Doe No. 7083 v. Sex Offender Registry Board (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-143-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11806 JOHN DOE, SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD NO. 7083 vs. SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD. Plymouth. March 5, 2015. – August 21, 2015. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, & Hines, JJ. Sex Offender. Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act. Constitutional Law, Sex offender. Due Process of Law, Sex offender. Practice, Civil, Sex offender. Civil action commenced in the Superior Court Department on April 2, 2012. The case was heard by Paul E. Troy, J., on a motion for judgment on the pleadings. After review by the Appeals Court, the Supreme Judicial Court granted leave to obtain further appellate review. Ethan C. Stiles for the plaintiff. David L. Chenail for the defendant. Matthew J. Koes for John Doe, Sex Offender Registry Board No. 3839, amicus curiae, submitted a brief. DUFFLY, J. The plaintiff, John Doe, Sex Offender Registry Board No. 7083 (Doe), was serving a criminal sentence at the Massachusetts Treatment Center (treatment center), and also had been civilly committed to the treatment center as a sexually dangerous person (SDP), when the defendant Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) notified him in September, 2009, of its recommendation that he be classified as a level three sex offender, pursuant to the sex offender registration statute, G. L. c. 6, §§ 178C-178Q.[1] Doe requested a hearing to challenge SORB’s recommendation. When that classification hearing took place, in February, 2012, Doe’s earliest parole eligibility date was ten months away, and a trial on Doe’s petition for discharge, pursuant to G. L. c. 123A, § 9, had been scheduled for a date eighteen months away.[2] Because each date was not only distant in time, but also only a potential date on which he might have become eligible for release, rather than a known release date, Doe requested that the classification hearing be continued to a date after, or shortly before, trial on his petition for discharge. In the alternative, Doe sought to have the classification proceeding left open after the hearing, so that his classification would not become final, and current evidence of his risk of reoffense would be available for the hearing officer to consider when his discharge was imminent. The hearing examiner denied the requests and classified Doe as a level three sex offender. Doe sought review in the Superior Court pursuant […]