Exception Ruled in Sex Crime Law
By Robert Hanley
Originally published in The New York Times, July 28, 2001
TRENTON, July 17 — New Jersey's highest court ruled today that children who are found guilty of sexual offenses before age 14 are not automatically subject to decades of public warnings about them and their crimes.
The State Supreme Court ruled in the case of a Mercer County youth, now 17, who admitted that when he was 10 he had sexually assaulted an 8-year-old cousin. The boy, identified in court documents only as J. G., was classified as a sex offender under Megan's Law. He was required to register with the police and have schools near his home notified of his presence. Similar sanctions would have continued into his adult years.
But in what it called an effort to reconcile the public safety provisions of the sex offender law and the privacy protections of the state's Code of Juvenile Justice, the court ruled unanimously today that offenders found guilty before their 14th birthday should have a chance to escape those sanctions at 18, by presenting evidence that they do not pose a risk of committing another sex crime.
New Jersey has been a pioneer in creation of laws providing public warnings about sex offenders. In 1994, it became the second state, after Washington, to enact a Megan's Law, named for a 7-year-old girl, Megan Kanka, who was murdered by a sex offender who lived across the street from her home in Hamilton Township.
All 50 states now have their own version of Megan's Law. Although the New Jersey Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction outside the state, lawyers familiar with the case said its ruling could provide guidance to courts in other states dealing with a legal challenge similar to J. G.'s. They knew of none, however.
The ruling noted that the state laws vary widely in their treatment of juvenile sex offenders. It said 13, including New York's, do not explicitly include or exclude juveniles. Twenty-four others apply rules to juvenile sex offenders to register with the police, the ruling said, but many are less severe than New Jersey's law.
Five others apply registration requirements only to juveniles who have been tried and convicted of sex crimes as adults. Alabama's excludes juveniles from its registration and notification laws altogether.
In New Jersey, earlier rulings by state and federal courts have prompted the state to set more restrictions than many others on community notification. But the decision today was the first creating age distinctions. Until now, the registration and community notification provisions of the law covered offenders of all ages.
Justice Gary S. Stein, who wrote the decision, said he found it "implausible and anomalous" that a 10- year-old faced the same sanctions as an adult under Megan's Law, even though the state's juvenile justice law requires that all juvenile records except jail terms be expunged when a delinquent turns 18. The court also accepted the arguments by J. G.'s lawyers that the sanctions should not apply to those under 14, the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults.
Still, the court rejected arguments that the classification of juveniles as sex offenders was unconstitutional.
It was not immediately clear how many juveniles were affected by the ruling, because the state attorney general's office does not track registered offenders by age. Of the nearly 7,500 sex offenders who have registered with New Jersey police departments under Megan's Law, prosecutors and public defenders estimate that 10 percent to 25 percent of them are under 18, with few under 14 and only a handful as young as 10.
J. G.'s lawyers, Craig J. Hubert and James M. Graziano, who took the case four years ago for no fee, said their client was "very happy" with the decision.
"He's a good kid and he's come a long way," Mr. Graziano said. "For seven years, he hasn't had an offense even remotely like the one in this case."
Mr. Hubert added: "He's a kid and now he's going to be allowed to be a kid. Within one year, we'll have this weight off his shoulders." Both said they were confident that they could persuade a judge next year to remove him from the law's provisions.
The Associated Press quoted a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, Emily Hornaday, as saying that the office was pleased that the court had affirmed the basic notion that sex offender laws could be applied to juveniles, and that officials did not object to the new standard giving offenders a chance to clear their records at 18. Megan's Law already gives all sex offenders a chance to clear their records after 15 years.
Part of today's ruling overturned a lower-court decision that upheld the state's classification of J. G. as posing a moderate risk of committing another sex crime. That classification had cleared the way for officials to give J. G.'s name and address to several schools in his neighborhood.
Today the Supreme Court reclassified him as low risk, meaning that he is now required only to register his name with the local police. The state will still be allowed to give information about J. G.'s case to the principal of the high school he now attends. Justice Stein said such a notification was permitted under the state's juvenile code.
Justice Stein also wrote that the court was troubled by the lack of evidence to support the charge that J. G., as a 10-year-old, had committed an act of sexual penetration on his cousin. Although J.G. admitted to the crime in 1996, when he was 11, the justice noted that a detective who investigated the case was not convinced that penetration had occurred.
In addition, a therapist for J. G. testified in a lower-court hearing that the boy had a learning disability and had difficulty reading and spelling simple words, and that she did not believe that he understood the terms "sex," "rape" or "penetration" when he admitted the crime.
