Opinion ID: 623395
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Current Law on Retroactivity of SORNA

Text: Absent a valid rule by the Attorney General, SORNA is not retroactive to defendants like Flowers and Stevenson who were convicted of sex offenses requiring them to register before July 27, 2006. Reynolds v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 975, 984, 181 L.Ed.2d 935 (2012) (resolving Circuit split); Cain, 583 F.3d at 419. Pre-enactment offenders cannot be convicted of violating SORNA for interstate travel completed before the Attorney General issues a final rule. In deciding Reynolds, the Supreme Court left open whether any of the many rules issued after SORNA's enactment constituted such a valid rule. It simply ruled that SORNA's retroactive application to prior offenders was not self-executing. The only issue in the case before us, therefore, is whether the Attorney General had issued a valid rule at the time of Stevenson's and Flowers's interstate travel in 2009. In Cain, 583 F.3d at 422-24, we held that the Interim Rule issued by the Attorney General in February 2007 was not valid under the APA because the Attorney General lacked good cause to dispense with the notice-and-comment and thirty-day publication requirements. [2] Because the defendant in Cain traveled in March of 2007, before the close of the comments period, the court in Cain took no position regarding whether SORNA would be validly retroactive against those who traveled following the close of comments on April 30, 2007, or thirty days thereafter on May 30, 2007. Id. at 423 n. 6, 424 n. 7. We resolved the issue left open in Cain when we decided Utesch. 596 F.3d at 310. The defendant in Utesch traveled interstate in November 2007. Utesch held that the Interim Rule was invalid under the APA, even following the close of comments and thirty days of publication. Id. ([W]e have no indication that the notice-and-comment process was actually carried out.). We held this procedural deficiency was not harmless error because the affected parties [had] no opportunity to participate in the crafting of the interim rule before it purported to take effect against them. Id. at 312. Utesch also held that the preliminary SMART guidelines published in May 2007 could not make SORNA retroactive because the APA process was not complete at the time of the defendant's travel in November 2007. Id. at 310-11. We concluded, however, that the process used by the Attorney General for the final SMART guidelines was precisely what the APA requires. Id. at 310. The guidelines were made available for comment, and following review and discussion of the comments, the Attorney General issued a final rule on July 2, 2008. Because the APA requires thirty days before a rule can become effective, we determined that the SMART guidelines became effective on August 1, 2008. The government's sole argument on appeal is that the district court's dismissals of Stevenson's and Flowers's indictments must be reversed because Utesch held that SORNA became retroactive on August 1, 2008. Stevenson and Flowers were indicted for traveling and failing to register in 2009. If the SMART guidelines were indeed a valid final rule, the district court's holdings must be reversed. Although the government is correct that Utesch unequivocally states, SORNA became effective against offenders convicted before its enactment ... on August 1, 2008, 596 F.3d at 311, the defendants are correct that this language is technically dictum because it was not necessary to the holding. See Williams v. Anderson, 460 F.3d 789, 811 (6th Cir.2006). At issue in Utesch was only whether the proposed SMART guidelines could be a valid final rule, because those were the only published guidelines available at the time of the defendant's interstate travel. Although useful to our analysis, our conclusion regarding when the SMART guidelines became final was not required in order for us to hold that there was no valid rule in place at the time of Utesch's travel in November 2007 or for us to hold that the Attorney General's errors in promulgating the Interim Rule were not harmless. The government also argues that this court's opinion in United States v. Trent, 654 F.3d 574, 581 (6th Cir.2011), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 1542, ___ L.Ed.2d ___, No. 11-611, 2012 WL 538719 (Feb. 21, 2012), confirmed that the effective-date language in Utesch was not dicta. This argument is unavailing, however, because the defendant in Trent was also indicted for travel in the fall of 2007, well before the SMART guidelines were final. Therefore, although the Trent court's discussion of the analysis in Utesch further supports the soundness of using August 1, 2008, as the date SORNA became retroactive, the language remains not binding. Williams, 460 F.3d at 811. At this time, we have not found any Court of Appeals that has addressed the question of the validity of the final SMART guidelines to a defendant who traveled after August 1, 2008. The Ninth Circuit also uses August 1, 2008, as the date SORNA became retroactive, but announced the rule under similar circumstances as we did in Utesch, where the defendant's travel was prior to the finalization of those guidelines. United States v. Valverde, 628 F.3d 1159, 1164 (9th Cir. 2010), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 1534, ___ L.Ed.2d ___, No. 11-40, 2012 WL 538716 (Feb. 21, 2012); see also United States v. Dietrich, 409 Fed.Appx. 993, 994 (9th Cir.2011) (unpublished opinion). Of the few district courts to address interstate travel by defendants following August 1, 2008, all have used the date that the SMART guidelines became final as the date that SORNA became retroactive, with the exception of the district court in this case. See, e.g., United States v. Kidd, No. 3:11-CR-20, 2011 WL 3352457, at -6 (E.D.Tenn. Aug. 3, 2011); United States v. Mattix, Crim. No. 10-397-HA, 2011 WL 1792144, at -4 (D.Or. May 10, 2011), appeal docketed, No. 12-30013 (9th Cir. Jan. 10, 2012); United States v. Ross, 778 F.Supp.2d 13, 20-23 (D.D.C.2011); United States v. Cotton, 760 F.Supp.2d 116, 132 (D.D.C.2011); United States v. Jackson, No. CR-09-1115 JF, 2010 WL 3325611, at -14 (N.D.Cal. Aug. 23, 2010) (order); United States v. Coleman, Crim. No. 09-30-ART, 2009 WL 4255545, at  (E.D.Ky. Nov. 24, 2009). To the extent that the defendants in these cases raised challenges to the SMART guidelines under the APA, and it is not clear how extensively they did, the district courts consistently rejected such arguments. See, e.g., Mattix, 2011 WL 1792144, at ; Ross, 778 F.Supp.2d at 21-22. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that our reasoning in Utesch remains sound; the SMART guidelines made SORNA retroactive when they became final on August 1, 2008. The defendants' arguments to the contrary are not persuasive.