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What Did He Know, When Did He Know It, and Frankly, How Can One Tell?

By Eric L. Lipman

On Tuesday, a divided panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued a decision that has had me ruminating throughout the week.

At issue in the case are the circumstances under which a Minnesota offender, who later relocates to another state, may be prosecuted for failing to update his Predatory Offender Registration. State and county officials sought to prosecute Damon Moore, a Level III offender, for failing to update his registration information following a move that he made from Illinois to Missouri.

Agents of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension track Minnesota offenders for the length of their registration periods, regardless of where those offenders later reside. As the appellate panel describes, the tracking of offenders who are now in other states ?facilitates other Minnesota purposes, such as notification of essential persons of where predators are, where they are not, and where they are likely to be.?

Following his extradition from Missouri back to Minnesota, Mr. Moore was charged with two failure-to-register crimes. The state sought to punish Moore for failing to renew his registration and failing to alert the BCA that he was moving from Illinois to Missouri. Moore?s defense was both that he did not knowingly fail to update his registration information ? because he was not aware that the renewal mailings were sent to his Chicago address ? and that Minnesota did not have the power to punish misconduct that happened entirely within the state of Illinois. The District disagreed and adjudged him guilty on each count.

A divided panel affirmed the trial court?s judgment in-part and reversed-in-part. The majority of the panel concluded that there was a sufficient nexus with the earlier sexual misconduct (that occurred in Minnesota) for state officials to prosecute Moore for a later failure to register. Perhaps more thought-provoking still, all three judges agreed that the serial mailings to Moore in Chicago (and his acknowledgement upon release from prison of an obligation to update his registration), were not enough to establish knowing violations of the registration law. As Judge Ross summarized: ?Because the state did not prove that Moore received the address-verification forms, we reverse the district court?s determination that Moore is guilty of failing to return them.?

This latter holding had me wondering whether personal service on in-state and out-of-state offenders will be required in order to establish that these offenders failed-to-register?

Likewise, if it becomes more difficult to track offenders who move to other states, do the political and policy incentives change, such that Minnesota officials will be less likely to approve requests for out-of-state transfers from these offenders? Will Minnesota now prefer to ?hold on? to these offenders, and supervise them within the state, or see them gone ? hoping that they will not return undetected?

The appellate panel?s complete, but unpublished analysis, is accessible here.

Full post as published by Within the Scope on April 25, 2008 (boomark / email).