Pennsylvania Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Amended Sex Offender Registry Law

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in Commonwealth v. LaCombe, 35 MAP 2018. The case is being considered by Pennsylvania’s high court after the Commonwealth appealed our stunning victory in which Judge William R. Carpenter of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas granted our Motion to Terminate Petitioner’s Lifetime Sexual Offense Registration and Notification Requirements under the 2018 amended version of Pennsylvania’s sex offender registry law (Act 10 and 29 of 2018).

Fifteen Year Registration Under Megan’s Law I

Our client had been found guilty in 1997, by a Montgomery County jury of Involuntary Deviate Sexual Assault and related offenses. He received a sentence of seven to twenty years imprisonment. At the time of his sentencing, Pennsylvania’s Megan’s Law I was in effect. Under Megan’s Law I, all offenders convicted of certain sex offenses were presumed to be a sexually violent predators (SVP) required to register for their lifetime. A person could only avoid being classified as a sexually violent predator if he presented evidence at sentencing to establish that he was not a SVP. Our client did just that at his sentencing in 1998, and as a result was determined not to be a SVP.

Nonetheless, our client was still was ordered to register as a sex offender for ten (10) years following his release from prison, which was the required registration period under Megan’s Law I.

Lifetime Registration Retroactively Imposed by Acts 10 and 29 of 2018

Lacombe’s ten (10) year registration requirement was subsequently changed to lifetime registration through multiple amendments to Pennsylvania’s Megan’s Law. The most recent amendments were through Acts 10 and 29 of 2018, which created a separate subchapter (Subchapter I) that applies exclusively to offenders whose offenses occurred before 2012. Under Subchapter I, our client is required to register for the rest of his life, despite the fact that he previously established that he is not an SVP and was required to register for only ten (10) years at the time of his sentencing.

To be clear: the increase in our client’s registration requirement from the ten (10) years imposed at the time of his sentencing to the lifetime requirement under the current legislation was through no subsequent act or failure of our client. It was the product of legislature fiat. Our client has been arrest-free for over twenty years and has maintained steady and gainful employment during that time.

Constitutional Challenges to Acts 10 and 29

Pennsylvania Megan’s Law, through its numerous iterations, has given rise to many constitutional challenges. The most recent amendments in Acts 10 and 29 of 2018 were enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature in an attempt to respond to the case of Commonwealth v. Muniz, 164 A.3d 1189 (Pa. 2017) in which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared that the retroactive application of the more stringent registration requirements of SORNA violated the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution

The Commonwealth’s appeal of Judge Carpenter’s decision in the Lacombe case was one of three cases challenging the amended version of SORNA that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard. In our client’s case, we argued that the Judge Carpenter appropriately concluded, in his well-reasoned opinion, that the newest version of the legislation fails to address, in any meaningful way, the issues which caused the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare the prior version of SORNA unconstitutional in Muniz.

It is expected that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will render its anxiously awaited decisions on the sex offender cases, including LaCombe, within the first half of 2020.