Opinion ID: 2738242
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: SORNA’s Reporting Obligation

Text: The reporting obligation under § 16913(c) arises as soon as the offender abandons his former residence, even if he has yet to establish a new, permanent residence. United States v. Murphy, 664 F.3d 798, 801–02 (10th Cir. 2011); see also United States v. Voice, 622 F.3d 870, 874–75 (8th Cir. 2010). Thus, although SORNA grants a three-day grace period, the offender is required to 2 The Constitution requires that venue must lie “in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed.” U.S. Const. Art. III, § 2, cl. 3; see also U.S. Const. Amend. VI (“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”). -7- report the change in status to at least one “jurisdiction involved” upon leaving his former residence. In many cases, the offender can satisfy his obligation by updating his registration in the new SORNA jurisdiction where he settles, as long as the registration takes place within three days of the abandonment of the prior residence. If it does not, then the offender “must register twice—within three days of abandoning his former residence, and within three days of establishing the new one.” Murphy, 664 F.3d at 803. In Murphy, the government successfully prosecuted the defendant in the departure district, and we affirmed his conviction. And although in Murphy we did not reach the question posed here—namely, whether the § 2250 offense actually occurs in the departure district—the facts of Murphy are instructive. In that case, we were asked to determine whether a sex offender subject to SORNA violated the statute when he abandoned his domestic residence and moved abroad. Specifically, the sex offender left Utah and traveled to Belize via California and Mexico. Because SORNA does not apply extraterritorially, Belize could not be a “jurisdiction involved” under the statute. Although this international aspect of the case made Murphy’s facts unusual, we found that the plain language of § 16913 obligated the defendant to update his registration in Utah, his departure district. Id. at 804. Importantly, the relevance of Murphy’s conclusion that the -8- violation of SORNA took place in the departure district is the product of two independent, but harmonious, interpretations of SORNA’s statutory language. 3 First, in Murphy we acknowledged that “a ‘jurisdiction where the offender resides’ and a ‘residence’ are two different concepts. Identifying a jurisdiction involved implicates a different inquiry than deciding whether a reporting obligation has arisen.” Id. at 801. For this reason, we concluded that Murphy was required to update his registration in Utah when he abandoned his “residence”: The record demonstrates Murphy knowingly violated SORNA by failing to update his registration. Although he had not yet established a new residence, Murphy changed his residence for SORNA purposes when he permanently left Bonneville. And although he was no longer residing at a particular location, Murphy’s reporting obligation did not end just because he left the state. As a result, a legal obligation to update his registration attached when he left Bonneville, while he was still in Utah, and not when he arrived in Belize. Id. at 803–04. 3 The district court did not rely on Murphy in deciding the evidence was sufficient to find that the violation of SORNA took place in Kansas. The court focused instead on the guidelines from the Attorney General discussed below. The district court distinguished Murphy because the issue there “was whether the defendant had violated SORNA” and the issue here “is where the defendant allegedly violated SORNA.” D. Ct. Op. at 7 (emphasis in the original). It is true Murphy focused on the occurrence of a violation in the first instance, but the location of the violation (Utah) was crucial to the decision. To this end, it is a fair inference from Murphy that a violation of § 2250 occurs—and thus venue is proper—in the location of the residence that the sex offender abandons. See also infra Part II.B.2. -9- The effect of Murphy’s holding is that the abandonment of a permanent residence triggers a sex offender’s obligation to update his registration. 4 To be sure, a sex offender convicted under state law cannot be in technical violation of § 2250 until he moves in interstate commerce and then fails to register, but it is the abandonment of the residence that sets this sequence in motion. In this way, the abandonment activates the reporting obligation’s three-day timer and signifies the commencement of the offense. This logic necessarily permits venue to lie in the departure district. Alternatively, Murphy holds that, for the purposes of § 16913, the departure district remains a “jurisdiction involved” even after the sex offender has left the state. “When an offender leaves a residence in a state, and then leaves the state entirely, that state remains a jurisdiction involved. Even if a sex offender plans on leaving a state permanently, his reporting obligation to a jurisdiction involved remains.” Murphy, 664 F.3d at 803. As a “jurisdiction involved,” the government can use the departure district as the venue for prosecuting his failure to register. Evidence that the sex offender never registered after leaving his 4 Lewis points to the Supreme Court’s decision in Carr v. United States, but that case does not dictate an alternative conclusion. See 560 U.S. at 456. There, the Supreme Court found that the elements of § 2250 must be met sequentially in order for a violation to transpire. In this case, we simply hold that a conditional obligation is triggered when the offender abandons his residence, not when he crosses state lines. When the offender thereafter completes steps two (crossing state lines) and three (failing to register) sequentially, he is subject to prosecution in the departure district. -10- original jurisdiction of residence is sufficient to prove that he violated the statute in the departure jurisdiction. This is also the conclusion endorsed by the National Guidelines for Sex Offender Registration and Notification. See generally Office of the Attorney General, The National Guidelines for Sex Offender Registration and Notification, 73 Fed. Reg. 38030–01 (July 2, 2008). Those guidelines, on which the district court relied, establish that the district from which a sex offender departs—or abandons his residence—is still a “jurisdiction involved” under SORNA. See 42 U.S.C. § 16913; Attorney General Guidelines, 73 Fed. Reg. at 38030–01. This is because even when the offender travels in interstate commerce and updates his status in a new district, the new district must provide notice to the former state of residence to fortify SORNA’s interconnected web of state registries. Thus, the defendant’s failure to update his registration has disrupted the intended seamless web of SORNA protection by not alerting all relevant jurisdictions of his whereabouts. The implication is that the departure jurisdiction may be a “jurisdiction involved” even after the sex offender has left. Attorney General Guidelines, 73 Fed. Reg. at 38030–01. Lewis argues that Murphy is wrongly decided, and points to the Eighth Circuit’s recent decision in United States v. Lunsford, 725 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2013), for support. In that case, the court concluded “that an offender who leaves a domestic jurisdiction for a foreign jurisdiction” need not “necessarily . . . -11- update his registration in the domestic jurisdiction where he formerly resided.” Id. at 862 (emphasis added). But on the venue issue, the Lunsford court did not dispute circuit precedent previously holding that a sex offender who departs from one SORNA jurisdiction to another without updating his registration in either jurisdiction may be prosecuted—that is, venue is proper—in the departure jurisdiction. See id. at 863 (citing United States v. Howell, 552 F.3d 709 (8th Cir. 2009)). Although Lunsford criticized Howell to the extent that it might be read to say that a sex offender is necessarily “required by [federal] law . . . to notify the [departure district’s] offender registry of his move,” Howell, 552 F.3d at 718, Lunsford did not dispute Howell’s holding at least insofar as it found venue is proper in the departure jurisdiction where it is clear that the sex offender failed to register in any domestic jurisdiction. Lunsford, 725 F.3d at 863. And unlike Howell, our decision here does not establish a mandatory federal reporting obligation in the departure district—the offender could update his registration by contacting either the departure jurisdiction or the arrival jurisdiction; when he fails to do one or the other, he has violated the federal statute in both, and venue lies in either. In sum, we find Murphy’s logic controlling because it establishes that a violation of § 2250 occurs in the departure district. After leaving Kansas and failing to register, Lewis was a fugitive subject to prosecution in Kansas because (1) abandoning his residence there triggered his reporting obligation, and (2) -12- Kansas remained a “jurisdiction involved” under SORNA because he never registered in another jurisdiction.