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Legal News

: Lawbeat

How did sex-offender ruling run off the rails?

By Mark Obbie

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Pity Jim Leusner. The Orlando Sentinel reporter had a tough assignment on Friday: to explain an esoteric legal principle that had an incendiary result. Judging from the comments that readers posted on his article, he wasn't entirely successful. But I only assign some of the blame for that to him. Leusner reported on a decision by a federal district judge in Orlando, Gregory Presnell, that freed two sex offenders accused of violating the federal Adam Walsh Act. The law, formally known as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, requires convicted offenders to register with local authorities if they move to a new state. Presnell ruled the law unconstitutional, as a violation of the Commerce Clause. Here's how Leusner introduced that concept:

U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell on Friday ruled that the 2006 federal law requiring state sex offenders to register with law-enforcement officials when they move across state lines was largely a local issue.

True enough. But it's not as though Presnell woke up Friday morning and decided that sex-offender registration just struck him as a local issue. He was interpreting the Commerce Clause and extensive case law on the question of when Congress oversteps its bounds to meddle in state-law questions. Experts like Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Corey Rayburn Yung at Sex Crimes don't agree on the legal correctness of Presnell's decision. Judges who've been ruling on the same issue don't all agree. Courts have been wrestling for generations with questions of what the Commerce Clause means. Did Leusner explain what debate the judge had waded into? Not quite. He did paraphrase defense counsel's argument that "Congress lacked the authority to force state sex offenders solely convicted of local offenses to register," and then quoted Presnell:

"The Adam Walsh Act was enacted with a commendable goal -- to protect the public from sex offenders," Presnell wrote. "However, a worthy cause is not enough to transform a state concern [sex-offender registration] into a federal crime."

In his last two grafs of a 13-graf story, Leusner wrote:

Presnell's problem with the federal law centered on the "mere unrelated travel in interstate commerce" to link it with local criminal conduct. Such reasoning would subject virtually all criminal activity to federal scrutiny, he wrote."Surely, our founding fathers did not contemplate such a broad view of federalism," Presnell wrote.

From the article sprang scores of fiery denunciations of the judge. Most simply moved from point A (perverts released) to point B (bad) in a straight line. The closest most attackers came to recognizing a legal issue was to rail against high-handed judges who don't respect Congress' and the public's will. But even those arguably responsible arguments were largely cloaked in spittle-flying rage. It's depressing to try to wade through the postings. So how did Presnell himself do at explaining the issues? Not bad, really. His relatively brief opinion is lucid and logical. I'm not saying it's correct -- that's for greater constitutional minds to decide -- but a layman could read it and grasp the reasoning. It takes him 10 pages to spell it out, and there aren't any pithy summaries other than the ones Leusner grabbed ahold of. A writer with more time to digest and summarize the opinion, and talk to experts, very well might have defused some of the public misunderstanding and anger. Judging from the idiotic tone of the discussion, however, I doubt it would have made much difference.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 20, 2008 (boomark / email).