The federal government yesterday published in the Federal Register proposed changes to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). The changes encompass a total of 93 pages and include a wide range of topics, including retroactivity, tier levels, professional licenses and travel (both domestic and international). Replies to the proposed regulations are due no later than October 13, 2020.
According to the proposed regulations, SORNA will apply to all individuals convicted of a sex offense, including those convicted before it was enacted. The federal government claims to have this authority due, in part, to the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Smith v. Doe, which declared that registration did not constitute punishment, but was instead merely an administrative requirement.
“Because the proposed regulations include so many pages citing their authority to apply SORNA to individuals convicted before it was enacted, it appears that they are concerned that this matter could be challenged in court,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “It is possible that ACSOL or another like minded organization will do so.”
According to the proposed regulations, SORNA requires all registrants to comply with its requirements “regardless of whether a registration jurisdiction has substantially implemented SORNA.” This statement is important because currently only 17 of the nation’s 50 states have substantially implemented SORNA.
The proposed regulations repeat that the federal government places registrants in three tiers. Those assigned to Tier 1 must register for 15 years while those assigned to Tier 2 must register for 25 years. Individuals assigned to those tiers may reduce their period of registration based upon a list of factors. Individuals assigned to Tier 3, however, must register for a lifetime.
The proposed regulations require additional information regarding employment, including whether a registrant has one more professional licenses.
“If the proposed regulations are adopted, we can expect the federal government to notify states that have issued a professional license to a registrant,” stated Bellucci. “We are concerned that the states will, in turn, revoke those licenses.”
According to the proposed regulations, individuals will be required to notify their local registration office if they leave the jurisdiction for seven days or longer. This requirement is proposed allegedly in order to protect children who reside at the location(s) where a registrant may visit.
The proposed regulations also address overseas travel for those subject to the International Megan’s Law. Specifically, the regulations will require registrants to provide additional information to the federal government regarding their overseas travel such as whether they have dual citizenship and/or a passport issued by another country.
“ACSOL began its discussion of the proposed regulations on the same day they were published,” stated Bellucci. “ACSOL will formally reply to the proposed regulations as an individual organization or in collaboration with like-minded organizations.”
Any individual that would like to volunteer to work with ACSOL on this effort should send an email to service@all4consolaws.org
Proposed rulemaking – SORNA – Aug 2020
Didn’t Eric Holder try something like this when he was AG and states said no. Hopefully states tell Barr to pass a bar and to piss off!!
Looks to me like the US DOJ will be making tier assignments. How will they go about doing this? Each state has their own statutes, particularly as it relates to the age of the victim. How will they access that infornation for cases that are decades old?
Will states that are currently non-SORNA be forced to implement this??
So wrong , can someone tell me is this written in stone or can they take it too court and stop this fool ?
Okay, I’m already bracing for the “hate mail” I’ll get over this post, but here goes…
I have to admit I’m a bit baffled at the huge reaction to this document. I don’t see it as the world-ending document many seem to see. I’ve earlier mentioned my concerns (https://all4consolaws.org/2020/08/federal-government-publishes-proposed-changes-to-sorna/comment-page-1/#comment-255050) but I’m otherwise not seeing how this changes much for most (all?) who must register.
For me, there are four key statements made in this document:
1) “[T]he registration authorities in the state may be willing to register the sex offender because Federal law (i.e., SORNA) requires him to register.” This “willing” concept troubles me greatly. I view this as a VERY BAD thing.
2) “This rulemaking is not innovative in terms of policy.” (p. 9) I view this statement as a GOOD thing.
3) “[A]dditional specifications regarding information sex offenders must provide, how and when they must report certain changes in registration information[.]” (p. 6) I view this as a BAD thing and I detailed my concerns in my earlier post.
4) “The effect of § 72.7(g) is to adopt the jurisdictions’ time and manner specifications as SORNA requirements in the situations it covers.” (p. 69) Section 72.7(g) is on p. 89 for those curious. I view this as a GOOD thing. It sets in black-and-white the policy that if your jurisdiction doesn’t allow you to comply with SORNA’s mandates, you’re off the hook. That it includes the (commonsense) caveat regarding if things change at the jurisdictional level (such as more completely conforming to SORNA) doesn’t bother me.
In closing, I wish to highlight that I in **no way** think SORNA is proper, right, or Constitutional. The ONLY thing I am saying is that I would like to know what has everyone so panicked and thinking court rulings are overturned, etc. I found some concerns; I’m sure I missed some–please share them.
