Opinion ID: 6115774
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: punitive effects

Text: Because we conclude that the Legislature likely intended SORA as a civil regulation, we must now determine “whether the statutory scheme is so punitive either in purpose or effect as to negate the State’s intention to deem it civil.” Earl, 495 Mich at 38 (quotation marks, citation, and brackets omitted). Again, a challenging party must provide 16 “the clearest proof” of the statutory scheme’s punitive character in order “to [successfully] negate the State’s intention to deem it civil.” Hendricks, 521 US at 361 (quotation marks, citation, and brackets omitted). In determining whether defendant has satisfied this burden, we do not examine individual provisions of SORA in isolation but instead assess SORA’s punitive effect in light of all the act’s provisions when viewed as a whole. See Smith, 538 US at 92, 94, 96-97, 99, 104-105; see also Doe v State, 167 NH 382, 402; 111 A3d 1077 (2015) (holding that the punitive-effect “inquiry cannot be answered by looking at the effect of any single provision in the abstract”; rather, a court “must consider the effect of all the provisions and their cumulative impact upon the defendant’s rights”) (quotation marks and citations omitted). 13 We assess in turn each of the Mendoza-Martinez factors that the United States Supreme Court identified as relevant in Smith.
This Mendoza-Martinez factor asks this Court to consider whether SORA has “been regarded in our history and traditions as a form of criminal punishment.” Earl, 495 Mich at 45. Sex-offender registries are of relatively recent origin and so have no direct analogies in this nation’s history and traditions. See Smith, 538 US at 97. However, the 2011 SORA does resemble, in some respects, the traditional punishments of banishment, shaming, and parole. 13 Although the challenge to the New Hampshire SORA addressed in Doe was brought under its state constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws and not the federal Constitution, the New Hampshire Supreme Court relied on federal precedent to aid in its analysis of the issue. Doe, 167 NH at 396. Moreover, we find the analysis in Doe consistent with Smith, in which the United States Supreme Court analyzed whether Alaska’s SORA had a punitive effect by considering the statute’s aggregate effects rather than each provision in isolation. 17 In regard to banishment, the 2011 SORA’s student-safety zones excluded registrants from working, living, or loitering within 1,000 feet of school property. See MCL 28.733 to MCL 28.736, as amended by 2005 PA 121. Unlike traditional banishment, these exclusion zones did not explicitly exile a registrant from the community. See United States v Ju Toy, 198 US 253, 269-270; 25 S Ct 644; 49 L Ed 1040 (1905). But they might have effectively banished a registrant from living within the community. For example, in urban areas that host several schools within their geographic borders, the 1,000-foot restriction emanating from each school might have eliminated access to affordable housing. See, e.g., Does I, 834 F3d at 702 (providing a visual representation of exclusion zones in Grand Rapids). Or, in rural areas with fewer schools but concentrated community areas, the 1,000-foot restriction might have eliminated a registrant’s access to employment and resources within the town or city center. And available homeless shelters might have also been encompassed by the 1,000-foot residency restriction. Compare with Smith, 538 US at 101 (noting that the 2003 Alaska sex-offender registry, which the United States Supreme Court held did not violate ex post facto protections, left registrants “free to move where they wish[ed] and to live and work as other citizens”). The 2011 SORA also resembles the punishment of shaming. The breadth of information available to the public—far beyond a registrant’s criminal history—as well as the option for subscription-based notification of the movement of registrants into a particular zip code, increased the likelihood of social ostracism based on registration. While the initial version of SORA might have been “more analogous to a visit to an official archive of criminal records than it is to a scheme forcing an offender to appear in public with some visible badge of past criminality,” Smith, 538 US at 99, its 2011 iteration 18 contained more personal information and required less effort to access that information. The public-facing registry contained not only information regarding a registrant’s criminal conviction but also the registrant’s home address, place of employment, sex, race, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, discernible features, and tier