Tag: megan’s law

New collection of research on sex offense registration

Cambridge University Press has just published a new book, edited by Professors Wayne A. Logan and J.J. Prescott, containing chapters from the nation’s leading social science researchers on the many important empirical questions surrounding sex offense registration and community notification (SORN).  Since SORN’s origin in the early 1990s, basic questions have existed regarding its effects, including whether it actually achieves its intended purpose of reducing sexual offending. SORN surely numbers among the most significant social control methods of the past several decades.  Although the Supreme Court in 2003 rejected two constitutional challenges to SORN laws (Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe and Smith v. Doe), of late courts, including the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Does v. Snyder, 2016), have cast a more critical eye, invalidating new generation SORN laws that have become more onerous and expansive in their reach. An updated review of caselaw from Professor Logan on SORN and other collateral consequences triggered primarily by sex offenses will be included in the forthcoming fourth edition of Love, Roberts & Logan, Collateral Consequences of Arrest & Conviction: Law Policy & Practice (West/NACDL, 4th ed. 2021). Also, as readers might be aware, the American Law Institute, as part of its overhaul of the Model Penal Code’s sex offense-related provisions, has tentatively approved a slate of reforms advocating a vastly reduced approach to registration and discontinuation of community notification. (We plan a post about the MPC’s important new model in the near future.) The Logan and Prescott collection promises to be an invaluable resource as policy-makers begin to consider whether SORN laws should be retooled or perhaps done away with altogether. Here’s the SSRN abstract for the book: Despite being in existence for over a quarter century, costing multiple millions of dollars and affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, sex offender registration and community notification (SORN) laws have yet to be subject to a book-length treatment of their empirical dimensions, examining their premises, coverage, and impact on public safety. This volume, edited by Professors Wayne A. Logan and J.J. Prescott, assembles the leading researchers in the field to provide an in-depth look at what have come to be known as “Megan’s Laws,” offering a social science-based analysis of one of the most important and controversial criminal justice system initiatives undertaken in modern times. The editors attach the title page, table of contents, and preface of the volume. Here’s the SSRN link https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3865283 and a link to the Cambridge website https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/criminal-law/sex-offender-registration-and-community-notification-laws-empirical-evaluation?format=HB. For information on relief from sex offense registration obligations, see our 50-state chart on the topic: https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/50-state-comparison-relief-from-sex-offender-registration-obligations/. Read more

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. In 2014, the Legislature passed legislation that enhanced the degree of failing to fully comply with community notification requirements from the fourth degree to the third degree. The four defendants in this case were paroled before the 2014 amendment, according to the court, but were indicted for violations that could have subjected them to prison terms and parole supervision for life under the 2014 amendment. Trial judges dismissed the charges, saying the enhanced penalties violated ex post facto clauses of the state and federal constitutions, and the Appellate Division affirmed. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the state’s appeal. In Wednesday’s decision, Albin said the 2014 change to Megan’s Law “violates defendants’ rights under the New Jersey Constitution’s ex post facto clause” and amounted to a sentencing enhancement as applied to those defendants. “In effect, the 2014 amendment materially altered defendants’ prior sentences to their disadvantage,” he said. “The 2014 amendment effected not a simple procedural change but rather one that offends the very principles animating the ex post facto clauses of our federal and state constitutions.” “The State contends that the 2014 Amendment is a classic recidivist statute that enhances the punishment for subsequent offenses and therefore is not an ex post facto law. However, the 2014 Amendment operates differently than recidivist statutes that have withstood challenge under the Federal and State Ex Post Facto Clauses,” Albin wrote, adding that “the 2014 Amendment related not to the commission of a subsequent crime but rather to the terms of the sentence imposed for defendants’ prior crimes.” The court held that the case at bar is “not substantively different from” that of its 2015 decision in State v. Perez, where the court said that a law retroactively enhancing the defendant’s status to “parole supervision for life” from “community supervision for life” violated ex post facto provisions as applied. A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, which handled the state’s appeal, declined to comment. Read more

A wide-ranging look at sex offender registration in PA and beyond

The Cumberland County (Pennsylvania) Sentinel recently published a series of articles by Joshua Vaughn that examine the operation and effect of sex offender registration laws from a variety of perspectives. We summarize the articles with links to the Sentinel’s website. Finding statistics to fit a narrative Original article Vaughn traces the “frightening and high risk of recidivism” for untreated sex offenders that Justice Kennedy used to support the Supreme Court’s holdings in McKune v. Lile (2002) and Smith v. Doe (2003) to an unsourced “anecdotal quip” in a 1986 article from Psychology Today suggesting sex offender recidivism rates as high as 80%.  That figure found its way into a Justice Department practitioner’s guide for treating incarcerated sex offenders, which in turn was cited by the Solicitor General’s amicus brief in McKune. Vaughn, asking how such a questionable statistic could turn out to be a “linchpin fact” in two extremely influential Supreme Court cases, proposes that the Court relied on the Solicitor General, who in turn relied on the practice guide without doing his own research. Vaughn reports that the Justice Department “now states on its website that the rate at which released sexual offenders are rearrested for new sexual offenses is as low as 3 to 10 percent,” evidently referring to a report of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.   When facts aren’t facts: A look at the effectiveness of sexual offender registries Original article The second article in the series looks at the comparative costs and benefits of registries in light of the claimed high recidivism rates that are used to justify them. It notes the 2014 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court holding unconstitutional a state law requiring long term registration of juveniles based on evidence showing juvenile recidivism rates between 2 and 7 percent.  The article also considers how registries might be reformed in light of what we now know about actual recidivism rates.   Registered man details a lifetime debt to society Original article The third article in the series offers a glimpse into one Pennsylvania man’s life on the registry.  After serving fifteen years in prison and losing his family, he has accepted the burdens of registration as a fact of life.  His days are now “spent trying to fly under the radar, not out of the oversight of police or for any nefarious purposes, but to try to regain some normalcy and a chance to build relationships in his life outside of prison.”   Family members speak out against sex offender registries Original article Vicki Henry, the founder of Women Against Registry, warns of the danger that public registration poses to registrants and their families.  In light of her own experience — her registrant son was the subject of unproven child pornography allegations — and reported incidents of violence against registrants, Henry says that “public registries have become a public hit list and do not provide the public with actual safety.”   A closer look at Pennsylvania’s sex offender registry Original article This article looks at the makeup of the Pennsylvania sex offender registry and the specific requirements to which registrants are subject.   There are currently over 19,000 people on the registry in Pennsylvania, 1,500 whom are classified as sexually violent predators.  Of those 1,500, two-thirds are currently incarcerated.  All registrants are subject to continual scrutiny from law enforcement, to public stigma, and to burdensome and intrusive notification requirements that can last from 15 years to a lifetime. Read more