Thanks to everyone who emailed me about this decision. Here is a news account about what happened:
Maine’s sex offender law could be unconstitutional because it retroactively increases criminal punishments for people who already have completed their sentences for sex crimes, the state supreme court said Tuesday.
The decision, a setback for the sex offender registry, comes less than two years after a 20-year-old Canadian man killed two sex offenders in Maine after randomly getting their names from the state’s online sex offender registry.
Since the shootings, there have been legislative debates about the registry, including efforts to eliminate it altogether.
An anonymous John Doe sued after being notified — a week before the shootings took place — that his name had to be placed in the registry.
As I've noted before, sex offender restrictions are often passed in the wake of a particularly tragic crimes committed by sex offenders. This is one of the few instances where a shocking story has helped generated a backlash against the restrictions. The decision itself has a couple of interesting ideas. The decision's attempts to distinguish a prior Maine case and the USSC decision in Smith v. Doe was particularly interesting:
In Haskell, we said that SORNA did not restrict the movements and activities of the registrants “in any way.” Id. ¶ 15, 784 A.2d at 11. Likewise, the Supreme Court found that the Alaska Act “does not restrain activities sex offenders may pursue but leaves them free to change jobs or residences.” Smith, 538 U.S. at 100. The Court noted that “[t]he record in this case contains no evidence that the Act has led to substantial occupational or housing disadvantages for former sex offenders that would not have otherwise occurred through the use of routine background checks by employers and landlords...."
In this case, the allegations are that Doe has reason to believe that he will lose his job, that his wife will leave him to protect her family, that his neighbors will attempt to remove him from the neighborhood, and that he fears violence. Accepting the truth of these allegations, as we must when reviewing a case decided on a motion to dismiss, see Persson, 2001 ME 124, ¶ 8, 775 A.2d at 365, we cannot say that these are all things that could otherwise occur through the use of routine background checks.
Because of the procedural posture of the decision, there was no definitive assessment of the constitutionality of the law as it currently exists. However, this portion of the decision really forces lower courts to confront the real-world effects of registration and notification. This has often been the poorest portion of previous rulings about registration laws as judges have tried to separate secondary effects from their opinions. It will be interesting how this case moves forward and how it may affect decisions in other states.
For more information on stories of Sex Offender Registration Challenges and the Legality of Ex Post Facto Rulings, see www.sexoffenderchronicles.com
Great Blog Professor
Robert Paisola
Director
The Robert Paisola Foundation
www.RobertPaisola.net
Posted by: Robert Paisola | September 27, 2007 at 03:02 AM
Hi,
The first way that you will be able to protect your child fromSex offenders is to teach them how to use the Internet as a way for them to approach a safe and secure way of using the tools of the Internet. You will find that there are kids who will want to use their time to talk to their friends, but they can reach out to others and others can reach out to them.
Posted by: VAUTHEY | October 08, 2007 at 01:46 AM