High court won't be asked to consider case of boy on sex offender list

4-19-15 Nebraska:

The Nebraska Supreme Court won't be asked to weigh in on whether the way a state law is written should result in a 12-year-old boy ending up on the state's Sex Offender Registry.

The question specifically is whether, by the letter of the law, minors listed on another state's sex offender registry should be put on Nebraska's list when they move to Nebraska, even if their cases went through juvenile court.

In Nebraska, lawmakers opted to exclude juveniles unless they were prosecuted criminally in adult court.

But when the Minnesota boy in this case moved to Nebraska to live with relatives, the Nebraska State Patrol determined he had to register because of a subsection of the law.

Specifically, it says the Sex Offender Registry Act applies to "any person who on or after January 1, 1997 ... enters the state and is required to register as a sex offender under the laws of another village, town, city, state, territory, commonwealth, or other jurisdiction of the United States."

In this case, the boy was 11 when he was adjudicated for criminal sexual conduct in juvenile court in Minnesota. A judge there gave him probation, counseling and community service, and his name went on a part of that state's predatory offender list visible only to police.

That led the patrol to conclude that the boy should be put on the list.

In August, the boy's family filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the patrol from putting him on Nebraska's registry, which is public.

In February, Omaha attorney Joshua Weir asked Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf to certify the question to the Nebraska Supreme Court because there is no case law to address the issue.

Kopf declined, but Weir said he sees reason for optimism in the judge's 10-page ruling this week.

"Although Judge Kopf ruled against the motion, I am very encouraged," he said Tuesday by email. "Judge Kopf noted that the law was clear that other sections of the law clearly did not apply to a juvenile adjudication."

In his order, Kopf noted that the Nebraska Juvenile Code says juvenile court adjudications are not to be deemed convictions.

Although similar, an adjudication is a juvenile court process through which a judge determines if a juvenile committed a given act.

In Kopf's order, he said if a conviction is a prerequisite to be a sex offender under Nebraska law, the subsections shouldn't apply to people required to register elsewhere based on juvenile court adjudications.

But he also noted that the specific subsection the patrol was applying to an out-of-state adjudication has not been considered by a court before.

And, he wrote, the plaintiffs didn't seek to certify to the Nebraska Supreme Court the question of whether the state's Sex Offender Registry Act applies to people required to register elsewhere as sex offenders because of adjudication.

They asked whether the subsection applies to a minor required to register in a state where the public isn't notified of juvenile court adjudications, he said.

Kopf said the question was unclear and "cannot reasonably be interpreted in the manner suggested by the plaintiffs' question." ..source.. by Lori Pilger