classification. When SORA’s notification provision was used, members of the public were alerted to this information without active effort on their behalf, in sharp contrast with the endeavor of visiting an official archive for information. Further, a registrant’s information could precede his entrance into a community, increasing the likelihood of ostracism. MCL 28.721a itself—the Legislature’s statement of its intent in enacting SORA—refers to providing the public, not just law enforcement, with the means to monitor persons with sex-offense convictions, encouraging public participation and engagement with the registry and furthering the stigma of registration. See Doe, 167 NH at 406 (“Placing offenders’ pictures and information online serves to notify the community, but also holds them out for others to shame or shun.”). As with banishment, however, the 2011 SORA does not perfectly resemble the traditional punishment of shaming. See Smith, 538 US at 97-98 (describing traditional shaming punishments such as requiring offenders to stand in public with signs describing their crimes or branding offenders in order to inflict permanent stigma). The 2011 SORA did not provide a conduit for the public to directly criticize and shame registrants—as it would have, for example, if it provided an online forum or area for comments in addition to the online registry. 14 14 In fact, SORA’s main page warns that “[i]nformation on this site must not be used to unlawfully injure, harass, or commit a crime against any individual named in the registry or residing or working at any reported address” and that “[a]ny such action could result in 19 Finally, the 2011 SORA also resembles parole. 15 Although registrants need not have sought permission to make life changes, they were not free to live and work where they desired because of the student-safety zones. Registrants, like parolees, were required to periodically report in person to law enforcement. See MCL 28.725a(3), as amended by 2011 PA 17; MCL 28.725(1), as amended by 2011 PA 17. They were also required to pay registration fees. See MCL 28.725a(6), as amended by 2011 PA 17. Failure to comply with SORA’s requirements, like the failure to comply with parole conditions, potentially subjects the offender to imprisonment. See MCL 28.729(1), as amended by 2011 PA 18. Further, as with parole, a law enforcement officer at any time could have investigated a registrant’s status based on an anonymous tip. The 2011 SORA thus imposed a significant amount of supervision by the state on registrants. This amount of supervision differentiates civil or criminal penalties.” Michigan State Police, Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry (accessed June 4, 2021) [https://perma.cc/K2FJ-69XF]. 15 The prosecutor argues that any resemblance of the 2011 SORA’s requirements to parole is not relevant to this specific Mendoza-Martinez factor because it is not a colonial-era punishment like banishment and shaming. But the prosecutor identifies no such “colonialera” limitation imposed by the United States Supreme Court’s reference to “traditions” and “history” in Smith. Admittedly, in Smith, 538 US at 101, the Court discussed supervised release only in terms of the restraint imposed and not in relation to traditional punishment. But in the absence of a specific, explicit limitation, we decline to foreclose comparison to a mode of punishment that has been available in this country for more than 100 years. United States Department of Justice, United States Parole Commission, History of the Federal Parole System (May 2003), p 1, available at (accessed June 4, 2021) [https://perma.cc/8M9B-AHZQ]. Further, as the Supreme Court explained in Smith, 538 US at 97, “[a] historical survey can be useful because a State that decides to punish an individual is likely to select a means deemed punitive in our tradition, so that the public will recognize it as such.” The same reasoning applies here when comparing the 2011 SORA to this country’s longstanding use of parole. 20 the 2011 SORA from the 2003 Alaska sex-offender registry, which the United States Supreme Court held did not resemble parole because registrants were “free to move where they wish and to live and work as other citizens” and because registrants were not required to make periodic updates to law enforcement in person. Smith, 538 US at 101-102. Neither of these characteristics is true of the 2011 SORA. In conclusion, the 2011 SORA bears significant resemblance to the traditional punishments of banishment, shaming, and parole because of its limitations on residency and employment, publication of information and encouragement of social ostracism, and imposition of significant state supervision.
