Court Lets Sex Offender Law Stand
©The Associated Press (4/3/2000)
By RICHARD CARELLI

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court today rejected a challenge to a Tennessee law - similar to those in all 50 states - aimed at helping government officials and the public keep track of anyone ever convicted of a sex crime.

The court, without comment, left intact a ruling that says the law does not invade anyone's privacy or violate any other constitutionally protected rights.

All 50 states have some type of sexual offender law modeled after a federal ``Megan's Law,'' named for a New Jersey girl who was raped and killed by a released convict in her neighborhood.

The Tennessee law, which imposes registration and monitoring requirements that potentially can last for an ex-convict's lifetime, took effect in 1995 but applies retroactively to people previously convicted of sex crimes ranging from statutory rape and solicitation to incest and aggravated rape.

Arthur Cutshall, who in 1990 had been imprisoned after pleading guilty to aggravated sexual battery of a 5-year-old relative in Greene County, sued when he learned that he would have to register with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation when freed in 1997.

He contended, among other things, that the law should not be applied retroactively, punished him twice for the same crime and violated his privacy rights.

A federal judge and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Cutshall and upheld the law.

``The focus of the act is not on circumscribing the conduct of the offender, but on the protection of the public,'' an appeals court panel said in its 2-1 ruling last October.

Cutshall's Supreme Court appeal said the law was meant to punish already-punished sex offenders and therefore violates the Constitution's double-jeopardy protection.

The appeal also attacked the law's provision for public release of registration information. ``The public may very well use the information to locate offenders and their families so they can attack them, harass them, or otherwise seek to drive them from the community as has happened on several occasions,'' it said.

The appeal added: ``The Tennessee act and similar other acts raise foundational issues of federal law regarding the manner in which the regulation of undesirable conduct may be balanced against the punishment of past offenses and about the types of personal interests and rights that government may infringe without providing even minimal due-process protections.''

State prosecutors urged the justices to reject the appeal. They said the Tennessee Legislature's motives were not punitive, but only ``to comply with federal law, to assist law enforcement in solving crimes and to help the public protect itself.''

The nation's highest court previously had rejected challenges of similar laws in New York and New Jersey.

But in January, the justices refused to revive a Pennsylvania law that required some sex offenders to be designated ``sexually violent predators'' subject to lifetime registration and public notice of their address. That law, struck down by the state's supreme court, allowed the state to assume people convicted of certain crimes are violent predators unless they prove otherwise.

The case acted on today is Cutshall vs. Sundquist, 99-1123.

On the Net:

For the appeals court ruling: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 6th Circuit.