This morning, in United States v. Cain, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit split over whether a sex offender convicted prior to the enactment of the federal Sexual Offenders Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) was required to update his sex offender registration before the Attorney General adopted regulations implementing the law’s registration requirement and specifying the applicaiton of the requirment to pre-SORNA offenses. Judge Rogers, joined by Judge Guy, held for the defendant, concluding there was no obligation to register prior to the adoption of the regulations. Judge Griffin dissented.
The law at issue was part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. The Supreme Court already has one case this term concerning this law (United States v. Comstock). Could this make for a second?
paul says:
See Carr v. US. Didn’t scotus already grant on this?
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October 13, 2009, 10:42 amSuperSkeptic says:
Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
or
federal Sexual Offenders Registration and Notification Act (SORNA)
What is the federal constitutional/jurisdictional hook for a law like this? Please tell me it isn’t sex offenders engaging in interstate commerce?
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October 13, 2009, 10:45 amJonathan H. Adler says:
SORNA is Title I of the Adam Walsh Act.
The jurisdictional hook for portions of the act are that they apply when sex offenders cross state lines.
I had forgotten about Carr, which I think raises a slightly different question (although there is some overlap). So this case could actually make three.
JHA
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October 13, 2009, 10:47 amBurt Fisher says:
There was a day when I could own a machine gun without any paperwork. Times change.
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October 13, 2009, 10:48 amOren says:
Hard to believe you were 18 back in 1934.
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October 13, 2009, 11:21 amCato The Elder says:
Nice last name for the appellant...can the United States really afford to lose this one? We’re talking the very first criminal here.
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October 13, 2009, 11:25 amOrin Kerr says:
I have the same question as Paul. See Carr v. United States, which the Court granted two weeks ago.
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October 13, 2009, 11:33 amHardly Surprised says:
Carr has to do with those who traveled in interstate commerce before SORNA’s enactment. This case, as I understand it, has to do with those who were convicted of a qualifying sex offense before the statute’s enactment.
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October 13, 2009, 11:52 amCDU says:
Carr v. United States seems to be focusing on a different issue. In that case, the sex offender in question traveled before SORNA was passed, so the issue is whether the travel in interstate commerce section is retroactive. In Cain the issue is focused on interstate travel during the period between the passage of the law and when the Attorney General issued a regulation concerning people convicted before the law’s passage. A Supreme Court decision in Carr won’t necessarily decide the issue in Cain.
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October 13, 2009, 11:58 amLior says:
Can a person really travel in interstate commerce? I thought the buying and selling of people is at the moment against US law?
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October 13, 2009, 12:20 pmThorley Winston says:
Wouldn’t that actually be Eve?
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October 13, 2009, 12:21 pmCDU says:
Eve gets a bum rap. Eating someone else’s apple is at best a misdemeanor.
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October 13, 2009, 12:27 pmegd says:
Obviously the law should be strengthened so that any individual who affects travel in interstate commerce should be covered. Gets rid of all those pesky federalism issues.
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October 13, 2009, 12:27 pmDave N says:
While I agree United States v. Cain is cool for a criminal case, the best case name of all time is Loving v. Virginia, which, of course, invalidated Virginia’s anti-misgenation statute.
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October 13, 2009, 12:31 pmChrisTS says:
The serpent gave it to her. At worst, she was in receipt of stolen goods.
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October 13, 2009, 1:03 pmSoronel Haetir says:
Wouldn’t the apple be more like a bailment? The tree was left in Eden but Adam and Eve were told not to partake. Eating the apple would seem like an act of conversion. The main sticking point would seem to be whether A&E actually agreed not to eat apples, even there a good argument could be made for vastly inequitable bargaining positions.
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October 13, 2009, 1:39 pmSeaDrive says:
IANAL, so tell me if I have this straight.
Prosecution: Sex offender fails to register; wily defense counsel tries to free him on technicality.
Defense: Government fails to do it’s paperwork; indicts sex offender for not doing his.
Volokh Conspiracy: Congress writes vague law; Government screws up; DA indicts sex offender for not complying with legal situation so vague that it goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals and perhaps the Supreme Court.
As I say, IANAL, and I’m glad.
