Failure To Register Sex Offender

Bauer Crider & Parry Podcast

Brad: Alright you're listening to the FloridaDefense.com podcast. We are speaking to Criminal Defense Attorney, Mike Kenny. Mike, we're going to be talking today about the failure to register as a sex offender in Florida.

Mike: That's right. Good morning. There's actually two types of registration that people have to have with sex type crimes. The first type is to register as a sexual offender, and then a heightened registration, the next type is failure to register as a sexual predator. The designation means something. It means something as far as what the requirements are to register. It also is indicative of how serious the crime was. A person who has to register as a sexual offender is a person who has been convicted of any type of sex crime. Basically, any sex felony in the state of Florida. And that could be anything involving a sexual battery, you know and adult with an adult, or it could be any type of sexual crime involving a juvenile that's a second or third degree felony. The sexual predator is reserved for a person who has been convicted at least one time of a first degree felony, and those are the most serious types of sex offenses really except for capital type crimes, or they have two separate convictions, whether it be a second degree felony or a third degree felony - two separate convictions at different dates. Those folks are sexual predators. They have heightened registration requirements where a sexual offender has to go into the sheriff's office twice a year - once on his birthday and once six months after that. A sexual predator has to actually do it four times a year. And the idea behind it is so everyone can keep track of where everybody is and they know at all times where these people are living. I will tell you the most common types of crimes as far as failures to register, the most common types of issues that come up are that the person moves out of one address into a new address and they do not update anyone in the time period that they need to.  And it is quite a burdon to have to live under these rules your entire life but you don't have the freedom to move from one place to the next without letting everyone know where you are first. And I think what some people run into, is they run into a problem where they're living a difficult life in the situation that they are in - maybe some neighbors, some people in the community have a problem with where they are and they want to move somewhere else and find another place to live without that scrutiny and then they find themselves getting into trouble if they don't update their address. But that's usually the most common, that the person has changed their address and has not provided an updated address. The other type of failure to register crime that comes up is they don't go into the sheriff's office to update the information on the required dates. They have basically check in dates. These crimes are so serious now where they basically score a mandatory prison. Meaning that they are in and of themselves crimes that would send you to prison, let alone the fact that the person would have a prior history typically involving a sex offense. The unique thing about sexual offender crimes and sexual registration crimes is that there's actually more than one type of address that a person can have. I'm involved in a trial now coming up which involves the type of address the person had. So for the most part a person has what's called a permanent address as a sexual offender. And a permanent address is defined by statute as any location where a person lives greater than five days - five consecutive days - that's considered your permanent address. So whether you're staying at a hotel for six days or you're staying at some park like an RV Park for awhile, that would be your permanent address. The other type of address a person can have is actually a temporary address. And a temporary address is defined as any location where a person is going to stay greater than five days in the aggregate. 4:40 And the aggregate means the combination, if you combine all the days together. And that kind of comes up if a person has maybe some family in another part of the state and they go and visit their family and they know they're gonna visit their family hroughout the year but it might not be consecutive days but it might be a couple days here, a couple days there, and a couple days there. That is something the person is going to have to register as a temporary address. Both of those addresses when registered are viewable, they're public record. They're on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website. If a person was to do a website search of that person's name, they'd find out exactly where he or she is registered as both their permanent and temporary address. Some confusion comes up as far as whether a person is living at a temporary address, whether that should be permanent or a permanent address that should be temporary, and that's unique. I think the crux of that issue is whether or not it's a consecutive stay or not, meaning whether you're staying in there day in and day out for greater than five days. That's gonna be your permanent address. There is even in an effort to accommodate every type of individual out there who might find him or herself with these types of charges, there's even these transient types of addresses. Transient type of addresses are for folks who unfortunately find themselves as homeless and there's literaly like "under a bridge" type addresses. They basically inform the sheriff's office where they're going to be on a regular basis so they know where to find them. And I get the public policy behind it. Years and years and years ago there were some horrible crimes that happened to some children and the effort was to locate some individuals that might be the first suspects of certain types of crimes and they want to be able to locate these suspects as quickly as possible while there's still a chance to find the victims in one piece. So I get the point behind it and certainly there's no real objection to it. What I find is a problem with these types of crimes is that I mentioned I'm going to trial on a failure to register as a sexual offender charge. The facts as I look at them as we go through them I think there's a very very strong case. I think factually my client is in a very good position. The problem is, these crimes just by their very nature, immediately draw attention in the mind of the juror and it's usually not welcome attention. If the juror, the first probably two seconds of jury selection, when they hear that a person is accused of failure to register as a sexual offender, that juror has just been informed that the person has previously been convicted of a crime that would require him to register in the state of Florida as a sexual offender. And the first thing they think about is the most horrible type of sex crime you can think about against a child. That's the natural way you know people think. So that's a major obstacle to overcome even if your facts are great, you're gonna have a juror who's going to be thinking some pretty negative things about you. So, in my experience, it's been in order to have an effective trial on those types of cases, you need to make sure you find out that your juror - you want to know the ones who kind of already got a bad taste in their mouth based upon the nature of the charge. And of course you can't you can only get so deep on that. But you want to be able to present to the jury the facts and you want them to understand something about your client. Something about your client where they realize he's not a name on a piece of paper with this horrible crime attached to it but you want them to see the big picture. Sometimes I talk to the jury about being courageous. A lot of these cases are about being courageous. It's really easy to sit down, look at some facts that you don't like, and say, "you know what, I don't like the charge. I don't like what this person was accused of doing in the past. I'm not even going to give it too much thought. This person is better off convicted anyway." That's the easy thing to do. It's not always easy to be courageous and to be courageous is a person who looks at the facts and says, "I need to do what I know is right based upon the facts as I understand them. I may not like the crime that this person was convicted of. I might not even like this person, but I need to do what's right because that's what the law requires me to do." So sometimes, as a defense lawyer, I really want to highlight how I want courageous jurors. Jurors who are able to almost hold their nose and check the box - almost do what they really don't want to do but they know that they have to do it because it's the right choice. And those are the folks that really are your best jurors because those are the folks who look at the facts and they don't let those outside influences overwhelm their capacity to understand the truth. 

