Opinion ID: 716733
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Objective Purpose

Text: 125 The objective purpose prong asks three related questions. First, we must discern whether the law can be explained solely by a remedial purpose. See Halper, 490 U.S. at 448, 109 S.Ct. at 1901-02. Registration is a common and long-standing regulatory technique with a remedial purpose. See, e.g., New York v. Zimmerman, 278 U.S. 63, 49 S.Ct. 61, 73 L.Ed. 184 (1928) (registration of membership corporations and associations permissible); United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22, 73 S.Ct. 510, 97 L.Ed. 754 (1953) (registration of professional gamblers permissible), overruled on other grounds by Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 88 S.Ct. 697, 19 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 74 S.Ct. 808, 98 L.Ed. 989 (1954) (registration of lobbyists permissible). 28 One need look no further than the Selective Service to find a nonpunitive registration system for individuals. See Gillette v. United States, 401 U.S. 437, 91 S.Ct. 828, 28 L.Ed.2d 168 (1971) (sustaining selective service system against claim that it violated free exercise). 126 Here, the solely remedial purpose of helping law enforcement agencies keep tabs on these offenders fully explains requiring certain sex offenders to register. Registration may allow officers to prevent future crimes by intervening in dangerous situations. Like the agent who must endure the snow to fetch the soupmeat, the registrant may face some unpleasantness from having to register and update his registration. But the remedial purpose of knowing the whereabouts of sex offenders fully explains the registration provision just as the need for dinner fully explains the trip out into the night. And the means chosen--registration and law enforcement notification only--is not excessive in any way. Registration, therefore, is certainly reasonably related to a legitimate goal: allowing law enforcement to stay vigilant against possible re-abuse. 127 Second, we must consider history, and registration does not resemble punishment through a historical analysis. Artway spends much of his brief chronicling the historical understanding of public shame as punishment. Early forms of punishment contained strong elements of gross public humiliation .... Physical punishments ... were carried out publicly in ceremonial fashion [because it was] intended that the victim should be humiliated, for degradation figured largely in all contemporary theories of punishment. Jon A. Brilliant, Note, The Modern Day Scarlet Letter: A Critical Analysis of Modern Probation Conditions, 1989 Duke L.J. 1357, 1360-61 (internal quotations omitted); see also Ex Parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 428, 5 S.Ct. 935, 940, 29 L.Ed. 89 (1885) (cataloguing punishments that consist principally in their ignominy as set forth in Blackstone's Commentaries); Crime and Punishment in American History 40 (explaining that humiliating punishments were historically intended to serve as deterrents). 128 In particular, Artway argues that Megan's Law is analogous to that most famous badge of punishment: the Scarlet Letter. There can be no outrage ... against our common nature,----whatever be the delinquencies of the individual,----no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 63-64 (Random House 1950) (1850). Like the Scarlet Letter, Artway contends, Megan's Law results in public ostracism and opprobrium: it would subject him to potential vigilantism, impair his opportunities to work, and damage his abilities to develop and maintain stable relationships. In his submission, its remedial purpose----to protect the public from him----seeks to brand him as an outcast. Such a shunning by one's community is the essence of historical punishment, Artway contends. 129 Artway's argument has considerable force, but the notification issue is not before us. We evaluate only registration, and that provision bears little resemblance to the Scarlet Letter. Registration simply requires Artway to provide a package of information to local law enforcement; registration does not involve public notification. Without this public element, Artway's analogy fails. The Scarlet Letter and other punishments of shame and ignominy rely on the disgrace of an individual before his community. The act of registering with a discrete government entity, which is not authorized to release that information to the community at large (except in emergencies), cannot be compared to public humiliation. The officers who constitute local law enforcement, even if they are from Artway's area, would constitute only a de minimis portion of that community. And their ready access to criminal history information is an integral part of their jobs, rather than an extraordinary event likely to trigger opprobrium. 130 Artway relies on Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910), to establish that even registration is punishment. It does not aid his case. Weems struck down as cruel and unusual punishment a Philippine law that imposed horrible punishments for falsification of public documents. Id. at 363, 30 S.Ct. at 547-48. Any false entry, even if unintentional and with no ill effect, triggered the cadena temporal. Id. This punishment imposed hard and painful labor for a period from twelve years and a day to twenty years, shackled at the wrist and the ankle, with no access to family or loved ones, the extinguishment of civil rights while serving the sentence, perpetual disqualification from political rights, such as holding office, and surveillance. Id. at 363-64, 30 S.Ct. at 548. 131 The Weems Court confronted a different issue from the one in this case. The Court held that this harsh punishment as a whole was cruel and unusual for the relatively minor offense involved. Id. at 382, 30 S.Ct. at 555. And the surveillance statute that made up a minor part of the total punishment differed from Megan's Law in at least one significant respect: the unfortunate offender in Weems was required to obtain written permission before he could move. See id. at 363, 30 S.Ct. at 547-48. Given this larger context, the Court's dictum about the harshness of surveillance hardly establishes that registration is punishment. 132 Finally, because registration historically is a regulatory technique with a salutary purpose, any incidental purpose to deter future offenses by past sex offenders will not invalidate it under Kurth Ranch.