Pennsylvania Supreme Court Rules SORNA Unconstitutional
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court today ruled SORNA Unconstitutional as applied to an individual whose offenses predate it’s enactment. The Court found: 1) SORNA’s registration provisions constitute punishment notwithstanding the General Assembly’s identification of the provisions as nonpunitive; 2) retroactive application of SORNA’s registration provisions violates the federal ex post facto clause; and 3) retroactive application of SORNA’s registration provisions also violates the ex post facto clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
This is another HUGE decision, this time in a State Supreme Court.
Although this has no bearing on Florida, the finding is indicative of a trend in the courts and some more persuasive precedent when it comes to future litigation.
You can read the full opinion of the Court below:
Registration is Servitude!
SORNA forces [me] to leave my home and travel to a police station to deliver public safety data, under oath, and submit to photographing and fingerprinting, for publication on a website that is scraped by private enterprise for redistribution and profit making purposes. E.g. citydata.com; homefacts.com. I am required to remain on-call around a 48 hour clock to keep the data current, year round, in perpetuity, at my own expense. That is exploitation.
SORNA transforms [me] into a delivery boy, expert witness and assistant website content manager. The value of that service exceeds 200k per year as the approximate cost to government of acquiring the data it wants by alternate means, like hiring enough cops to collect the data without molesting me.
Article 1 Sections 9 and 10 prohibit congress and state legislatures from singling people out for deprivations. That’s a bill of attainder, or pains and penalties. Cummings v. Missouri. And the 13th Amendment unquestionably prohibits Servitude except as a punishment for crime of which a citizen has been duly convicted which requires Judicial process and the safeguards embedded in the 6th Amendment. All of them.
Hence, Congress can’t lawfully impose Servitude against a subclass whether civil or not. Dancing around vagaries like delegation of power and retroactivity is nothing but a red herring. A ruse to distract from a historical usurpation of power and treasonous disregard for the Judiciary and the bill of rights. Incredible!
SORNA is the regulation of human beings. Plain and simple. Forced labor, involuntary servitude, kidnapping and trafficking all rolled up in one. Felony crimes. Proponents of SORNA should be indicted for warring against the constitution.
Lock em up!
My Question is. If these courts keep finding these laws unconstituional then why are these only going to effect people who charges where before the registry?
FLCitzen – it is a fine line – but what these courts are finding unconstitutional is the ex post facto element of the laws (so not the law itself). In order for the law itself to be found unconstitutional it would have to be a case based on cruel and unusual punishment OR that it was punishment applied but not considered part of the actual sentence (this is the way in my opinion that the laws will eventually be struck down). So in other words, we need a court to say it IS indeed punishment and then it would have to actually be part of your sentence adjudicated by a judge (which it is not – remember it is “civil”) Baby steps….
But what does line 1 mean of there opinion . It has nothing to do with the retroactive part. That is defines in the next line.
FLCitizen
Assuming you are referring to the 1) 2) 3) in the little blurb up above:
1) SORNA’s registration provisions constitute punishment notwithstanding the General Assembly’s identification of the provisions as nonpunitive
means that the court found that SORNA’s requirements are indeed punishment, despite the State of Pennsylvania saying that they are not.
In order for “the retroactive part” to work, SORNA has to be a punishment. Pennsylvania says it is not. Pennsylvania says that it is a “civil measure.”
So, before the court can even touch the retroactive part, that punishment part needed to be worked out. Then they can move on to #2.
Hope that helps.
I see so now that some courts are n indeed calling it punishment we would have to go after the original smith case which said it wasn’t in order to find relief for offenders that don’t qualify under ex post facto