This Mendoza-Martinez factor asks this Court to “inquire how the effects of” the 2011 SORA “are felt by those subject to it.” Smith, 538 US at 99-100. “If the disability or restraint is minor and indirect, its effects are unlikely to be punitive.” Id. at 100. Imprisonment is the “paradigmatic” affirmative restraint, id., and the 2011 SORA ensured adherence to its many requirements on the potential for imposition of imprisonment. Although SORA has always contained such a penalty provision, the conditions that a registrant must satisfy to avoid incarceration have increased. See Doe, 167 NH at 403 (explaining that courts have found sex-offender registry requirements “to be amplified” when “the failure to comply with the requirements could result in harsh prosecution and penalties, such as a fine or imprisonment”). Even those who adhered faithfully to the 2011 SORA’s requirements were subject to onerous burdens. As discussed earlier, the 2011 SORA affirmatively barred registrants 21 from living, working, and loitering in large regions of the state through the student-safety zones. The application of these exclusionary zones also had substantial collateral consequences, including limiting access to public transportation, employment opportunities, educational opportunities, resources like counseling and mental-health treatment, and medical care such as residential nursing homes. The 2011 SORA’s definition of “loiter”—“to remain for a period of time and under circumstances that a reasonable person would determine is for the primary purpose of observing or contacting minors,” MCL 28.733(b), as amended by 2005 PA 121—was also arguably broad enough to encompass parenting activities such as attending parent–teacher conferences, attending student sporting events, or transporting children to school. Further, the student-safety zones also risked preventing registrants from establishing a permanent home, given that registrants were not excepted from the residency ban if a school opened within 1,000 feet of their established home. See MCL 28.735, as amended by 2005 PA 322. The in-person reporting requirements imposed by former MCL 28.725(1) also imposed affirmative disabilities on registrants. Upon numerous life events, including moving residences, changing employment, changing educational status, changing names, making plans to reside outside of the home for more than 7 days, and changing vehicles, registrants were required to provide an in-person update to law enforcement within three days. MCL 28.725(1), as amended by 2011 PA 17. Particularly onerous was the requirement in former MCL 28.725(1)(f) of immediate in-person reporting when a registrant established “any electronic mail or instant message address, or any other designations used in internet communications or postings.” Given the ubiquity of the Internet in daily life, this requirement might have been triggered dozens of times within a 22 year. 16 In addition to the in-person reporting requirements triggered by life events, each registrant was required to make periodic in-person reports to law enforcement: for Tier I offenders, yearly; for Tier II offenders, semiannually; and for Tier III offenders, quarterly. MCL 28.725a(3), as amended by 2011 PA 17. 17 Cumulatively, these frequent in-person reports imposed a burden on registrants, especially for those who might have had difficulty traveling to make the reports—such as those who did not have access to public transportation, did not have the financial resources necessary for private or public transportation, or had health or accessibility issues that would have impeded transportation. See State v Letalien, 985 A2d 4, 24-25; 2009 ME 130 (2009) (“[I]t belies common sense to suggest that a newly imposed lifetime obligation to report to a police station every ninety days to verify one’s identification, residence, and school, and to submit to fingerprinting and provide a current photograph, is not a substantial disability or restraint on the free exercise of individual liberty.”). In sum, the 2011 SORA imposed onerous restrictions on registrants by restricting their residency and employment, and it also imposed significant affirmative obligations by requiring extensive in-person reporting. 16 The prosecutor’s position that these in-person reporting requirements were “no worse than having to appear in person to secure a driver’s license”—an event generally required once every eight years—is without merit given that these requirements are wholly dissimilar. 17 When considered in conjunction with the length of time registrants were required to remain registered under MCL 28.725(11) to (13), this means that—not including any inperson reports initiated by the registrant’s life changes—Tier I registrants would make, at minimum, 15 trips to a registration site; Tier II registrants would make, at minimum, 50 trips to a registration site; and Tier III registrants would likely make more than 100 trips to a registration site. 23
