Doe No. 3839 v. Sex Offender Registry Board (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-144-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC-11604 JOHN DOE, SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD NO. 3839 vs. SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD. Plymouth. September 3, 2014. – August 21, 2015. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, & Lenk, JJ. Sex Offender. Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act. Delinquent Child. Constitutional Law, Sex offender. Due Process of Law, Sex offender, Retroactive application of statute. Statute, Retroactive application. Practice, Civil, Sex offender. Administrative Law, Findings. Civil action commenced in the Superior Court Department on February 18, 2011. The case was heard by Christopher J. Muse, J., on a motion for judgment on the pleadings, and a motion for relief from judgment and for reconsideration was also heard by him. The Supreme Judicial Court granted an application for direct appellate review. Matthew J. Koes for the plaintiff. William H. Burke for the defendant. DUFFLY, J. In 1990 and 1991, the plaintiff, John Doe, Sex Offender Registry Board No. 3839 (Doe), was adjudicated a delinquent juvenile by reason of sex offenses he committed in 1989 and 1990, when he was fourteen and fifteen years old. Following his adjudications, Doe was committed to the Department of Youth Services (DYS), where he remained for over nine years, pursuant to orders extending his commitment beyond his eighteenth birthday. In April, 2000, Doe was committed temporarily to the Massachusetts Treatment Center (treatment center) for evaluation on the Commonwealth’s petition that Doe be civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person (SDP); thereafter, he was found to be sexually dangerous and was civilly committed to the treatment center for a period of from one day to life. In January, 2011, twenty years after Doe committed the offenses, the defendant Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) classified him as a level three sex offender. In September, 2013, Doe was determined to be no longer sexually dangerous, and was discharged from the treatment center. Doe contends that the sex offender registration statute, G. L. c. 6, §§ 178C-178Q (registration statute), as applied to him, constitutes an ex post facto punishment, and violates his rights to due process and protection against double jeopardy, because the requirement that he register as a sex offender was triggered by juvenile adjudications that preceded the statute’s enactment. See St. 1996, c. 239, § 1. He maintains also that, even if the registration statute […]