Court Opinion

ID: 9805052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 17:31:06.609229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:34:17.572080
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, P.J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
T 1 I concur in the Court's conclusion that the order appealed is not one suppressing evidence and therefore an appeal by the State cannot proceed under section 1053(5) of Title 22. However, statutes and prior case law providing for an order quashing or setting aside an information, or granting a demurrer, are limited to certain defects appearing "on the face" of the information or indictment or in the grand jury process. 22 O.S.2011, § 493, 504; State v. Hammond, 1989 OK CR 25, ¶ 5, 775 P.2d 826, 828, overruled on other grounds, State v. Young, *111994 OK CR 25, 874 P.2d 57.1
T2 The order here essentially granted a motion to quash for insufficient evidence pursuant to section 504.1 of Title 22, because the defendant, in the view of the trial court, was able to "establish beyond the fuce of the ... information that there is insufficient evidence" of one of the "necessary elements of the offense," ie., that the defendant's failure to register was unlawful. Id. (emphasis added). I therefore concur that the State can maintain this appeal from an order quashing the information for insufficient evidence under section 1053(4).
13 I respectfully dissent from the opinion affirming the trial court's dismissal of this criminal charge. Today the Court compounds the interpretive error committed in State v. Salathiel, 2013 OK CR 16, 313 P.3d 263, where it affirmed a trial court's dismissal of a felony charge of DUI, second offense. The defendant in Soulathiel had incurred a prior deferred judgment for DUI before the effective date of a 2011 amendment making a second DUI after a prior DUI deferred judgment a felony.
T4 The Court in Salathiel was unable to strike down the amended DUI statute as an ex post facto law. The entire weight of authority was against it. Still, the Court upheld the dismissal, applying a common law "presumption" that the new law making a deferred judgment a predicate offense for felony DUI applied only prospectively. The Court thus limited its application to defendants who, after the effective date of the amendment, first incurred a deferred judgment for DUI and then committed a second DUI offense. That the Legislature anticipated or intended this bizarre construction "taxes the credulity of the credulous." Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. -, 133 S.Ct. 1958, 1980, 186 L.Ed.2d 1 (2013) (Scalia, J., dissenting).2
1 5 By today's use of the same common law presumption, the Court holds that the defendant's obligation to register as a sex offender became fixed for all time on the date he suffered conviction or was sentenced as a sex offender; and that later, more restrictive enactments, cannot alter his initial obligation to register. Appealing to the "general common law rule" that statutory amendments are prospective only, absent clear legislative intent, the Court omits the important proviso that "remedial or procedural statutes which do not create, enlarge, diminish, or destroy vested rights are generally held to operate retrospectively." State v. Watkins, 1992 OK CR 50, ¶ 5, 837 P.2d 477, 478 (quoting Welch v. Armer, 1989 OK 117, ¶ 27, 776 P.2d 847, 850).
T6 The common law presumption against retroactive legislation typically has guided the interpretation of civil and eriminal procedure statutes by avoiding constructions that abridge vested legal rights and obligations. In Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994), the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff could not seek, after a non-jury trial on her employment discrimination claim, the benefit of new statutory amendments providing for money damages and a jury trial General Motors Corp. v. Romein, 503 U.S. 181, 112 S.Ct. 1105, 117 L.Ed.2d 328 (1992) held that a legislative amendment retroactively requiring refunds of certain reductions in workers' compensation benefits did not unconstitutionally impair the obligation of contracts or deny General Motors due process of law. These cases teach that some retroactive statutes may deprive persons "of legitimate expectations and upset settled transactions." *12Romein, 503 U.S. at 191, 112 S.Ct. at 1112 (emphasis added).
17 The other cases cited by the majority reinforce this essential point. In Good v. Keel, 29 Okla. 325, 116 P. 777, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held a condemnation statute could not retroactively authorize highway officials to condemn and take Indian land allotted prior to the passage of the statute. Adair v. McFarlin, 28 Okla. 633, 115 P. 787, held that a 1908 act did not retroactively divest the district court of jurisdiction in certain cases then pending under prior law. Casey v. Bingham, 37 Okla. 484, 132 P. 663, held that a 1908 statute purporting to void certain conveyances of land before the removal of restrictions on allotments did not affect deeds executed and delivered for valid consideration prior to its passage. Welch v. Armer, supra, held that an amendment affecting the rights and duties of parties to uninsured motorist contracts involved substantive changes and could not be retroactively applied to earlier contracts.
