PA registrants find relief from extended registration period.
Last week the Pennsylvania Superior Court granted relief to a bunch of persons required to register as sex offenders in Commonwealth v. Fernandez (2018 PA Super 245 – Pa: Superior Court 2018).
In 2017, the Pennsylvania Supreme court invalidated the retroactive provisions from the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) in Commonwealth v. Muniz, 164 A.3d 1189 (Pa. 2017), cert. denied, 138 S.Ct. 925 (2018). Muniz held that the trial court may not retroactively increase registration requirements under SORNA.
Nineteen individuals appealed the retroactive enhancement of their registration requirements after registration violations. Although the facts of their cases were all different, their situation was the same; they were convicted of sexual offenses BEFORE the enactment of SORNA in PA (2011), and SORNA was applied retroactively to include them, the courts consolidated their case into one – which held that the retroactive application of SORNA was unconstitutional.
The court held the appellants are not subject to SORNA’s retroactive registration increases!
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Love it !. Keep them coming PA and Michigan.
19 lucky individuals. I’m so happy for them and glad the tides are turning. Hopefully we can celebrate the same thing here in Florida one day.
great news ! chip away at it !
Points out one other thing that is terribly unfair about how they apply sex offender registry laws. The information about those 19 individuals were on file in the registry, and those maintaining the registry knew that they no longer belonged there, yet they still had to file an appeal to get taken off. Most people don’t know how to do that without a lawyer. Many can’t afford a lawyer. The state had no problem adding people onto the registry and adding on retroactive changes automatically, so why can’t they automatically remove those unconstitutional retroactive changes automatically? It’s just a foul, corrupt system.
Thanks FAC for sharing. You are always on top of things. this is good news. Everytime a Supreme Court rules, it sets precident that can be used for other Supreme court decisions in other states. Its been awesome to watch what is happening in PA. Thanks to those who banded together, all 19 of them. We need to get the lawyers who worked on this to advise attourneys in other jurisdictions on how to succesfully argue and win ! That is worth putting money behind and I would back that effort in VA, get all who were convicted of non violent offense and sentence which didnt include registry, before May 1994 , before the registry, to work together , pool our resources . The more we unite and work together the better.
Well I think this awesome news