This Mendoza-Martinez factor asks the Court to consider whether the 2011 SORA promotes the traditional aims of punishment: retribution and specific and general deterrence. See Earl, 495 Mich at 46. As the prosecutor concedes, SORA promotes the aim of deterrence. Deterrence is necessarily encompassed by SORA’s stated purpose of “preventing and protecting against the commission of future criminal sexual acts by convicted sex offenders.” MCL 28.721a. The extensive requirements of the 2011 SORA also generally deterred potential offenders by increasing the resultant consequences of sexual predation. Yet the aim of deterrence alone does not render a statute punitive. See Smith, 538 US at 102. As the United States Supreme Court has reasoned, “To hold that the mere presence of a deterrent purpose renders such sanctions ‘criminal’ . . . would severely undermine the Government’s ability to engage in effective regulation.” Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted). However, the deterrent effect of the 2011 SORA is not merely an indirect consequence, incidental to its regulatory function, but instead a main feature of the statutory scheme. See MCL 28.721a. The 2011 SORA also supports the aim of retribution. The 2011 SORA was imposed on offenders for the sole fact of their prior offenses and made no individualized determination of the dangerousness of each registrant, indicating that SORA’s restrictions were retribution for past offenses rather than regulations to prevent future offenses. 18 See 18 Although the 2011 SORA organized offenders into tiers on the basis of the offenses committed and then based the length of registration on that tier, all tiers were generally subject to the same requirements and restrictions regardless of the risk of recidivism the registrants posed individually. 24 Smith, 538 US at 109 (Souter, J., concurring in the judgment) (“The fact that the Act uses past crimes as the touchstone, probably sweeping in a significant number of people who pose no real threat to the community, serves to feed suspicion that something more than regulation of safety is going on; when a legislature uses prior convictions to impose burdens that outpace the law’s stated civil aims, there is room for serious argument that the ulterior purpose is to revisit past crimes, not prevent future ones.”). In sum, because the 2011 SORA aimed to protect the public through deterrence and because its restrictions appear retributive, the 2011 SORA promotes the traditional aims of punishment.
Next, this Court must consider whether the 2011 SORA has a rational connection to a nonpunitive purpose. See Earl, 495 Mich at 46. A rational connection is all that is required; “[a] statute is not deemed punitive simply because it lacks a close or perfect fit with the nonpunitive aims it seeks to advance.” Smith, 538 US at 103 (opinion of the Court). Again, the asserted goal of the Legislature is to “provide law enforcement and the people of this state with an appropriate, comprehensive, and effective means to monitor those persons” who have committed a specified sex offense and who are therefore considered to “pose[] a potential serious menace and danger to the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the people . . . of this state.” MCL 28.721a. The protection of citizens from potentially dangerous sex offenders is “a compelling state interest in furtherance of the state’s police powers.” Letalien, 985 A2d at 22. The 2011 SORA, by identifying 25 potentially recidivist sex offenders and alerting the public, seeks to further the nonpunitive purpose of public safety. Accordingly, given the low bar of rationality, the 2011 SORA is connected to a nonpunitive purpose.
The final Mendoza-Martinez factor to be assessed is “whether the regulatory means chosen are reasonable in light of the nonpunitive objective.” Smith, 538 US at 105 (opinion of the Court). Similar to the rational-connection determination, the lynchpin of this analysis is “reasonableness,” not “whether the legislature has made the best choice possible to address the problem it seeks to remedy.” Id. The Legislature’s asserted nonpunitive goal was based on the Legislature’s determination that “a person who has been convicted of committing an offense covered by [SORA] poses a potential serious menace and danger to the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the people, and particularly the children, of this state.” MCL 28.721a. Central to our inquiry, then, is whether the 2011 SORA is a reasonable means of protecting the public from sex offenders who allegedly pose such a “potential serious menace.” Id. 19 19