Doe, Sex Offender Registry Board No. 68549 v. Sex Offender Registry Board (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-183-14)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11562 JOHN DOE, SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD NO. 68549 vs. SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD. Suffolk. September 3, 2014. – November 5, 2014. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, & Hines, JJ. Sex Offender. Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act. Administrative Law, Substantial evidence, Regulations. Evidence, Sex offender, Expert opinion. Practice, Civil, Sex offender. Witness, Expert. Regulation. Minor. Civil action commenced in the Superior Court Department on June 15, 2010. The case was heard by Robert C. Cosgrove, J., on a motion for judgment on the pleadings. The Supreme Judicial Court granted an application for direct appellate review. Francis J. DiMento (Dana Alan Curhan with him) for the plaintiff. Jennifer K. Zalnasky for the defendant. Eric Tennen, for Youth Advocacy Division of the Committee for Public Counsel Services & others, amici curiae, submitted a brief. Robert E. McDonnell, Jeff Goldman, Nathaniel P. Bruhn, & Saia M. Smith, for American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Massachusetts & another, amici curiae, submitted a brief. LENK, J. Over a three-year period ending in 1988, when he was sixteen years old, John Doe No. 68549 repeatedly subjected two of his cousins to sexual assaults, including rape. His victims came forward many years after the fact and, in October, 2003, when Doe was thirty-one years old, he pleaded guilty to a number of sex offenses committed when he was a juvenile. In March, 2006, a hearing examiner of the Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) determined that Doe posed a moderate risk of reoffense and a moderate degree of dangerousness, and classified Doe as a level two sex offender. A Superior Court judge, determining that this classification was not supported by substantial evidence, remanded for further proceedings. In May, 2010, a successor hearing examiner (successor examiner) concluded that Doe poses a low risk of reoffense and a low degree of dangerousness. Doe was therefore classified as a level one sex offender, a classification that was upheld by a different judge of the Superior Court. Doe appealed, and we granted his application for direct appellate review. Doe contends that he should not be required to register as a sex offender. See G. L. c. 6, § 178K (2) (a)-(d). He argues that, in light of scientific research showing that adolescent brains are different from adult brains, and in light of the […]