The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), became law July 27, 2006. It requires all sex offenders to register. As part of the registration they must provide their name, address, business address, and school status. Everyone who has been convicted of certain sex offenses must register, regardless of whether the conviction predated or post-dated SORNA’s passage.

Those who are convicted after SORNA’s passage must register before getting out of custody. Those who are not given a jail sentence must register within three days of the conviction. The law does not specify when those who were convicted prior to the passage of SORNA must register. Rather the law authorizes the attorney general to determine the specific registration conditions for pre-enactment convictions.

The question before the Supreme Court this week in Reynolds v. United States is a rather limited one. But it has created a fair amount of debate among the courts of appeal which have spit their decisions. It is whether those convicted prior to the attorney general issuing his specifications had to register after the passage of the act but before the attorney general issued his specifications.

The Supreme Court ruled that there was no requirement for pre-enactment convictions to register prior to the isuance of the attorney general’s specifications. Since the attorney general must set the registration specification for a subset of those required to register (pre-enactment convictions) the court found it reasonable to believe that the condition for the attorney general to set the registration specifications modified the registration requirement for pre-enactment convictions. SORNA attempts to unify many different state registration laws. Different states require different people to register and provide time periods for this to happen. According to the Supreme Court, Congress could have felt that by putting off pre-enactment conviction from having to register until after the specifications were issued many problems could be avoided. Finally Congress did not specify a time line for pre-enactment registration it only reasonable to wait until after the attorney general general’s specifications are listed to require registration for pre-enactrment convictions.

A convicted sex offender in New Mexico has been arrested and is facing three years in prison for moving out of a dumpster and into an abandoned apartment. The law in New Mexico requires sex offenders to have a physical address and to notify the authorities within ten days of moving. That means it is illegal to be homeless and be a sex offender in New Mexico. ¹ In California where the laws forbid sex offenders from living within 2000 feet of any school or park it is very difficult to find any place that sex offenders can live, forcing them to be homeless. In San Francisco 80 per cent of sex offenders are homeless. Thus we force sex offenders to be homeless and then we punish them for being homeless. Great laws we have!

Federal sentencing is a complicated area of law. The Guidelines which are voluntary but must be considered consist of a numerical evaluation of the person’s criminal history and of the crime. In United States v. Conca the Second Circuit Court of Appeals faced a few of the problems found in determining criminal history.

Marc Conca plead guilty to failure to register as a sex offender when traveling from one state to another state. He traveled from Texas to Oklahoma to New York and probably a few other states in between without notifying the Texas authorities of his addresses in each and without registering in each state. The base level for the offense is 19. The probation Department in its Presentence Report recommended that twelve points be given for Criminal Possession of Stolen Property (3 points), False Written Statement (1 point), Aggravated Unlicensed Operation (1 point), Burglary (2 points), Petit Larceny (1 point), Felony Sexual Assault (3 points), and Unauthorized Use of Motor Vehicle (1 point). In addition it recommended that he receive another two points since the offense occurred within two years of his being released from prison. This put him in criminal history category six with a range of 63 t0 78 months. The court imposed a 78 month sentence.

On appeal he challenged the possession of stolen property allegation which occurred when he was sixteen and which was adjudicated as a youthful offender and a six level enhancement (part of the base level points) for committing a rape while in failure to register status.

He objected to the rape because at the time of the sentencing charges were pending in Oklahoma and he had not been convicted. Two police officers testified at the sentencing. While the evidence was hearsay the appellate court upheld the District Court’s decision that their was sufficient evidence to convince the District Court of the rape. As to the possession of stolen property his probation had been revoked and he had been sentenced as an adult. As a result the court was within its power to consider the prior as an adult prior and assess him criminal history points.

In 2006 Congress enacted the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. The act requires among other things that youth as young as fourteen years register, often for life, following a conviction or a juvenile adjudication for certain sex offenses. it also mandates the publication on the internet of specific information about certain sex offenders including their addresses.

A study by the Associated Press found as to juveniles convicted of registrable offenses the law has not been fully implemented in most jurisdictions. Twenty-one states, according to the study, now require juveniles to register as sex offenders and another nineteen state require them to register if they are convicted as adults. The law is quite complicated and Ohio is the only state fully in compliance. Other states risk loosing Federal funds to support criminal justice programs.

Part of the problem is that states vary in their perception of the need to require juveniles to register as sex offenders. Sex offender registrants often have trouble getting jobs, finding housing, and blending into society. This is particularly true now that the names of registrants are available on the internet.

Long term registration may be appropriate for those who are uncurable. But many experts in the field feel that juveniles can be rehabilitated and registration only makes it more difficult. There is the case of the sixteen year old Iowa boy who was required to register after having sex with a thirteen year old girl. Such behavior is not necessarily proof of a long term sex offender requiring lifetime registration.