Author: CCRC Staff

Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center

More states enact major “second chance” reforms

In recent weeks, three more states — Colorado, Louisiana and Vermont — have enacted laws intended to make it easier for people with a criminal record to find and keep employment, or otherwise to regain rights and status.

We are just now noting Wyoming’s enactment in March 2018 of general standards for professional and occupational licensure, which impose new restrictions on how criminal record may be taken into account by licensing agencies, and its amendment of more than a dozen specific licensing laws.

In the first five months of 2018 alone, a total of 21 states have enacted legislation to improve opportunities for people with a criminal record, with more similar laws evidently on the way.  States have enacted several different types of “second chance” laws this year, from expansion of voting rights to expansion of judicial authority to relieve collateral consequences at sentencing.

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“Challenging the Punitiveness of ‘New-Generation’ SORN Laws“

Wayne Logan has a terrific new article on the recent challenges to sex offender registration and notification laws, forthcoming in the New Criminal Law Review.  Here is the abstract:

Sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws have been in effect nationwide since the 1990s, and publicly available registries today contain information on hundreds of thousands of individuals. To date, most courts, including the Supreme Court in 2003, have concluded that the laws are regulatory, not punitive, in nature, allowing them to be applied retroactively consistent with the Ex Post Facto Clause. Recently, however, several state supreme courts, as well as the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, addressing challenges lodged against new-generation SORN laws of a considerably more onerous and expansive character, have granted relief, concluding that the laws are punitive in effect. This symposium contribution examines these decisions, which are distinct not only for their results, but also for the courts’ decidedly more critical scrutiny of the justifications, purposes, and efficacy of SORN laws. The implications of the latter development in particular could well lay the groundwork for a broader challenge against the laws, including one sounding in substantive due process, which unlike ex post facto-based litigation would affect the viability of SORN vis-à-vis current and future potential registrants.

Civil death lives!

The first and foremost collateral consequence in Colonial America was civil death; based on the grim fact that felonies were punished by execution, upon conviction, the law began to wrap up the convict’s affairs.  As the law developed, capital punishment ceased to be the default punishment, and civil death was seen as too harsh for a felon who might serve a probationary sentence instead of being executed or even going to prison at all.  The Rhode Island Supreme Court recently issued an opinion demonstrating that this ancient doctrine is not entirely obsolete.

In Gallup v. Adult Correctional Institutions, the court upheld dismissal of a complaint alleging that the state negligently allowed the plaintiff, a prisoner serving life, to be assaulted by another inmate.  The court pointed to the state’s civil death statute, which applies to prisoners serving life in an adult correctional institution. Such persons “shall, with respect to all rights of property, to the bond of matrimony and to all civil rights and relations of any nature whatsoever, be deemed to be dead in all respects, as if his or her natural death had taken place at the time of conviction.”  Of U.S. jurisdictions, only Rhode Island, New York, and the Virgin Islands maintain civil death, and New York’s statute has many exceptions.  There is, accordingly, not much modern law on the scope of civil death statutes.

One wonders whether the Rhode Island statute could really extend to the full scope of its language; could a lifer be denied, for example, freedom of religion and speech under the U.S. and/or Rhode Island constitutions?  Suggesting that the answer is “no” is the fact that the court granted the plaintiff leave to plead a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action based on the same underlying facts; the court recognized that a state statute cannot eliminate federal rights.

That acknowledgement raises the hard question of the extent to which the federal Constitution protects the property, right to marry, and “civil rights and relations” of even a person serving a life sentence.

NJ high court bars retroactive application of Megan’s Law

The New Jersey Supreme Court on Wednesday held 2014 amendments to Megan’s Law enhancing certain penalties for sex offenders who violate parole requirements unenforceable against four defendants based on the ex post facto clauses of both the state and federal constitutions. The court, in a unanimous ruling, vacated the convictions and sentences of four paroled sex offenders who committed minor violations of their parole conditions and mounted a challenge to the laws. The ruling vacates the individuals’ third-degree convictions for the parole violations.
“A law that retroactively increases or makes more burdensome the punishment of a crime is an ex post facto law,” wrote Justice Barry Albin for the court. “The Amendment, therefore, is an ex post facto law that violates our Federal and State Constitutions as applied to defendants.”  The four sex offenders—Melvin Hester, Mark Warner, Linwood Roundtree and Anthony McKinney—after completing their sentences for the original crimes, were placed on community supervision for life, according to the decision. That means that they must register their addresses with local law enforcement, and inform law enforcement if they change their addresses.  Those registration requirements were enacted by the state Legislature in 1994 after a 7-year-old Hamilton Township girl, Megan Kanka, was sexually assaulted and murdered by a convicted sex offender, Jesse Timmendequas, who was living in her neighborhood. The requirements that paroled sex offenders register their whereabouts later became federal law.

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President Trump supports opportunities for people with a criminal record

In an editorial published on May 21, the New York Times commended President Trump for remarks at a White House conference on prison reform last week, in which he expressed support for improved employment opportunities for people with a criminal record:

“A friend of mine told me that when people get out of prison, they’re all excited.” Mr. Trump said. “And then they go and they have that stigma; they can’t get a job. People don’t want to hire them. They can’t get that chance. When we talk about our national program to hire American, this must include helping millions of former inmates get back into the work force as gainfully employed citizens.”
It appears that most of the relevant discussion at the conference last week was about a House bill aimed at preparing federal prisoners for reentry, addressing such issues as good time credit and halfway house placement.  It also appears that the prospects for federal prison reform this year are dim, given the wide gulf between the pending House bill and the insistence of Senate leadership on including provisions for sentencing reform.  Nonetheless, the President’s words will be very useful for those working in state legislatures to restore rights and status.  Already in 2018, at least 13 states have enacted laws either reforming occupational licensure or extending record-clearing laws, and bills are awaiting the governor’s signature in another five.  We are already starting work on a report summarizing legislative accomplishments in 2018 that will be modeled on “Second Chance Reforms in 2017” published last fall.