Prosecutor asks high court to rule on sex offenders
Registration law in Pa. in question
A legal battle being waged by a Pennsylvania sex offender over how long he must remain registered with police could have ramifications for thousands of other sex offenders in the state, a prosecutor argued in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed asked the court to take up the issue after a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision this summer found that the lifetime registration requirement for Jose Muniz was unconstitutional.
The first hurdle to get the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, though, is for Mr. Freed to convince the justices that the lower court opinion was not clearly decided on separate state constitutional grounds.
Muniz, found guilty of indecent assault in 2007 when Megan’s Law governed sex offender registrations in Pennsylvania, would have had to register with police for 10 years. But he failed to appear at his sentencing. When he was apprehended seven years later, Megan’s Law had been replaced with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, known as SORNA, which called for Muniz to have a lifetime registration.
In addition to quarterly inperson visits to the state police for offenders with lifetime registration, registrants under SORNA must also report if they move, get a new car, a new job, a new phone number, a new email address or travel internationally.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in July ruled that the state’s sex offender registration requirements are punitive and cannot be applied to defendants retroactively.
Although Muniz’s case is stayed pending the outcome of
his appeal, the state decision has caused significant distress among victims, sex offenders, police, the courts and attorneys about what rules must now be followed with regard to registration.
“The potential is for thousands and thousands of people to get removed from the registry,” Mr. Freed said.
Prosecutors, as well as Pennsylvania State Police officials, which run the state’s sex offender registry, have sought guidance from the state Legislature on how to handle the current situation, and the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on the issue last month.
The Pennsylvania sex offender registry has about 22,000 active offenders. Several thousand of them are affected by SORNA being applied retroactively.
Without guidance from the Legislature or courts, state police officials say they don’t know how to proceed.
Joshua Yohe, senior assistant public defender in Cumberland County who represents Muniz, said he does not believe the U.S. Supreme Court should take the case, and instead said it’s a state issue.
“There’s too much variation from state to state within the SORNA and Megan’s Law statutes,” he said. “They could be dealing with 50 different cases and 50 different states.”
But in the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Cumberland County prosecutors argue that Pennsylvania’s law is modeled after the national law of the same name, which has been upheld in federal circuit courts across the country.
“The foregoing makes clear that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with decisions of multiple United States courts of appeals,” according to the petition.
The state Supreme Court even noted in its opinion that its holding “is a departure from federal case law,” the prosecution wrote.
If the Pennsylvania court found some of the provisions of SORNA to be punitive, the petition continued, the justices could have severed the offending portions without gutting the entire statute.
“Confidence and trust in our judicial system is imperative for the victims of all crimes; none more so than those of sexual crimes and abuse,” state police Capt. Beth Readler testified at a judiciary committee hearing in September.
She warned that if no action were taken and petitions such as Muniz’s were successful, “a very large number of currently registered sex offenders will no longer be required to register.”
“The impact on the ability of victims, and the public at large, to make decisions regarding their safety will be compromised; and the psychological impact on victims patent.”