Missouri Court Strikes Down Retroactivity of Sex Offender Statute

From the Associated Press account of the decision:

A judge has thrown out part of a law barring sex offenders from living close to a school or day care.

An unidentified sex offender in St. Louis County had sued, claiming it’s wrong for the state to make him move from his home because the legal standard changed after he began living there.

Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce agreed last week and barred the state from enforcing the law retroactively. But the ruling keeps intact part of the law, so going forward, sex offenders are forbidden from moving into a home that’s near a school or day care.

A 2004 law prohibited sex offenders from establishing a residence within 1,000 feet of a school or day care.

But lawmakers changed the law in 2006 to bar offenders from living that close, even if they moved in before the law took effect, and the judge found that unconstitutional.

“These people plead guilty under one scenario. You can’t change the rules of the game at halftime,” Chet Pleban, the man’s attorney, said Wednesday. “If you want to tinker with (the law) for political gain or otherwise, do it in a constitutionally firm manner.”

In response to the decision, this was the official statement of the Chief Public Information Officer for the Missouri Department of Corrections:

Section 566.147 was passed into law in 2004, making it a crime for sex offenders to establish residency within 1,000 feet of certain schools or childcare facilities. In 2006, a phrase in section 566.147.1 was changed from shall not establish residency to shall not reside within 1,000 feet of certain schools or childcare facilities. In March 2007, Missouri probation and parole notified a probationer that he must stop residing at his home in sty. Louis County. He challenged probation and parole's action by filing a lawsuit in Cole county, r.L. V. Doc. Judge joyce has ruled that section 566.147 as amended in 2006 violates the u.S. And missouri constitutions when applied to r.L. And similarly situated offenders who resided within 1000 feet of a school or childcare facility at the time the amended law took effect on june 5, 2006. The court also enjoined the department of corrections from enforcing the law against r.L. And similarly situated offenders who resided within 1,000 feet of a school or daycare center on june 5, 2006.
The court's order takes immediate effect, and the missouri department of corrections will abide by the judge's ruling. We anticipate that the missouri attorney general's office will appeal the ruling, because the judge has declared that the law passed by the legislature is unconstitutional. Some other states have upheld similar restrictions. Our mission is to protect public safety, and we will continue to do that.

The last part of the official statement is a little off.  It is true that every highest court that have reviewed residency restrictions has allowed those restrictions to apply retroactively.  However, most states included "grandfather" clauses which allowed persons to stay in their current homes even if those homes were within exclusion zones.  So, while persons who committed crimes before the passage of residency restriction statutes would be subject to the restrictions, they wouldn't actually be forced from their homes.  Missouri's law was materially different in that regard.

Comments

[Jim Byrne]

Judge Joyce needs to learn her job. A circuit court judge has no more authority to rule on the constitutionality of a statute than a layman. A circuit court judge has a duty to follow the law, not decide whether or not it is unconstitutional. The Missouri Supreme Court has exclusive jursidiction on matters of constitutionality of a statute. This can be found in Article V, Section 3 of the Missouri Constitution.

RS.Mo Chapter 3 clearly states what to do if the Supreme Court of a Federal Circuit Court with appropriate jurisdiction rules that a law is unconstitutional.

The Governor should speak up, and then take appropriate actions to remove a wreckless judge from the bench.

Many of the judges are incompetent, and the media refuses to expose them.