In some ways this judge could be seen as swimming against the current. The Supreme Court has already heard challenges to the constitutionality of sex registries on a couple of occasions and has allowed them to stand. The most frequently cited case seems to be Smith v. Doe, a 2003 case out of Alaska. In it, Anthony Kennedy described how the court had to determine if lifetime registration on these publicly available lists constituted ex post facto retroactive punishment. His decision cited the “frightening and high risk of recidivism” among sex offenders as sufficient justification for the extra burden placed on them by the registry after completing the rest of the sentence.

That decision has been under criticism lately because the statistics on recidivism which were cited turned out to be completely flawed. (That’s not to say that the recidivism rate might not be very high, but the study they used is now largely discounted.) With that in mind, and this ruling as an initial step, I wonder if this somewhat restaffed court will see the question differently. It was only a 5-4 decision last time.

I’ve personally never been comfortable with the idea of lifetime registries. It’s a case which causes a lot of internal conflict because I personally find sex offenders to be among the worst, most monstrous class of criminals, and even more so when the victims include children. (Yes, we’re talking to you, Roman Polanski.) Even absent an actual murder, some of the worst are, in my opinion, suitable candidates for the death penalty. But when we convict someone of a crime and sentence them to some term in jail, perhaps with additional probation, it just seems as though that’s supposed to be the end of it. A lifetime on such a registry absolutely seems like a life sentence in some ways even though that’s not what the criminal was sentenced to.