Opinion ID: 1870902
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Missouri's Megan's Law is Retrospective In Its Operation as to Persons Convicted or Pleading Guilty Prior to Its Passage.

Text: In the same sentence that bars ex post facto laws, Missouri's Constitution provides, that no . . . law . . . retrospective in its operation . . . can be enacted. Mo. Const. art I, sec. 13. This provision has no analogue in the United States Constitution and is contained in the constitutions of only a handful of other states. [16] The Does argue it precludes application of Megan's Law to those who pled guilty or were found guilty prior to the act's January 1, 1995, effective date. The Does' argument finds strong support in R.W., 168 S.W.3d 65, in which plaintiff made a parallel argument that Megan's Law violated Missouri's bar on ex post facto laws. This Court rejected the claim not because the law was not retrospective, but because the law was civil rather than punitive in nature. In so doing, R.W. specifically acknowledged, The registration statutes operate retrospectively in this case. Id. at 68 (emphasis added). This statement has direct application to the Does' assertion that the law is unconstitutional for this very reason. The statement is dicta, however, for the issue whether such laws are barred by the Missouri Constitution was not briefed in R.W. While persuasive, R.W. is not determinative of the question now before this Court: does Missouri's Megan's Law violate article I, section 13 to the extent it operates retrospectively on persons who pleaded or were found guilty prior to its effective date? The constitutional bar on civil laws retrospective in their operation has been a part of Missouri law since this State adopted its first constitution in 1820. [17] The 1875 constitutional debates note this bar is broader than the ex post facto bars in other states: [T]he prohibition of retrospective legislation or forbidding the General Assembly to pass a law retrospective in its character did at one breath accomplish the prohibition of a more extensive kind of a more comprehensive nature than was to be found in any of the constitutions of but three states in the Union. So that the prohibition of an act retrospective in its operation in the Constitution of 1820 rendered it nearly superfluous to add the prohibition of an ex post facto law or of a law impairing the obligation of contracts, or of a law impairing vested rights. . . . Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention 1875, vol. IV at 95 (Isidor Loeb & Floyd C. Shoemaker, eds., State Historical Soc'y of Mo., 1938). In interpreting Missouri's broad constitutional bar, this Court said: A retrospective law is one which creates a new obligation, imposes a new duty, or attaches a new disability with respect to transactions or considerations already past. It must give to something already done a different effect from that which it had when it transpired. Squaw Creek Drainage Dist. v. Turney, 235 Mo. 80, 138 S.W. 12, 16 (1911). The language used to bar laws retrospective in operation remained the same in the 1945 constitution. Mo. Const art. I, sec. 13. Jerry-Russell Bliss v. Hazardous Waste, 702 S.W.2d 77 (Mo. banc 1985), sets out types of situations in which a law will be found to be retrospective in operation, stating that a new law may not impair vested rights acquired under existing laws, or create a new obligation, impose a new duty, or attach a new disability in respect to transactions ... already past. Id. at 81 (quotation omitted). Bliss argued that an act prohibiting issuance of a hazardous waste management license to habitual violators of past hazardous waste laws violated the prohibition on retrospective laws since the violations occurred prior to the act's passage. This Court rejected the argument, noting the act only made past practices of the company a consideration for the granting or denial of a hazardous waste transporter's license. Id. A statute is not retrospective or retroactive . . . because it relates to prior facts or transactions but does not change their legal effect, or because some of the requisites for its action are drawn from a time antecedent to its passage, or because it fixes the status of an entity for the purpose of its operation. Id. at 81. La-Z-Boy Chair Co. v. Director of Economic Development, 983 S.W.2d 523 (Mo. banc 1999), applied these principles to a claim that a law violated a vested right. It held that [a] `vested right' has been defined as `a title, legal or equitable, to the present or future enjoyment of property or to the present or future enjoyment of the demand, or a legal exemption from a demand made by another.' Id. at 525, quoting, Fisher v. Reorganized Sch. Dist., 567 S.W.2d 647, 649 (Mo. banc 1978). In that case, this Court rejected a taxpayer's argument that it had a vested right to assume that because it had a tax exemption for its new plant when built, that exemption would continue. La-Z-Boy said no one has a vested right that the law will remain unchanged. Again addressing the retrospective law bar, Corvera Abatement Technologies, Inc. v. Air Conservation Commission, 973 S.W.2d 851 (Mo. banc 1998), rejected a challenge to asbestos abatement project regulations. As first promulgated, the regulations failed to include a required fiscal note and, thus, could not immediately go into effect. The legislature passed an amendatory law containing a fiscal note. Because the commission applied the regulations only as to acts that occurred after the amendment of the statute and the publication of the corrected fiscal note, id. at 856, the law did not violate the prohibition on retrospective laws and there was no need for formal re-promulgation of the regulations for them to go into effect. Id. [18] By contrast, Doe v. Roman Catholic Diocese, 862 S.W.2d 338 (Mo. banc 1993), held that a law adopting a discovery rule for cases of childhood sexual abuse involving, for example, repressed memories, did violate the prohibition on laws retrospective in their operation by providing, This section shall apply to any action commenced on or after [the act's effective date] including any action which would have been barred by the application of the statute of limitation applicable prior to that date. Id. at 340. Doe held that once the original statute of limitations expires and bars the plaintiff's action, the defendant has acquired a vested right to be free from suit, a right that is substantive in nature, and therefore, article I, section 13, prohibits the legislative revival of the cause of action. Id. at 341 (emphasis in original). The clear legislative intent to apply the law retrospectively could not supersede the specific prohibition on retrospective laws. Id. Applying the reasoning of Doe here, the Does argue that their release from probation or parole is comparable to the running of the statute of limitations and that once they were released they had a vested right in being free from further collateral consequences of their prior pleas of guilty, particularly in the case of those who were not convicted but merely pled guilty in return for an SIS. This Court rejects the analogy. Nothing in the Does' releases from supervision states that no further collateral consequences will be imposed. They merely are no longer on probation or parole. Various collateral consequences still attend their prior pleas of guilty. [19] Moreover, a vested right must be something more than a mere expectation based upon an anticipated continuance of existing law. Fisher, 567 S.W.2d at 649 (quotation omitted). The Does had no vested right in the law remaining unchanged. Similarly, this Court rejects the claim that publication of true information about the Does affects a past transaction to their substantial detriment by imposing a new obligation, adding a new duty or attaching a new disability in respect to transactions or considerations already past. See Bliss, 702 S.W.2d at 82. The publication of this information merely looks back at antecedent actions, as did the regulations in Corvera . The same cannot be said, however, of the Does' additional argument that the bar on laws that operate retrospectively is violated by the imposition of an affirmative obligation on them to register upon release and then regularly thereafter. The obligation to register by its nature imposes a new duty or obligation. Respondent argues that this is unimportant because Megan's Law only criminalizes a failure to register and the Does could not have failed to register until after Megan's Law became effective. Here, however, the Does are not complaining that they have been held or will be held criminally liable for failing to register. They are complaining about application of the registration requirement to them, based solely on their pre-act criminal conduct. As to all but Jane Doe III, who was not convicted until 1998, the application of that requirement truly is retrospective in its operation. It looks solely at their past conduct and uses that conduct not merely as a basis for future decision-making by the state, in regard to things such as the issuance of a license, or as a bar to certain future conduct by the Does, such as voting. Rather, it specifically requires the Does to fulfill a new obligation and imposes a new duty to register and to maintain and update the registration regularly, based solely on their offenses prior to its enactment. This violates the standard set out in Bliss and violates our constitutional bar on laws retrospective in operation.