House passes stricter sex offender bill

Unexpectedly, the House voted 223-to-199 in favor of an amendment by Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, that would expand the current hate crime law to include some crimes involving sexual orientation, gender, and disability. Under current law, the federal government assists local and state authorities prosecuting limited types of crimes based on the victim's race, religion, or ethnic background.

The House has been the chief obstacle in numerous previous attempts to expand hate crimes law, and Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, said it was an ''incredibly historic vote" that could give momentum to similar action in the Senate.

The sex offender bill, which also would require felony offenders to register for life and authorize the death penalty for sex crimes resulting in the killing of a child, responds to what the House Judiciary Committee chairman, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, said was a ''national crisis" in child sex offenses. He said that of some 550,000 convicted sex offenders in the nation, the whereabouts of 100,000 are unknown.

Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, said, ''We track library books better than we do sexual predators."

Sensenbrenner said that the legislation would get favorable treatment in the Senate and that he expected it to be signed into law by the end of the year.

The White House, in a statement, expressed support, saying that even though sex crimes against children have declined significantly in recent years, more needs to be done. It noted that the legislation codified the online National Sex Offender Public Registry that the Justice Department launched earlier this year.

The legislation would bring together parts of numerous proposals to protect children from sex offenders. Sections of the bill are named after victims in cases that gained national prominence, including Dru Sjodin, a North Dakota college student, and 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford of Florida.