Comments may be mailed to Regulations Docket Clerk, Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 4234, Washington, DC 20530. To ensure proper handling, please reference Docket No. OAG 157 on your correspondence. You may submit comments electronically or view an electronic version of this proposed rule at http://www.regulations.gov.
Incredible. In the recent riots in Philly, over 500 people were arrested for rioting, looting, assault and arson. Every single one of them had their charges dropped. Yet, 15 years ago I did a single, non-contact offense and this is what is put upon me. If only I would have just looted a store and set it on fire it would all be behind me.
People: these proposed revisions still would apply within the SORNA tier framework. That is, once your registration time is up per your particular tier under FEDERAL SORNA, there’s no longer a federal obligation to register and thus comply with related requirements.
So, tier 1 registrants would be done with the federal obligation after 10 years from sentencing with a clean record (15 years worst case), tier II after 25, and tier 3 for life -even, unfortunately, if your state has removed you. The AG is trying to get the minimum amount of registration time even if the crime is not a covered offense in one’s state -provided that one’s state’s registration authority would be willing to register you for an offense not covered by your state’s SORNA. Somehow I doubt most states would be willing to avenge the feds for offenses not rising to being registrable according to state law.
For the majority of us who are tier 1 registrants this would have no impact after your 10 years (or 15 worst case). 25 years for tier II registrants.
The proposed revisions cannot alter the codified tier based registration scheme.
I went on the Dept of Justice website today to send an email to AG Barr. I explained how SORNA is helping to keep my fiancé (and others like him) unemployed and how it affects me as a deploying service member terrified that something will happen to him while I’m away in a war zone since he is put on a public hit list. Neighbors on Nextdoor.com (that I do not know personally) speak often of lynching and killing sex offenders. I have reported this to Nextdoor and they do not care. I am afraid of the police abusing their power if I draw attention to my family and household.
My fiancé’s was a military offense and probably considered Tier 1 but it’s been impossible to get an answer on that even at this point. It doesn’t match most state OR federal laws and in trying to say that these laws make things more streamlined is a bunch of cr**. This makes things wayyy more complicated and confusing and I bet it’s gonna cost a ton of money. Aren’t we in enough debt over Covid????
I figured he (Barr) may not care, but I have to assume that in some way people don’t think about every aspect of the registry and how it affects families as well as the eternal flogging and of those on the registry (which may very well be their intent). I thought they wanted LESS people on unemployment or homelessness, not more so.
It may or may not do anything by writing but I feel so hopeless it’s all I can do at this time. Besides try to save up money to leave the country once I retire, I guess.
I haven’t had to register in California since 1989. Is CA going to come looking for me or do I have to march into my local police station?
What Federal tier would 288(a) be??
For Tier 1 — CA says 10 years, but if these rules are pushed into existence this year (Oct?), then SORNA would supersede and make Tier 1 15 years. SORNA says that if your record is “clean,” then 15 can be reduced to 10. But “Clean” under SORNA includes having to go through a sex offender treatment program:
“Clean record is defined as having no convictions for an offense for which imprisonment of more than one year may be imposed; no convictions for a sex offense (even one with the maximum penalty of less than one year); successful completion of any periods of supervised release; and completion of an appropriate sex offender treatment program certified by the jurisdiction or by the U.S. Attorney General. The guidelines allow states to design treatment programs and criteria used in determining successful completion.”
So unless you go out and pay thousands for a treatment program, that reduction of 5 years is not available to you. So here in CA, this new development means that a Tier 1 registrant who was able to petition at 10 years has suddenly had that waiting period increased by 50% from 10 to 15 years. Not through any law passed but because AG Barr has changed the rules on us?
Questions:
1. How could this not be construed as some of the worst developments we have encountered in many years, especially since we just achieved Tiers in CA?
2. Do I have this all right?
Thanks.
To make this easier for people to understand:
Smith v Doe applied to a ‘horse and buggy’ law.
We are saying today, that ‘horse and buggy’ laws apply to every vehicle ever made.
There is no possible way this new law would have ever passed the justices that decided Smith v Doe. All you have to do is read the dissenting opinions, and you will see what they really thought of Smith v Doe.
That being said, this law might be a good thing for all registrants (I am one). Because this finally might be a ludicrous enough law for judges to grow a pair of balls and do their jobs.
Judges have been afraid to do their job since Smith v Doe, this should be the final straw
If these proposals become law, will the feds somehow notify us individually? There are many RSO’s out there who won’t know about this.
Now is a great time to join ACSOL with your monthly ongoing gift!! I can do $10/mo. Wish it was much more.
