Registration Deadlines for SORNA Clarified.

The concepts of being required to register, and failing to register, are separate within the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

 

United States v. Gundy, 2015 BL 295714, 2d Cir., No. 13-3679-cr, 9/14/15

    The defendant was in prison when the sex offender federal registration requirements were deemed retroactive. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that he violated the law by traveling interstate even though it occurred while he was still in custody and before he had finished serving his sentence. 

    In 2005 the defendant had been convicted of a sex offense in Maryland. This conviction violated the terms of his federal supervised release, so he was transferred to a federal facility in Pennsylvania in 2011, and in 2012, to a halfway house in the Bronx, N.Y. The government indicted him for his failure to register as a sex offender and then traveling interstate. Their argument remarked that the SORNA requirements had been made retroactive in 2008.

    The defendant claimed that he did not have to "initially register" until he had completed the sentence of imprisonment.

    The court found that the defendant conflated the statute's deadlines for registering initially with the section of the statute that establishes mandatory registration conditions. The court stated that the defendant's  argument did not give enough credence to the fact that 18 U.S.C. §2250(a) treats being required to register and failing to register "as separate and distinct elements of the criminal offense."

    The court did not determine whether his travel falls outside of Section 2250 because he remained in federal custody the entire time. They indicated that the district court had not ruled on that point.

http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/United_States_v_Gundy_No_133679cr_2015_BL_295714_2d_Cir_Sept_14_2