Court ruling dismisses valid complaints about Arizona’s sex offender registry, expert says

Ben McJunkin is an associate professor of law and associate deputy director for the Academy for Justice at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Among other areas of law, he specializes in sex crimes. He spoke on The Show to talk more about this issue.

Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: And Ben, what about this case and the ruling in it stands out to you?

BEN MCJUNKIN: Well, I think the thing that’s most notable about this particular case is that the judge gave sort of short shrift, in my opinion, to a few of the arguments that the plaintiff is raising here. And the reason for that is that mostly there’s bad precedent on the books both Supreme Court precedent and Arizona Supreme Court precedent — that have precluded some of these claims.

And so I think the plaintiff is making a plausible argument about how restrictive some of these registry restrictions are, and yet they’re not really legally cognizable in the form that he brings here. And so the judge is not able to give them the kind of airing that they’re probably due.

BRODIE: What to you is maybe a little too restrictive about Arizona law?

MCJUNKIN: Well, so Arizona is not unique necessarily, but it does things differently than some states. And one of the things that it does is that it mandates registration as a result of conviction. So for 22 offenses, there’s automatic registration on the sex offender registry. And for most offenders, that’s going to be registration for life.

And so there’s this combination of automatic registration based on your offense combined with the lifetime length of the registration that can make it seem pretty restrictive to people who may have committed even a first offense.

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