Janice what do we need to mobilize? Plaintiffs? More civil rights trial attorneys? A march on Washington?
One woman drafted the original guidelines without any help. She did so more or less secretly because no one knew what she was doing or how. She could have carried tons of bias and baggage that may have been relevant. Could this draft be the same? The backstory politics could be explosive.
SORNA regulations are a “floor”, meaning it is the minimum requirements, and each State, if they so choose can formulate more stringent rules/regulations. This newest “proposed regulations” from AG Barr, simply put, RE-FORMULATES the MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF SORNA and each state must meet these new minimums. It raises that ‘floor’.
IF each and every one of “us” (numbering close to 1 million) writes to AG Barr, and send via USPS our comments in a letter (using large fonts) and certified/requiring a signature upon receipt, and asking for his response to each letter…it may be somewhat burdensome for the AG’s office, but this is what is being requested. Do we think the AG’s office can go through 1 MILLION letters in 60 days? (If they get the bulk of the letters closer to the end of the 60 day period, this burden may be increased somewhat, assuming the letters don’t find their way into a circular file).
I would take great joy in participating in such a mass effort.
@HopingforHope, it won’t become law but rather will become policy because the law delegates the AG to be able to make the policy regarding retroactive application of the law. There is no voting on this and despite what public comments say, the AG can and likely will implement this if he wants to even if there is opposition. That said, to answer your question the feds will probably not notify you immediately and if you aren’t notified you are likely in the clear if you don’t comply up until some point that it gets noticed that you aren’t in compliance and you either arrested and/or questioned about your knowledge of your requirements. Once that happens you would then know about them and you would have to comply. There are many methods they will use to eventually notify you aside from trying to get the States and state law enforcement to do it for them when you have contact with them. The most likely of these would be at an airport when you appear on a flight manifest on a domestic or international trip (they send someone to meet you at the plane) or in the case of an international trip, notifying you via the Border Patrol when you are trying return to the country.
@AJ, *full disclosure: this is the way I understand this to work. I may not be right and please show me examples if I’m not.* I’m not saying that the feds couldn’t try twist registration compliance to still try nail you but I would argue that these are quite different. In your cited case the weapon used was a product of interstate commerce so interstate commerce was actually involved in committing the crime even though I personally think it’s a stretch to say it is if the weapon is purchased locally and the perp himself did not engage in the interstate commerce to get it but the shop owner he bought it from did the interstate commerce. I don’t know enough about the case though to really analyze that piece of it and it’s common to order a gun to a dealer yourself. That said, if you stay within a States border and fail to register under fed SORNA your failure to register was not a crime committed which involves any element in another state. Even failing to provide an internet identifier would be out of the scope as the requirement was to simply tell the state information for SORNA and you aren’t actually using the internet to provide the information. It’s certainly not against federal SORNA or other federal laws to simply use the internet unless you do something illegal on it. Once you travel outside the State unregistered then that changes everything. I don’t believe using the internet unless you are committing a failure to register offense while
actually using it would trigger the ability for the fed to enforce it and I don’t see how you can commit a failure to register offense by simply using the internet. It isn’t any different than how the fed can’t prosecute a sex crime against a minor unless you take the minor across state lines or cross state lines specifically to commit the crime. You flying to another state a few days after committing the sex offense to go on a vacation (not if you lived there) wouldn’t allow the feds to arrest you for that offense. Only the state could prosecute that.
I’d love it if Judge Cleland takes a look at this steaming pile and says that guess what, SORNA is no longer constitutional so SORNA is now enjoined too!
Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he??? 🙂
Every sexofender in the US has a FBI profile and all fall under SORNA i know for a fact Orange County imposes SORNA on sexofender in there county.
I remember when i lived out there every time i had contact with Law Enforcement they would all ways referred me to the SORNA website in a threatening kinda way and worded me of what i can and cant do and they did alot of compliance checks out there it was lame az phuck i was happy to out of there jurisdiction
Face it folks, anytime the Government wants to test getting over on the constitution, or doing something deemed overboard, they use the registry and registrants as the guinea pig. I can think of no other criminal acts the government does this to. Just today I read a woman on her third DUI hit and killed someone, yet those individuals do not have to register, nor repeat anything else, when its proven they do it again and again. Only if sex or sex acts are involved are people truly considered dangerous and forever under such an unjust system. They’ve never given a justification as to why Tier III must register for life other than the age of the victim as if that alone says the person will continue to commit more crimes.