T8 State v. Watkins, supra, decided under the anti-retroactivity statute in section 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, held that a new statute of limitations could not retroactively extend the time for prosecuting crimes committed before its effective date. Id., 1992 OK CR 50, 16, 837 P.2d at 478. But the Court had previously held in Allen v. State, 1991 OK CR 35, ¶ 2 821 P.2d 371, that the anti-retroactivity statute is "applicable only to [amendments in] Title 22." Id., 1991 OK CR 35, 12, 821 P.2d at 877 (opinion denying rehearing). Watkins and its application of section 8 are therefore doubtful authority for the interpretation of statutory amendments found in Title 57.
T9 In sum, the anti-retroactivity cases selectively quoted by the Court have no application here. In those cases, contractual or procedural rights, title to real property, or lawful jurisdiction of pending actions, had already vested in the affected parties before the challenged amendment to existing law. These laws implicated detrimental reliance and settled matters that warranted non-ret-roactivity: Retroactive application would have abridged vested rights and violated legitimate expectations.
10 Unlike a law retroactively extinguishing an estate in property or the obligations of contract, the sex offender registration period in effect at the time of a guilty plea, sentence, or entry into the state subjecting the offender to registration, creates a current obligation with no enforceable due process or ex post facto limitation on potential future obligations. Watson v. State, 283 Ga.App. 635, 642 S.E.2d 328 (2007); Peters v. Donald, 282 Ga.App. 714, 639 S.E.2d 345 (2006)(amendment requiring sex offenders to register applied to defendants not required to register at the time of their guilty pleas, and was not ex post facto ).
T11 Sex offender registration laws are plainly subject to remedial amendments in the public interest affecting the obligations of pre-existing offenders. The clear purpose and intent of the Legislature in its original enactment of the sex offender registration law and subsequent amendments has been to aggressively deal with the perceived public safety threat posed by sex offenders. New registration requirements may be onerous; they may even be excessive and unwise, but they involve no abridgment of vested legal rights or violation of legitimate expectations in settled matters.
1 12 Such laws are not subject to an intrusive judicial presumption of anti-retroactivity that openly frustrates the policy of the Legislature. Failure to register as a sex offender has been a crime in Oklahoma for more than two decades. 57 O0.S.2011, § 587(A). Persons subject to new registration requirements are bound to take notice of their current obligations and comply, or face the current penalty for failing to do so, unless those requirements abridge specific constitutional guarantees. Smith, 538 U.S. 84, 123 S.Ct. 1140, 155 L.Ed.2d 164 (2003); Starkey, 2013 OK 43, ¶ 88, 305 P.3d at 1082 (Taylor, J. dissenting) (finding legislature intended SORA amendments to be retroactive to preexisting offenders, and amendments are not ex post facto ).
. 118 Assuming the 2004 and 2007 SORA amendments expanded this defendant's obligation to register, "(al statute is not made retroactive merely because it draws upon *13antecedent facts for its operation." Cox v. Hart, 260 U.S. 427, 435, 43 S.Ct. 154, 157, 67 L.Ed. 332 (1922). Prosecuting this sex offender for failing to register, in 2012, under a law in effect since at least 2007, involves no retroactive application of law, in the ex post facto sense, or any other. Thompson v. State, 278 Ga. 394, 603 S.E.2d 233 (2004) (finding statute prohibiting sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of play area created crime based on offender's status, but was not retrospective, or ex post facto, to defendant who suffered predicate conviction before effective date).
T 14 Because no constitutional law prohibits this prosecution for violating the registration requirements then in effect, I would reverse the district court and remand the case for trial.

. State v. Young overruled Hammond and several other cases only insofar as the latter held that a motion to set aside the information was not proper in misdemeanor cases. Young, 1994 OK CR 25, ¶ 4, 874 P.2d at 58.

. Should the Legislature respond to today's ruling by stating more clearly that future SORA amendments apply to pre-existing sex offenders, the Court will eventually be forced to address the ex post facto ruling of the Oklahoma Supreme Court in Starkey v. Oklahoma Department of Corrections, 2013 OK 43, 305 P.3d 1004, and the United States Supreme Court's arguably contrary holding in Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 123 S.Ct. 1140, 155 L.Ed.2d 164 (2003). I have previously expressed my agreement with the dissenters in Starkey that these SORA amendments are not ex post facto as applied to offenders convicted, sentenced, or otherwise made subject to Oklahoma sex offender registration requirements before the effective date of the amendments.