Court Rejects Megan’s Law Challenge

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a constitutional challenge to the original Megan’s Law, the much-copied New Jersey measure that requires sex offenders to register with police after their release from prison and in some cases notifies the neighborhood of their presence.

Without comment or dissent, the justices refused to hear offenders’ claims that the law amounts to a second, after-the-fact punishment for the same crime.

The high court’s action, while not an official ruling, clears away most legal doubts about these new laws, which are designed to alert communities to the danger posed by sexual predators.

Since 1994, all the states, as well as the federal government, have passed versions of Megan’s Law. The laws were named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was abducted and murdered on July 29, 1994, by a paroled sex offender who had moved into her neighborhood.

Her killer, Jesse Timmendequas, was convicted and sentenced to death.

Under Megan’s Law, all released sex offenders must register with the police. In the case of those who pose a moderate risk to commit further crimes, officials are obliged to notify schools, youth centers and day-care facilities of their presence in the community. In high-risk cases, officers go door-to-door notifying neighbors.

Monday’s court action was foreshadowed by a June ruling upholding a Kansas law that went beyond Megan’s Law. In California, Kansas and five other states, officials are authorized to send sex criminals to locked mental hospitals after they have served their prison terms.

On a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative majority upheld these “civil confinement” laws in the case of Kansas vs. Hendricks by defining the term “punishment” narrowly.

The Constitution’s bans on double jeopardy and ex post facto laws are commonly said to prohibit the imposition of a second or an after-the-fact punishment for a single offense. But the court’s conservative majority said that “punishment” refers only to a criminal prison term.

“Even though they may be confined” against their will, wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in June, Leroy Hendricks and his fellow Kansas sex offenders locked up in a state mental hospital “are [not] being punished.”

The U.S. court of appeals in Philadelphia followed this approach in upholding Megan’s Law. In August, the appeals court cited the decision in Kansas vs. Hendricks and said that the regulations affecting released sex offenders in New Jersey do not “constitute punishment” and therefore do not violate the Constitution.

However, the sex offenders won a partial victory, as well. The judges said that New Jersey officials bear the burden of showing in a judicial proceeding that a released offender poses a true risk to the community. While all released offenders must register with the police, only those judged to pose a risk are subject to the community notification rules.

Because each side in the litigation won on some points and lost on others, lawyers for both New Jersey and the sex offenders appealed to the Supreme Court and urged the justices to reconsider the issue.

But the Supreme Court decides legal questions, not just interesting or significant cases, and in this instance, it was clear that the high court already had resolved the legal questions. As a result, the appeals in both cases--W.P. vs. Verniero (the New Jersey attorney general), 97-887, and Verniero vs. W.P.--were denied without comment.

In other actions, the court:

* Agreed to rule on whether states can require persons gathering signatures for ballot initiatives to wear badges that say whether they are volunteers or paid for their work. A U.S. appeals court in Denver struck down such a Colorado requirement on free-speech grounds. The case (Buckley vs. American Constitutional Law Foundation, 97-930) will be heard in the fall.

* Refused to block at a preliminary stage a damage claim filed against nine federal agents by a man who was wounded during the 1992 shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. While government agents cannot be held liable for their actions if they follow the law as they understand it, this partial “immunity” does not shield them if they clearly violate the law. In this case (Smith vs. Harris, 97-1051) a federal judge, the U.S. court of appeals and now the Supreme Court have refused to block a suit alleging that the federal siege and shooting violated the constitutional rights of Kevin Harris, who was wounded.

* Cleared the way for broadcasters in the West to air ads promoting state-licensed casinos, such as those in Nevada. Since 1934, federal communications law has barred certain gambling ads, but that prohibition has been whittled away in a series of free-speech rulings. Two Nevada stations challenged the restriction and last year the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down as unconstitutional.

The Clinton administration appealed the ruling, which covers California, Nevada and seven other Western states. But without comment, the justices denied the appeal (United States vs. Valley Broadcasting, 97-1047).