The Jacob Wetterling Act
The Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, also known as the Jacob Wetterling Act, was signed into federal law on September 13, 1994, as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-322). The act provides funding to states to establish registration systems for sex offenders. States must require abusers who have committed a criminal offense against a minor to register every year for ten years after release from prison, parole, or probation. Sexually violent predators must report their addresses to the state every ninety days until it is determined they are no longer threats to public safety. Sexually violent predators include those who have committed sexually violent crimes, as well as those who may not have committed sexual crimes but suffer from mental abnormalities or personality disorders that may predispose them to commit predatory or violent sex offenses.
Jacob Wetterling was an eleven-year-old boy kidnapped near his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota, by an armed, masked man on October 22, 1989. His abduction was similar to a case involving a boy from a nearby town who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted earlier that year. Jacob was never found, but police believed the cases were linked and encouraged the creation of a database so that police departments could share information.
Megan's Law
"Megan's Law" (Public Law 104-145), signed May 17, 1996, amended the Jacob Wetterling Act by requiring states to release information on registered sex offenders if needed to protect the public. In 1994 the nation's first notification law was enacted in New Jersey after seven-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender who lived across the street from her family. Since then many states have enacted legislation ("Ashley's Law" in Texas and "Polly's Law" in California, for instance) that requires the registration and tracking of sex offenders.
The Pam Lychner Act
The Pam Lychner Sexual Offender Tracking and Identification Act (Public Law 104-236), signed on October 3, 1996, also amended the Jacob Wetterling Act by requiring the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to establish a National Sex Offender Registry to help state-to-state tracking and management of released sex offenders. It further allows the FBI to conduct sex offender registration and community notification in states that do not have "minimally sufficient" systems in place for such purposes. The Pam Lychner Act was named after a victim's rights activist who was killed in an airplane crash in 1988.
The Lychner Act also requires a registered sex offender moving to a new state or establishing residence upon release from prison or being placed on parole, supervised release, or probation to notify the FBI and state authorities within ten days of the move. Failure to do so the first time is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of not more than $100,000. A second offense is a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of not more than $100,000.
State Sex Offender Registries
As of February 2004 all fifty states and the District of Columbia had centralized sex offender registries. The states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands submitted records on nearly 300,000 convicted sex offenders to the FBI National Sex Offender Registry. As of September 15, 2004, thirty-five states and the District of Columbia had Internet sites where the public could access information about the offenders.
Supreme Court Upholds Megan's Law
In its first review of Megan's Law, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases challenging state sex-offender registry laws. In the first case two sex offenders argued that the registration requirement is a retroactive punishment prohibited by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and by the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bans a law that applies retroactively.
Under Alaska's law a person convicted of an aggravated sex offense or of two or more sex offenses must register for life and verify the information every three months. Both the registration and notification requirements are retroactive. John Doe et al. were released from prison in 1990 and completed rehabilitation programs for sex offenders. They claimed they already served time and that they were being punished a second time by the registration law. In a 6–3 vote, in Smith et al. v. John Doe et al. (No. 01-729 [2003]), the Supreme Court held that the intent of the Alaska sex-registration law was not to punish. Delivering the opinion of the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted:
The fact that Alaska posts the information on the Internet does not alter our conclusion. It must be acknowledged that notice of a criminal conviction subjects the offender to public shame, the humiliation increasing in proportion to the extent of the publicity. And the geographic reach of the Internet is greater than anything which could have been designed in colonial times. These facts do not render Internet notification punitive [inflicting punishment]. The purpose and the principal effect of notification are to inform the public for its own safety, not to humiliate the offender. Widespread public access is necessary for the efficacy of the scheme, and the attendant humiliation is but a collateral consequence of a valid regulation.
The second case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court by state personnel responsible for compiling the state's sex-offender registry and for posting it on the Internet. John Doe, a convicted sex offender, filed a lawsuit on behalf of himself and similarly situated sex offenders, claiming that Connecticut's sex-offender registration law violates, among other things, the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. John Doe claimed that the state did not hold a hearing to determine whether or not he was likely to be currently dangerous. The U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court Appeals for the Second Circuit agreed with John Doe, prohibiting the public disclosure of registered sex offenders. In Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. John Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 9–0, reversing the appellate court ruling. The Court stated that "due process does not require the opportunity to prove a fact that is not material to the State's statutory scheme."
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