7th Cir. Affirms “sex offender” enhancement for non-sex-offender.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently issued its decision in US v. Cohen, affirming a federal conviction and sentence tied directly to sex offender registry enforcement.
In this case, James Cohen accepted money from an individual required to register under SORNA in exchange for falsely allowing him to use Cohen’s address as his residence. Cohen then knowingly lied to U.S. Marshals during a compliance check by telling them the individual lived with him when he did not. He was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) for making materially false statements, pleaded guilty, and received a 21-month prison sentence after the court applied a four-level enhancement under U.S. Sentencing Guideline § 2J1.2, based on the fact that his conduct related to sex offender registration laws under Chapter 109B.
On appeal, Cohen argued that the enhancement was improper because his offense was not itself a “sex offense”. The Seventh Circuit rejected the argument, finding that the guideline properly applied because the false statements directly interfered with the enforcement of SORNA – even though Cohen, himself, was not subject to SORNA and never committed a sex offense.
The ruling reinforces how aggressively federal courts treat conduct connected to registry compliance and how even peripheral actors can face serious criminal penalties. For FAC and the people we advocate for, this case underscores the high-risk environment surrounding registry laws and the urgent need to continue challenging policies that expand punishment while doing little to improve public safety.
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Going by this “logic”, local registration authorities should be required to register when create circumstances that make registration impossible, such as not being in the office during business hours or turning registrants away for arbitrary dress codes. That would also interfere with the enforcement of SORNA, would it not?
It never ceases to amaze me how much more they drill this genre of “sex crimes” into the ground.
I had a compliance check a couple of days ago, one of the officers looked like if I didn’t have cameras on my property he would have beaten the piss out of me for no other reason than simply because of the SO status. Where’s that same anger for the child killers? Here’s a headline that caught my eye: “man 40, beats his fussy newborn to death in a drunken blackout” gets 11 years(ish)” and no registry. Come on. Make it make sense already.
So by saying a sex-offender lives at an address when one didn’t is a crime. So when the judge declares a non-sex-offender lives at that address wouldn’t he also be committing the same crime?
In Florida, similar conduct is also a state-level crime (3rd degree felony) punishable by up to 5 years in prison under F.S. sec. 943.0435(13). He only got 21 months under federal law. In Florida, he could have received 5 years in state prison for lying about the residence of a person forced to register.