No surprise here

Expect the state to appeal the ruling, but a Cleveland judge got it exactly right last week. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Ronald Suster found unconstitutional a state law that across the board increased the length of time convicted sex offenders must register with police. The law did so without any additional court hearings for people who had committed crimes and received sentences before the law took effect.
The law classified sexual offenders under a three-tier system rather than in the previous eight categories. It also required longer registration times for felons, some for life, and mandatory community notification for some offenders once considered low level. There's nothing wrong with those requirements. If society determines harsher sentencing is needed for sexual offenders, the Legislature is the proper body to write those rules - provided you apply the new standards only to people convicted after the law went into effect. The state cannot punish a person a second time for the same crime.
Members of the Legislature, in their rush to look tough on crime, weren't very precise with the law. That kind of oversight from a group made up of many lawyers strikes us as odd.
But, 32 state senators and 97 representatives followed the poor policy lead of their federal counterparts in trying to punish retroactively. Federal funding would be lost to any state that didn't adopt tougher rules by 2009. The Cuyahoga County ruling was counter to others that have found the law to be OK. Again, we're going to see the Legislaure overstep its way to the Ohio Supreme Court.
The next time legislators decide to get "tough on crime," perhaps they ought to consult law enforcement officials - judges, prosecutors, police - something they neglected to do with this bungle. So, with the approximately 23,000 registered sex offenders The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported are in Ohio, lawmakers only got tough on victims. They set out pretending to do something the Ohio Constitution doesn't let them do just to look like they were doing something about crime.