Enacted nearly 25 years ago, Megan’s Law was hailed as
a pivotal step toward making communities safer by empowering the public with
information about where sex offenders live. Now, five separate cases before the
state Supreme Court are attacking it as outdated, discriminatory, and
unnecessarily cruel, depriving thousands of people of their fundamental rights.
The cases challenge nearly every aspect of the law,
which has undergone several incarnations since being signed in 1995, one year
after the death of 7-year-old Megan Kanka. The New Jersey girl was raped and
killed by a neighbor who, unbeknownst to her family, was a twice-convicted
pedophile. Similar laws were adopted across the United States and at the
federal level.
Prosecutors believe the pending cases could gut Pennsylvania’s
law, allowing sexually violent predators to evade detection and endangering
public safety. They also warn that the law’s best-known aspect — the website
that lists the thousands of offenders in the state — could be watered down or
dismantled. In the last year alone, the website received 411 million page
views, state records show.
"Awareness and knowledge are power, and they are
precisely why this offender registry exists and what is at stake in the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court,” said Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose office
is leading the defense of the law in some of the cases before the high court.
Defense lawyers, joined by a growing chorus of experts
in the criminal justice reform movement, dismiss that. They argue the cases
expose deep constitutional problems and should at a minimum push the
legislature to rethink its approach to managing people who commit sexual
violence.
“The way the system works currently cannot continue to
function,” said Aaron Marcus, an assistant defender with the Defender
Association of Philadelphia and one of the lawyers involved in challenging the
law.
At the heart of the majority of cases is the latest
iteration of the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act, or SORNA,
which evolved out of the original Megan’s Law. When SORNA took effect at the
end of 2012, it greatly expanded the law, increasing the list of offenses
subject to registration and notification — including a handful that are not
sexual in nature — and imposing more stringent registration and notification
rules.
The state’s Megan’s Law registry more than doubled,
growing from about 10,000 people to just over 20,000, according to the
Pennsylvania State Police, which oversees the registry.
Marcus said that after “decades of trial, mountains of
empirical evidence and close to one million people around the country being
denied their rights to liberty and their reputation," no hard evidence
exists that the public is any safer or that assaults have been prevented.
One of the most closely-watched cases before the high
court deals with requirements under the current law for people classified as
“sexually-violent predators," those who have committed the most serious
offenses and who are considered to have a high likelihood to reoffend. They are
subject to lifetime registration, as well as lifetime counseling and community
notification.
The case centers on whether those rigorous
registration, notification and counseling requirements constitute unlawful
punishment.
Brought by a Butler County man who pleaded guilty to
statutory sexual assault and corruption of minors, the case targets the state’s
little-known process for assessing sexual offenders. A board of psychiatrists,
psychologists and criminal justice professionals in Pennsylvania make
recommendations to the court about whether someone should be classified as a
sexually violent predator.
Since 2000, the board has completed 20,260
assessments, according to state officials. In 6,027 of those cases, it has
recommended that the offender be classified as a sexually violent predator,
although the courts have not always agreed.
“This is the case that will dictate how we operate
going forward,” said Meghan Dade, the board’s executive director. “This is a
pivotal moment in Pennsylvania.”
Another case before the court arose from the
convoluted registration system for offenders. Because of a separate legal
challenge, the law now imposes two different sets of rules: one for people who
committed crimes prior to Dec. 20, 2012 — when the current law went into effect
in Pennsylvania — and another for people who committed crimes after that date.
Lawyers for a Chester County man — a biochemical
engineer with no prior record who was convicted in 2017 of aggravated indecent
assault and subject to lifetime registration — are arguing the law violates a
fundamental right to reputation under the state constitution. It presumes that
people convicted of certain sexual offenses cannot change and therefore are
prone to reoffending, they contend.
In court papers, the lawyers, led by Marcus, cite
experts and studies that show the public holds a false perception that people
convicted of sexual offenses will go on to reoffend, and that their risk for
doing so lasts for years. They said only a small number of offenders fit that
bill, while the rest get lumped into that group, suffering a lifetime of harm.
Their arguments go to the heart of the criminal
justice reform movement blossoming across the country that aims to reduce harsh
penalties for smaller offenses, and reform policies for offenders who, after
serving prison time, suffer myriad social and financial hardships.
“It is difficult to overstate the impact that sex
offender registration has on a person’s life,” Marcus said.
Lawyers are paying close attention to the case because
it takes aim at the state’s sex-offender website, which some view as aiding in
destroying reputations because it is so widely accessible.
“The long-term viability of the Megan’s Law website
could be implicated,” said Carson Morris, a deputy attorney general in the
state Attorney General’s Office who is defending Megan’s Law in one of the five
cases before the high court.
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