Kansas top court rules sex offenders’ lifetime registration not ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ News
Kansas top court rules sex offenders’ lifetime registration not ‘cruel and unusual punishment’

A divided Kansas Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF] Friday that a lifetime registration as a sex offender does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The court heard the case of Henry Petersen-Beard who was convicted as a 19-year-old of raping a 13-year-old girl. The court analyzed whether Petersen-Beard’s lifetime registry as a sex offender violated section 9 of the Kansas Bill of Rights [text] and the Eighth Amendment [text] of the US Constitution precluding the state from inflicting cruel or unusual punishment. The court found that lifetime sex offender registration requirements are not punishment for purposes of applying the Kansas Bill of Rights or the US Constitution and are nonpunitive and form a civil regulatory scheme. Decided also on Friday, three other cases found [Kansas City Star report] that registry requirement constituted cruel and unusual punishment and that a 2011 amendment [backgrounder] to the law was in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause [text] of the US Constitution by acting retroactively.

Changes in the sex-offender registry system have taken place across the country as sex offender laws have been increasingly criticized for limiting residence option and promoting ostracization. Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] unanimously that the Sex Offender Notification and Registration Act (SONRA) did not require an individual to update his registration in Kansas once he departed the state and moved to a foreign country. In November, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear signed [JURIST report] an executive order that automatically restored voting rights and the right to hold public office to certain offenders after their sentences had been satisfied; those convicted of sex crimes were excluded from the order. In August, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that a city within the state has no right to pass ordinances restricting where sex offenders can live. In June, the US District Court for the District of Minnesota ruled [JURIST report] that that state’s sex offender program and civil commitment statutes were unconstitutional.

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