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How Broad is the Longoria Rule: Enough to Change Failure-to-Register Practice?

By Eric L. Lipman

In an interesting published opinion issued today, a unanimous panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the imposition of a 10-year period of conditional release for an offender whose failure to register as predatory offender began before the effective date of the statute authorizing this penalty, but continued after the date on which the new penalty became effective.

In May of 2005, Ernesto Longoria, a Level III predatory offender, registered that he was living at an address on Robie Street in Saint Paul. Sometime thereafter, Longoria left this address and began residing elsewhere. However, Longoria did not, as required by Minnesota?s predatory offender statute, apprise state officials of his new address more than 5 days before his move. Still later, in late August of 2005, St. Paul Police Officers verified that Longoria was no longer living at the Robie Street address ? and, according to a fellow tenant, had not lived there for months.

On August 1, 2005, a new Minnesota statute, imposing a ten-year conditional release period upon Level III offenders who are convicted of failing to maintain their registration information, became effective.

Longoria later pled guilty to a failure to register offense. As part of the sentence for that crime, the District Court imposed the new, ten-year period of conditional release. Through a motion for post-conviction relief, Longoria sought to set-aside this portion of his sentence.

Denying Longoria?s request for post-conviction relief, the appellate panel cited approvingly the District Court?s holding that ?even if petitioner was in violation of the statute by moving from the Robie address prior to August 1, 2005, he continued to be in violation each and every day thereafter until such time as he properly registered. Under the registration statute, the state is only required to establish the element of non-registration on any particular date, as opposed to establishing the date upon which a defendant moved.?

This last observation had me thinking. A frequent source of conflict between state law enforcement officials and the prosecutors that pursue failure to register crimes is whether proof of the address that a predatory offender has relocated to is required in order to mount a successful prosecution of a failure to register crime. As with Longoria, for example, St. Paul Police officers knew that he was no longer living at his registered address on Robie Street ? although they may not have been certain where he had gone from there. Some prosecutors will insist that police first establish ?the new, destination address? before they will pursue a failure to register charge against an offender; whereas some other prosecutors are willing to file a criminal complaint knowing only that the predatory offender is not where he said he would be.

Accordingly, if the meaning of the Longoria case is that offenders with registration crimes that span the first week of August 2005, will be subject to conditional release periods, the impact of today?s holding will be fairly modest. There are not that many offenders whose crimes involve these particular facts. However, if the panel?s instruction is to be understood that ?the state is only required to establish the element of non-registration on any particular date,? and presumably not the ?destination address,? this could have an impact upon a wide-range of cases.

The panel?s complete analysis is accessible here.

Full post as published by Within the Scope on May 13, 2008 (boomark / email).