Sixth Circuit panel concludes Michigan sex offender registration amendments “imposes punishment” and thus are ex post unconstitutional for retroactive application
August 25, 2016 at 12:29 PM
http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2016/08/sixth-circuit-panel-concludes-michigan-sex-offender-registration-amendments-are-punitive-and-thus-ar.html
In a significant panel ruling today, the Sixth Circuit has concluded in Does v. Snyder, No. 15-1536 (6th Cir. Aug. 25, 2016) (available here) that Michigan’s amendments to its Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) “imposes punishment” and thus the state violates the US Constitution when applying these SORA provisions retroactively. Here is some of the concluding analysis from the unanimous panel decision reaching this result: We conclude that Michigan’s SORA imposes punishment. And while many (certainly not all) sex offenses involve abominable, almost unspeakable, conduct that deserves severe legal penalties, punishment may never be retroactively imposed or increased. Indeed, the fact that sex offenders are so widely feared and disdained by the general public implicates the core countermajoritarian principle embodied in the Ex Post Facto clause. As the founders rightly perceived, as dangerous as it may be not to punish someone, it is far more dangerous to permit the government under guise of civil regulation to punish people without prior notice. Such lawmaking has “been, in all ages, [a] favorite and most formidable instrument[] of tyranny.” The Federalist No. 84, supra at 444 (Alexander Hamilton). It is, as Justice Chase argued, incompatible with both the words of the Constitution and the underlying first principles of “our free republican governments.” Calder, 3 U.S. at 388–89; accord The Federalist No. 44, supra at 232 (James Madison) (“[E]x post facto laws . . . are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.”). The retroactive application of SORA’s 2006 and 2011 amendments to Plaintiffs is unconstitutional, and it must therefore cease.