Court rules 10 must join sex offender registry

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri attorney general's office said Tuesday's ruling by the state Supreme Court means that all sex offenders in Missouri must register with the state, including those convicted before the registry was created more than a decade ago.

The state's highest court found that the registry, which began in 1995 and expanded in 2000 to include misdemeanor offenses, must include all offenders living in Missouri, Attorney General Chris Koster said.

Judges determined that a federal law that requires all offenders to register in their home state applies in Missouri, instead of a state constitutional provision that prevented officials from forcing offenders to register if their crimes predated the registry.

In its unanimous decision, Missouri's highest court ruled in a case involving 10 sex offenders who argued they shouldn't have to register because their offenses predated the creation of the sex offender list. The judges found that a 2006 federal law requires all sex offenders to register with their home states.

That federal law, called the Sexual Offenders Registration and Notification Act, isn't subject to restrictions in the Missouri Constitution, the Missouri court decided.

"Parents and communities deserve to know when sex offenders live nearby, no matter when the offender committed the offense," Koster said in a written statement.

A Kansas City attorney representing the unnamed sex offenders did not immediately return a call seeking comment Tuesday.

There are currently 7,321 people on the list, which is maintained by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed by 11 people in Jackson County seeking to avoid registering as sex offenders. A trial judge ruled that 10 of the 11 people didn't have to register because their offenses predated the state's sex offender list. The state appealed.

Eight of those offenders moved to Missouri after a conviction for a sex crime in another state or under military law. The other three were convicted of misdemeanors before 2000.

The Supreme Court did not consider the case of one person who pleaded guilty in 2002 in Missouri who lost at the trial court level.

In June 2006, the state Supreme Court decided that the registration requirement could only be applied to offenses dating back to 1995. That's because Missouri's constitution bars retrospective laws, which the court defined as laws that impose new duties or restrictions based on an offender's previous actions.

That ruling came about a month before the federal sex offender registration law and wasn't mentioned in Tuesday's four-page ruling.