Q: is it unconstitutional to be arrested 30 yrs after a crime that you have already plead to and done your time?
My fiance was in his last year of high school and had sexual contact with the schoolmate who was 15 more than once it was sentenced to 5 years to register on the sexual registry for two counts of sexual contact with a minor but law was revised after he was sentenced and made him a lifer he lives in Wisconsin I live in Florida and he didn't make it home in time to register this past March they put a warrant out for him and arrested him and was extradited back to Wisconsin released came back to Florida and it was arrested here it's ruining his life his business and his reputation. The law wasn't put in place for people like him and now it dictates his life. I don't feel that just because the law was revised after he was sentenced for being on the registry for 5 years and a year in prison. He paid his time for the crime and now that it's been revised they revised his sentence which is BS yes me unconstitutional.
A: There's a bad news opinion about that issue from the US Supreme Court, but to be certain, your fiance must consult a criminal defense attorney who handles sex offender cases. In the 2003 Supreme Court case Smith v. Doe, a retroactive state statute on registration requirements was challenged as being an ex post facto law - meaning a law that changes the punishment for a particular crime after commission of the crime, which would be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, ruling against the man who failed to timely register, held that the statute at issue in that case was not unconstitutional because they deemed it to be a civil regulatory law rather than a statute that imposes a punishment. However, a reliable opinion about the law in your fiance's situation cannot be obtained online. In order to give a reliable opinion, he'd need a lawyer to review the statute at issue, determine if there's already been a legal challenge it that has lost, and if there has been no legal challenge thus far, determine if up-to-date case law in analogous cases provides the answer. Alternatively, justice organizations such as the ACLU might be able to provide an answer.
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