The Associated Press
WASHINGTON- The Senate voted Thursday to set up a national sex offender database that would be available on the Internet and require strict monitoring of high-risk sex offenders for a year after their release from prison.
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is known as “Dru’s Law” for Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old University of North Dakota student who was abducted from a shopping mall and killed in 2003.
Senators approved the bill by voice vote. An identical version is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.
The man charged with abducting Sjodin and killing her, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., is a convicted sex offender who had been released from prison just six months before she disappeared.
The bill is designed to compensate for a patchwork of state laws that have hindered searches for sexual predators when they cross state lines. It would create a national sex offender registry that would allow the public to search by ZIP code across state lines.
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The bills are S.792 and H.R.95