I’m telling my family good buy its over I’m 31 f this I hope my 4 kids learn from my one mistake f it all
The individuals that keep pushing for these laws really need to burn in hell. The amount of Government/Beauracratic intrusion into people’s lives is Insane.
Where is the donation fund for a full-on Lawsuit? I will gladly donate.
If this passes, this God-forsaken country that is a skeleton of what it once was will become the next China as far as how they monitor and control its people.
This is NOT the ‘United States’ that you have been brainwashed to believe that you know. WAKE UP.
I heavily doubt these requirements would get enacted, but you never know. If they do, nothing really changes for me. Although I have an end date for getting off the registry, I’ll be too old to worry about the feds keeping me on it a few more years. Go right ahead. At this point, I’m too old to fight. The only thing that really bothers me about the DOJ proposal is the having to give notice if I leave my state for more than 7 days. What if my plans change and I have to remain out of state for 8 instead of 7 days? Do I have to notify the cop shop back home that I won’t be home in time? Feels like high school again back in the 60s when I had to tell my parents I won’t be home for supper. Most states require visitors to register within 7 days anyways. And if you do, your home state will be notified. So I also see some bureaucratic overlap in the proposed changes, but what do I know.
@Lovecraft you hit on an interesting word.. decision and yes many of you all come up with some unique stuff. Evil intent can be a slow horse and buggy law as one person said on here in his words. Seems today everyone wants to be a rocket scientist. Yes this registry issue and this sex offense can eat at you like a canker sore We can either make the right decisions or the wrong ones. Course I don’t like to think about this SORNA law as its like a third party exchange on someone’s behalf that wasn’t prepared in the long run.Course sex sting operators have all their plans and trained to induce these ordeal in this black and white type conspiricy, or you can call it a writing on the wall conspircy. Now it seems its time for them to re-hatch and regroup or rethink their mistakes. Guess one couldn’t take the fifth today in this computer era.
We can talk about the Black plague, the spainish flu, the aid’s epic in the Regan era and this convid-19 so who really was prepared. Even in my own situation law enforcement person that set me up wasn’t prepared for my answer when he explained the purposed of these operations to me about adults of talking to little kids or teenagers and said to me you thought you were coming down here to meet up with a teenager for sex and you made a choice.
I said to him …point blank your wrong. I made a decision to come down here. Than he goes on to ramble choice , decision whats the difference. Even the bible says the heart is deceitful. so what man knowth the thoughts and intent of another and yes that cooled his jets for a bit but than he says to me I’m think of something else.
Lovecraft I’m just glad they are taking a better look at this whole ordeal with sorna and these laws, and yes its about time. Nothing wrong with speaking out for the truth and they should of been better prepared before all this confusion with this tier issue and this SORNA law before they even got it in gear. In my views its like a divided government. And when government is dividing the word of the lord with deceit and lie’s things get out of hand.
Many governments have a play book that tells them how to handle a situation but it is seldom used when a crisis or a pandemic comes up. Someone talked about the Byzantium Era a bit on here and that was a bit lopsided and very unorthodox and a bit out of character.
You know lovecraft one wonders who’s incriminating who. So taking the fifth would be out of the question or who is the sacrifice in this ordeal. It sort all comes down to the intent or the conspiricy factor like jude in the biblical times in this twisted sort of way. Actually the bill of rights seems to be over looked in many of these issues. One wonder who is buttressing one’s freedom of religion. So who wonders today if this is really a Christian nation.
Yes even people have even gotton on me a bit for even bringing it up in this type of ordeal. One even wonders if we are still one nation under God today and yes we are still one nation under god if he is in have faith and believe in the words of love.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/05/8-historys-destructive-lies/
Quick thought …… Because we are tied into a class action law suit in Michigan that says you cant retroactive life sentences , And that the registry is deemed unconstitutional because they applied these federal statue too thousands of people in 2006 then again in 2011 after a conviction , It was said by a federal Judge that is is not except able or constitutional how could this stand ???? Isn’t this just another slap in the face too the Federal court Judges ? This is why we are in court now ? If it didnt fly over then, why would he be able to just go in and re write it and retroactive it too hundreds of thousands of people who have already served their time or were due off in no more then 10 or 25 years to a life sentence , You would think the judges would laugh and strike it down??? Please correct me if i am wrong ??? Here in Michigan we are in a class action law suit because of this same reason the judge says you can not retroactive apply 2006 and 2011 because it is punitive . As well as a no teir system , Or give life sentences out after the fact? So now Bill Barr can decide the out come of this federal case that was deemed too be punitive ???