Criminal — SORNA — Pre-act offenders

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U.S. Supreme Court

Criminal
SORNA
Pre-act offenders

The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act does not require pre-Act offenders to register before the Attorney General validly specifies that the Act’s registration provisions apply to them.

This conclusion is supported by a natural reading of the Act’s text, which consists of four statements.

Statement One says that “[a] sex offender shall register, and keep the registration current.” Statement Two says that, generally, the offender must initially register before completing his “sentence of imprisonment.” Statement Three says that the sex offender must update a registration within three business days of any change of “name, residence, employment, or student status.” Statement Four says that “[t]he Attorney General shall have the authority to specify the applicability of the requirements . . . to sex offenders convicted before the enactment of” the Act. ß16913. Read naturally, the Fourth Statement modifies the First. It deals specifically with a subset (pre-Act offenders) of the First Statement’s broad general class (all sex offenders) and thus should control the Act’s application to that subset. See Gozlon-Peretz v. United States, 498 U. S. 395. Also, by giving the Attorney General authority to specify the Act’s “applicability,” not its “nonapplicability,” the Fourth Statement is more naturally read to confer authority to apply the Act, not authority to make exceptions.

This reading efficiently resolves what may have been Congress’ concern about the practical problems of applying the new registration requirements to a large number of pre-Act offenders, which could have been expensive and might not have proved feasible to do immediately. It might have thought that such concerns warranted different treatment for different categories of pre-Act offenders. And it could have concluded that it was efficient and desirable to ask the Justice Department, charged with responsibility for implementation, to examine pre-Act offender problems and to apply the new requirements accordingly.

This reading also takes Congress to have filled potential lacunae (created by related Act provisions) in a manner consistent with basic criminal law principles. The Second Statement, e.g., requires a sex offender to register before completing his prison term, but says nothing about when a pre-Act offender who has left prison is to register. An Attorney General ruling could diminish such uncertainties, helping to eliminate the kind of vagueness and uncertainty that criminal law must seek to avoid.

380 Fed. Appx. 125, reversed and remanded.

Local effect: The opinion is consistent with Seventh Circuit precedent, U.S. v. Dixon, 551 F.3d 578, 585 (7th Cir. 2008).

10-6549 Reynolds v. U.S.

Breyer, J.; Scalia, J., dissenting.

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