Saturday, September 23, 2000
Court of Appeals rejects Kentucky's Megan's Law
By Charles Wolfe
Associated Press
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky's version of Megan's Law, which requires public registration of sex offenders and their addresses, was declared unconstitutional by the state Court of Appeals Friday.
The ruling came in the case of a convicted rapist who fled his hometown after his neighborhood was papered with fliers about his crime.
A three-judge panel said the law wrongly requires a sentencing court, years after a trial, to decide how much of a risk an offender will pose to the public after release from prison.
That means reopening a criminal case — something courts never do except when asked by defendants them selves in motions for new trials, the panel said.
The appeal was by Nate Sims, whose case got national attention last year when he was hounded out of Danville by neighbors of a couple who took him in.
Mr. Sims spent 20 years in prison for a rape and sodomy in Louisville. As he neared release, he had to undergo a “risk determination” hearing in Jefferson Circuit Court, where he had been sentenced.
Because the court declared him to be a high risk, Mr. Sims' mug shot, address and criminal record were posted by the local sheriff and placed on the World Wide Web by Kentucky State Police.
The statute is Kentucky's version of a law named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old who was raped and murdered by a sex offender who had been released without public notice into her neighborhood in Hamilton Township, N.J.
The Kentucky law raised eyebrows in Northern Kentucky this summer when the Kenton County sheriff's department began notifying neighbors about sex offenders who had moved into the county.
In July, officers visited Villa Hills to tell residents about a misdemeanor sex offender, Jarett Brainard, who had recently moved to the area from Oregon. Neighbors, however, were not told that the charge stemmed from a relationship between Mr. Brainard, 20, and his then 16-year-old girlfriend. The couple was living together and had a son this summer.
Outraged, Mr. Brainard's family walked the neighborhood to explain the situation.
Mr. Brainard knew he was registered as a sex offender, but said he was told by Oregon authorities that there would be no direct public notification.
The concept of registration was not an issue in the ruling Friday. Other appellate panels ruled in two cases in July that the law is neither double jeopardy — two punishments for one crime — nor an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
But in the Sims case, the court said classifying prisoners is a job for the executive branch. By imposing it on courts, the General Assembly breached a constitutional barrier, the separation of powers doctrine.
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