Colorado Supreme Court rules mandatory lifetime sex offender registration violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment
A helpful reader made sure I saw an interesting ruling, handed down today by a 6-1 vote, from the Colorado Supreme Court in People in the Interest of T.B., 2021 CO 59 (Colo. June 28, 2021) (available here). Here is how the majority opinion starts:
T.B. committed two sexual offenses as a minor — the first when he was eleven years old and the second when he was fifteen. Because he was twice adjudicated delinquent for unlawful sexual behavior, the Colorado Sex Offender Registration Act, §§ 16-22-101 to -115, C.R.S. (2020) (“CSORA”), requires T.B. to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his natural life. Now an adult, T.B. seeks review of the juvenile court’s denial of his petition to deregister, arguing that CSORA’s mandatory lifetime sex offender registration requirement for offenders with multiple juvenile adjudications violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. We agree.
Mandatory lifetime sex offender registration brands juveniles as irredeemably depraved based on acts committed before reaching adulthood. But a wealth of social science and jurisprudence confirms what common sense suggests: Juveniles are different. Minors have a tremendous capacity to change and reform. As such, mandating lifetime sex offender registration for juveniles without providing a mechanism for individualized assessment or an opportunity to deregister upon a showing of rehabilitation is excessive and violates the Eighth Amendment. Accordingly, we affirm in part and reverse in part the judgment of the court of appeals and remand with instructions to order a new hearing on T.B.’s petition to deregister.
As the T.B. opinion notes, the Ohio Supreme Court has issued a similar ruling some years ago and top courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have found due process problems with mandatory juve sex offender registration. As the T.B. opinion also notes, the Colorado General Assembly recently passed a bill to eliminate mandatory lifetime sex offender registration for offenders with multiple juvenile adjudications, so the state likely will not have an interest in pursuing any appeal of this ruling.
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