In an unusual situation, the State of Indiana agreed that an appeals court erred in reversing a removal (from the sex offender registry) order and jointly sought a rehearing and order declaring the case moot because they took him off the registry of their own volition!
The order on the rehearing states; “the State sua sponte removed McPhearson from the registry.In their joint petition, McPhearson and the State argue that the State’s original analysis of the sex offender registration amendments was incorrect.Specifically, McPhearson and the State contend that other litigation pending in our sister federal courts,coupled with a careful examination of Indiana’s prohibition against ex post facto laws, has prompted the State to reevaluate its approach to these types of cases”
How rarely do you read a state concede they “got it wrong” and their interpretation of the statute is unconstitutional?
You can read the decision here: https://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/05262001jgb.pdf
AND, more importantly, they ADMIT it is ex post facto which the courts in many areas state ex post facto only applies to “punishment”.
So I guess we have what we have known all along, it is punishment and all these jurisdictions pushing the limits on more and more laws of punishment are finally starting to fall like a dam with a leak.
However, again it seems to apply to JUST that one person. Very few if any blanket rulings coming down.
So they haven’t really even made a ruling Other than just ruling on the joint motion. We need to keep an eye on Indiana because on paper, it had a fairly lenient policy for removing some people. However, as we know from recent court cases, the state was not offering that relief not only to out-of-state offenders but also to Indiana offenders who had left and then come back. At least as best as I can remember.! If that is the case and you have the state acknowledging ex post facto, then this could be very important as it could give some of us another landing spot that’s less expensive than some of the current ones like Vermont.