencing Day For Christopher Butler "Dirty Private Eye" 

Imprisoned detective may pose risk to star clients

Imprisoned detective may pose risk to star clients

Published October 25, 2012

Associated Press

Four years after a private eye went to prison for wiretapping phones of the rich and famous on behalf of celebrities and Hollywood heavyweights, his clients are facing hefty bills for his skullduggery.

In the first of more than a dozen lawsuits against Anthony Pellicano's well-heeled clients, a jury last week ruled against the ex-wife of a billionaire philanthropist, awarding $4 million to his three adult children and former personal assistant after she violated their privacy.

The verdict could spell trouble for other former clients who have been sued, such as Paramount studio head Brad Grey and one-time superagent Michael Ovitz.

The case against the ex-wife, Jacqueline Colburn, is the first to be tried before a jury stemming from a criminal probe that ensnared Pellicano for targeting Sylvester Stallone, Garry Shandling and Kevin Nealon and for work he did for others like Chris Rock and an attorney who represented MGM mogul Kirk Kerkorian in a child custody battle.

Pellicano, 68, is now serving 15 years in a federal prison in Texas after being convicted in 2008 of racketeering and more than six dozen other counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud and wiretapping. He is scheduled to be released in March 2019.

The trial billed as a blockbuster that would reveal the seedier side of Hollywood fizzled in the end as Pellicano kept silent, acting as his own lawyer.

The evidence showed he dug up dirt on clients' rivals by bribing phone company employees to install wiretapping software and had rogue police officers search databases for personal information. The information was used in hardball negotiations for business disputes, divorces and lawsuits.

Clients such as Grey, Ovitz and comedian Rock were never charged in the case and they insisted they didn't know about Pellicano's tactics. Kerkorian also has said that he had no knowledge of any wiretapping being used.

Grey and Ovitz are now facing lawsuits that could be costly and where the evidence is potentially stronger than the Colburn case, which relied largely on testimony and not on FBI reports or damning audio tapes made by Pellicano.

"I would think people will think long and hard about their exposure," said attorney Lawrence Segal, who represented Richard Colburn's children. "A lot of defendants may be thinking that in the absence of actual recordings they stand a decent chance of a defense. But we were able to prevail on a largely circumstantial case."

About a dozen lawsuits have moved slowly through the legal system alleging wiretapping and privacy invasion. Among the other defendants are AT&T and the cities of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, where the police officers who provided information to Pellicano worked.

Most of the lawsuits are pending before a judge but have been mired by appeals in the criminal case, which allows Pellicano and others to preserve their right against self-incrimination, and the exchange of documents between attorneys was put on hold for many months. No trial dates have even been set.

A settlement in some of the lawsuits has been reached, said attorney Brian Kabateck, who represents several Pellicano victims, but a deal hasn't been finalized. He said the Colburn verdict provides some reassurance to his clients.

"It shows that juries are still outraged about this behavior even though it was many years ago," he said. "I think it sends a message to the defendants that they are going to have to pay real money."
The verdict in the Colburn case is a fraction of the fortune billionaire philanthropist left behind when he died in 2004 at age 92.

Evidence showed that his eighth wife, Jacqueline, who was nearly 50 years younger, paid Pellicano at least $115,000 to snoop on her husband after he was caught having phone sex with another woman, according to the lawsuit.

Ex-Pellicano employee Richard Campau testified that Colburn was in the private eye's office regularly listening to audio tapes of calls to and from the family home. Physical therapist David Powers also testified that Colburn bragged to him that she had hired the best private investigator in Los Angeles and he was using wiretaps.

There were an estimated 500 calls that were wiretapped by Pellicano over a 10-month period which captured numerous personal, medical and business matters involving the three adult children from a prior marriage and the ex-personal assistant, all of whom believed their conversations were private.

They "never knew of the surreptitious eavesdropping and certainly never agreed to put their personal lives on public display," said plaintiffs' attorney Wayne Skigen.

The lawsuit focused solely on the ex-wife and Pellicano and wasn't bogged down by suing large entities, such as the phone company or any cities. Segal and Skigen are seeking a default judgment against Pellicano because he hasn't responded to their claims.

Attempts to reach Jacqueline Colburn's attorney, Stanley McKiernan, were unsuccessful Wednesday. McKiernan has said there isn't any evidence showing Pellicano wiretapped on his client's behalf.

Federal authorities started investigating Pellicano after former Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch found a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on her car along with a sign reading "stop" in June 2002.

Busch testified at the criminal trial that she believed Ovitz and Pellicano had orchestrated the threat because she co-wrote articles about the agent's alleged financial troubles while his talent agency was in talks to be acquired.

Ovitz is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Busch. He has yet to give a deposition.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/10/25/imprisoned-detective-may-pose-risk-to-star-clients/?intcmp=features#ixzz2ALobA0ET

California Limits Spousal Support

California Limits Spousal Support
By Rita Fuerst Adams, National Executive Director,
Fathers and Families

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation introduced by Assembly member Toni Atkins, (D-San Diego) that prevents victims from being forced to pay spousal support to ex-husbands or wives who are convicted of violent crime against them. Assembly Bill 1522 was inspired by the case of a San Diego-area woman, Crystal Harris, who was ordered to pay her former husband monthly spousal support during the pendency of his criminal trial. After he was convicted and sentenced to six years, Harris was ordered to pay a portion of his legal fees.

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie M. Dumanis announced the legislation earlier this year and testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee in support of it. Current California law already prevents spousal support in cases of attempted murder or soliciting the murder of a spouse. AB 1522 adds violent abuse felonies to the list of convictions that disqualify a person from obtaining financial benefits from their ex-spouse in a divorce proceeding.

While Judges in California have had the discretion to deny spousal support or alimony in cases of felony offenses, this new law makes it mandatory in cases where the spousal support would have been paid by the injured party. The language is gender neutral. Fathers and Families hopes the implementation is also gender neutral.

According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, more than 56 percent of divorce lawyers across the United States report an increase in mothers paying child support to fathers in the last three year and 47 percent note a rise in the number of women making monthly alimony payments to their ex-husbands. The study did not report on how much of an increase there has been in cases of mothers paying child support or the actual rise in women paying alimony.

Crystal Harris’ case brought national attention to the loophole in the law. “I never want to think of another rape victim having to go through the re-victimization process that I went through,” Harris said.

The bill garnered strong bi-partisan legislative support from Senators Joel Anderson, R-El Cajon; Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego; Juan Vargas, D-San Diego; and Mark Wyland, R-Carlsbad; and Assembly members Marty Block, D- Lemon Grove; Ben Hueso, D-Chula Vista; Martin Garrick, R-Carlsbad; Kevin Jeffries, R- Murrieta; Brian Jones, R-Santee; Jeff Miller, R-Orange; and Holly Mitchell, D-Culver City.