sex offenders

Petitions to Terminate Sex Offender Registration (Part II)

The other day I posted my thoughts about the “Jacob Wetterling” provision in G.S. 14-208.12A.  While that provision raises what I think are the most difficult questions related to petitions to terminate sex offender registration, they are by no means the only questions. Here are some others (along with my best attempt to answer them, … Read more

Petitions to Terminate Sex Offender Registration

Under G.S. 14-208.12A, registered sex offenders who are not required to register for life can petition the superior court to terminate the registration requirement after 10 years. (The requirement to petition for deregistration came into being in 2006; before then, 10-year registrations terminated automatically after the requisite time had passed.) North Carolina’s sex offender registry … Read more

Updated Sex Offender Registration & Monitoring Flow Chart

Some time ago I prepared a flow chart that included all the information about sex offender registration and monitoring I could reasonably (or maybe even slightly unreasonably) cram onto one page. My goal was to create an at-a-glance reference tool that included all the effective dates—crucial for applying the law properly—that appear in the patchwork … Read more

Banishment, Part II

Editor’s note: This post was originally intended to be a response to a comment to a post about sentences of banishment. The initial post, here, considered a federal sentence that forbade the defendants from a particular county during their supervised release, and concluded that North Carolina courts lack the power to impose a similar sentence. … Read more

Banned from the County

The First Circuit recently upheld a district court’s imposition of a special condition of supervised release banning two convicted drug dealers from Suffolk County, Massachusetts (basically, Boston) during the entirety of their eight- and twelve-year periods of supervision (United States v. Garrasteguy). The case caught my eye for two reasons. First, that’s a long time … Read more

Sex Offenders, Online Identifiers, and the First Amendment

A federal judge in Utah recently invalidated the part of Utah’s sex offender registry that requires each registrant to provide his “[i]nternet identifiers and . . . addresses . . . [and] the name . . . of all websites on which the sex offender is registered.” Doe v. Shurtleff, 2008 WL 4427594 (D. Ut. Sept. 15, 2008) (quoting Utah Code Ann. § 77-27-21.5(12)(i) & (j)). This raises some questions about the constitutionality of North Carolina’s new requirement that sex offenders provide “[a]ny online identifier that the person uses or intends to use.” G.S. 14-208.7(b)(7) (eff. May 1, 2009). . .

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State v. Wooten and Satellite Monitoring of Sex Offenders

Like about half the states, North Carolina monitors certain sex offenders by satellite. The General Assembly first enacted our satellite-based monitoring (SBM) program in 2006, requiring lifetime monitoring of recidivists, aggravated offenders, and sexually violent predators, and monitoring for a period of years determined by the court for offenders whose crime involved the physical, mental, … Read more