They call it Megan’s Law. And to many people it’s a monument to a little girl who didn’t have to die. To many, it’s a legal talisman that promises to protect children from sexual predators -- strangers like Jesse Timmendequas -- who hide in anonymity.

Megan’s slaying was a particularly horrific crime, and news of it shocked the community where the pretty blonde girl with the gap-toothed smile lived and died. But the horror went far beyond Hamilton.

Throughout the state, people demanded that something be done. There had to be some mechanism to warn them when a dangerous sexual predator was on the loose in a community. After all, people -- parents, children, schoolteachers, police-- all had a right to know when such an animal lived in their midst, didn't they?

Dick Zimmer (AP)

Dick Zimmer, then a state senator in New Jersey, and later a one-term congressman, certainly thought so. It was the dawn of the get-tough-on-crime era, and, with the blessing of the leaders of his Republican Party and support from both sides of the aisle, Zimmer and his colleagues hastily cobbled together a package of bills, which, among other things, required that anyone convicted of a sex offense undergo evaluation. The bills required that the risk sex offenders posed to the community be assessed and that, depending on that assessment, the community be notified.

For those deemed least likely to resume their criminal behavior, only the local authorities would be notified. Those considered a moderate risk would have their names circulated among police, local schools and community groups, and for those considered the most dangerous, a public alarm would be sounded once they were released back into the community.

On the surface, the law seemed to present a reasonable and reassuring answer to a real danger, and it was quickly embraced by the state's then-attorney general, Deborah Poritz (now chief justice of the New Jersey State Supreme Court), by then-governor Christine Todd Whitman (now the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency) and by leaders in both houses of the state legislature.

And so, within weeks of its introduction, thanks in part to the moving testimony and unflagging support of Maureen Kanka, Megan’s Law was overwhelmingly adopted. Two years later, when Zimmer went on to Congress, he saw to it that a version of the New Jersey statutes became federal law.

But from the beginning there were those who warned that the law had serious flaws. For one thing, early studies, such as one conducted in Los Angeles County, indicated that information disseminated about convicted sex offenders was often wrong. Real, hard-core pedophiles often gave authorities bogus addresses or moved without warning, making the registration effectively useless, the Los Angeles study found.

Prosecutors, noting that the vast majority of sexual offenses, particularly those against children, were solved only when the offender confessed, warned that the laws could backfire. Threatening accused molesters with lifelong registration made it that much more difficult to force an admission of guilt, obligating prosecutors to risk losing cases and exposing victims to additional trauma at trial, they said.

What's more, many offenders had been convicted or pleaded guilty in the past to less serious offenses, crimes that did not rise to the level of Megan's Law notification. Notably, the name Jesse Timmendequas, Megan's killer, would not have been publicly released if the sex offenders’ registry had existed at the time of the girl's death. His prior offenses would not have warranted widespread community notification. A popular saying among prosecutors in New Jersey's 26 counties is, "Megan's Law would not have saved Megan."