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October 13, 2009, 1:45 pmSuperSkeptic says:
This is suspect to me. Its unquestioned because it’s a good idea, tracking sex offenders, but it logically allows for much, much more. Would it be okay to have a federal registry of those with traffic tickets? Or trespassers?
I would characterize Eve’s acts as tresspassing and conversion — not theft, hence civil and not criminal, leaving the honor to Cain.
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October 13, 2009, 3:25 pmDaniel Chapman says:
The honor belongs to Cain only if you don’t count “Don’t eat the damn apple” as a law that could be broken.
I’m probably reading too much into this little debate, but really? Isn’t this obvious?
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October 13, 2009, 4:46 pmJust Dropping By says:
Eating the apple gave her knowledge of good and evil, which was previously a trade secret of God, so she could potentially be guilty of a felony for violating the Economic Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1832. (And even if Eve was arguably innocent of a violation of the Act when she received the apple from the serpent, she would still be guilty of violating it when she gave the apple to Adam.)
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October 13, 2009, 5:17 pmspeedwell says:
Eating the apple...
You guys are awesome. :D
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October 14, 2009, 7:58 amChrisTS says:
I think we are all missing an important fundamental point here: God was not elected; hence, neither Adam nor Eve consented to his laws.
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October 14, 2009, 3:46 pmKeith Richard Radford Jr says:
Should churches or our federal government be held libel for the murder of sex offenders?
Sex laws have been built on misconceptions and myth.
The Supreme Court just ruled on sex offender laws where some factions of our government think by some inert reasoning that sex offender should be quarantined like some virus steaming from Draconian/Islamic radical view that sex offenders should be executed. I have seen for myself, video taken in another country where a sex offender was placed on a pole much like the Catholics use to use a pyramid shaped object and have them sit on it and spin, the pole travels through the body looking for the throat but if not found its ok because the sharpened end of the pole will come out somewhere to the delight of these very strange people who think such sad thoughts. The heritage of the act is in its self a brutal throwback to violent uneducated people who are so obsessed with any sex they can find & the only way to deal with this kind of “hierarchy” of historic hysteria. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration used to make animals less threatening which clearly explains the atmosphere we have made for our selves.
Anyway we are supposed to be the most advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for some nations we are still warring with, selling weapons too, {think!} while other nations went home our weapons dealers and torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money with out taking it from someone by force. Is that supposed to include mutilations? In my humble opinion that alone are terrorist activities as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by lies.
The truth about the sex offender registry will come out soon enough. When it does, People will see how the use of the registry was created, and by exactly who and why and the devastation it has created and the worthlessness of the use of it. It’s origin in the Jim Crow hanging laws that brought disgrace to our nation allowing thieves and murderous societal bigots who have trashed any shot at making good of a program in its design to make money destroying our nation and its people. We can not play god and we can not survive using this behavior model because we are compounding the problem since the numbers increasing to include the children they purport to protect.
It’s a ruse designed by people who are getting rich off the doctoring, castration/hysterectomy/health care/physic care of people through sex laws that have gone wild. What about the people who are being used by the Medicare programs that requires these mutilations for both men and woman after they take their means of support? Digging around in someone’s genitalia because you want what a weaker nation? Can’t you see? You have created the model and it is worthless! Why don’t we just indiscriminately kill people we don’t know? That is statically the next sex offender, because over 90% of all new offences are committed by someone “not” on the sex offender registry and the numbers are increasing not decreasing so as a behavior model this is really worthless.
So what is the use of such laws as the sex offender registry other than to terrorize people? With the murder of so many sex offenders and the continued disregard for life by the use of the registry it will be no time at all before the federal government will be held liable for their deaths through federal court.
In a nation where a statement may have a double or triple meaning and our entire linage can be traced through mud, guts, and beer it’s nice once in a while to get the picture of what is meant instead of what some thinks someone may have implied being translated by greed. So it is from the trenches to the hill. Remember the game where someone says something in someone’s ear then passes it the same way to the next; the person advocating such destructive laws are the ones who need to be section 8 by simple brake down of the issue not the sex offenders.
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October 23, 2009, 1:36 am