Portion of Sex Offender Premises Restriction Held Unconstitutional
Published for NC Criminal Law on January 14, 2013.
Happy New Year! I feel like I spent most of 2012 talking about Justice Reinvestment. Let’s start 2013 with a more agreeable subject—like sex offenders.
In one of its final rulings of 2012, the court of appeals held in State v. Daniels that a portion of the law limiting where some registered sex offenders may go is unconstitutionally vague. In Daniels, the defendant was charged with two counts of violating G.S. 14-208.18(a)(3), which makes it a Class H felony for certain sex offenders to knowingly be “at any place where minors gather for regularly scheduled educational, recreational, or social programs.” The charges stemmed from two visits by the defendant to county parks. In the first, the defendant came to the park to meet his daughter, who was watching a tee ball game at one of the park’s youth baseball fields. In the second, the defendant was playing softball on an adult ball field at a park that also had a youth field.
In his defense, the defendant filed a motion to declare G.S. 14-208.18 unconstitutional on a mix of First Amendment and due process grounds. The trial court granted the motion, declaring that G.S. 14-208.18(a)(3) is unconstitutionally overbroad because it infringes on the defendant’s freedoms of association and religion, and unconstitutionally vague in that it fails to put people of ordinary intelligence on notice of the precise conduct the law prohibits. The trial court further declared G.S. 14-208.18(a)(2), the 300-foot rule described here, unconstitutional, as the facts of the case could have implicated that provision as well. Having deemed the statute unconstitutional, the judge dismissed the charges against the defendant.
The State made three arguments on appeal.
- First, that the trial court lacked authority to rule on G.S. 14-208.18(a)(2), the 300-foot rule, because the defendant had only been charged with a violation of subdivision (a)(3);
- Second, that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law on its face; and
- Third, that in any event the premises restrictions in question are neither unconstitutionally overbroad nor vague.
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