“A deal is a deal: Pa. Supreme Court blocks retroactive registration boosts for sex offenders
“By: Matt Miller; mmiller@pennlive.com; The Patriot News
September 29, 2016 at 4:30pm, updated September 30, 2016 at 7:52 am
Sex offender registration requirements can’t be increased for people who reached deals to plead guilty to sex crimes before Pennsylvania’s latest registration law took effect, the state Supreme Court has decided.
The high court reached that conclusion in an opinion Justice Max Baer issued this week on three consolidated cases involving York County sex offenders.
Wayne Shower, Gabriel Martinez and Adam Grace all pleaded guilty to sex crimes before Megan’s Law was superseded by the more stringent Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act in December 2012. Shower was sentenced in 2006, Martinez in 2010 and Grace in 2011.
All three men pleaded to crimes that, under Megan’s law, required them to register with state police as sex offenders for 10 years. Under SORNA, however, the crimes to which Shower and Martinez pleaded carry lifetime registration requirements, while a 25-year registration would apply in Grace’s case.
The registration dispute came to the Supreme Court after the county district attorney’s office appealed rulings by a York County judge and a state Superior Court panel that sided with Shower, Martinez and Grace.
Like the lower courts, Baer’s court essentially agreed that a deal is a deal and that the plea agreements constituted enforceable contracts.
When Showers, Martinez and Grace reached their plea agreements with county prosecutors, the government was bound by the terms that then limited their registration periods to a decade, Baer concluded.
“In this commonwealth, when trial courts accept plea agreements, the convicted criminals…are entitled to the benefits of their bargains,” he wrote.