9:42 B: That's good. One question that I had. You mentioned that 16 is the consensual age for sex. That means basically, cause I believe in Oklahoma it's 18 so you know an 18 year old and a 17 year old couple that have been together a long time and they have sex, the parent gets upset, something happens, they're registered as a sex offender for the rest of their life. Is that kind of the same with say 16 and 15? 

M: Yes, actually it's kind of unique. I want to highlight there's a unique part in there where there's a change. So 16 is the age of consent and that works so a 16 yr old can have sex with any person who is 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, even 23. Once you get past 23, and the other person is 16, once you are 24 or older the other person has to be at least 18. So it's the reason why the legislature came up with that gap in years, the reason why is they didn't want to have situations which probably happens more often than we're prepared to recognize or admit, but folks in school - folks in high school. You have a freshman in high school who might be 14 or 15 and then you have maybe they're maybe a little bit more mature emotionally and they end up talking to people who are a little bit older in high school and they end up engaging in a relationship with someone who's maybe a Sophomore, Junior, or even Senior - a Senior you're almost 18 if not 18 years old. And the legislature didn't want to have a situation where they take two students who go to the same school and you're basically making someone a sexual offender when the statute clearly was not designed to do that - punish high school kids like that. So what they tried to do is give a range. So it's 16 up until 23 those two different ages are fine. Once you hit the age of 24, the other person has to be 18 years old. The other unique thing is, and it's almost counter productive but if a person is under the age of 18, so they end up having sex with an adult and there's one adult who is over the age of 18 and another person is under the age of 18, if that person gets pregnant, obviously if that girl gets pregnant, there is a crime for that called child abuse by impregnation. And so what that sets up is a scenario where the legislature says it's legal for a 16 yr old to have consensual sex with a 20 yr old - there's nothing about that that would be illegal. However, if the 20 yr old got the 16 yr old pregnant, that would actually be a crime called child abuse by impregnation. So it's one of those weird catchalls that a person even though they might be considered permitted to have sex, you're not out of the woods yet if somebody gets pregnant. 

B: That is interesting. Alright, well you've been listening to the FloridaDefense.com podcast. You've been listening to Attorney Mike Kenny at the Bauer Crider & Parry Law Firm on this one has been on Failure to Register as a Sex Offender in the State of Florida.