Nichols v. United States

• Decision Date: 04 April 2016
• Docket Number: 15–5238.
• Parties: Lester Ray NICHOLS, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

578 U.S. 104

136 S.Ct. 1113

194 L.Ed.2d 324

Lester Ray NICHOLS, Petitioner

v.UNITED STATES.

No. 15–5238.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued March 1, 2016.

Decided April 4, 2016.

Daniel T. Hansmeier, Kansas City, KA, for Petitioner.

Curtis E. Gannon, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Melody Brannon, Federal Public Defender, Daniel T. Hansmeier, Appellate Chief, Timothy J. Henry, Paige A. Nichols, Kansas Federal, Public Defender, Kansas City, KA, for Petitioner.

Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Solicitor General, Leslie R. Caldwell, Assistant Attorney General, Michael R. Dreeben, Deputy Solicitor General, Curtis E. Gannon, Assistant to the Solicitor General, James I. Pearce, Attorney, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Justice ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.

Lester Ray Nichols, a registered sex offender living in the Kansas City area, moved to the Philippines without notifying Kansas authorities of his change in residence. For that omission Nichols was convicted of failing to update his sex-offender registration, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). We must decide whether federal law required Nichols to update his registration in Kansas to reflect his departure from the State.

I

A

Following the high-profile and horrific rape and murder of 7–year–old Megan Kanka by her neighbor, States in the early 1990's began enacting registry and community-notification laws to monitor the whereabouts of individuals previously convicted of sex crimes. See Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 89, 123 S.Ct. 1140, 155 L.Ed.2d 164 (2003) ; Filler, Making the Case for Megan's Law, 76 Ind. L.J. 315, 315–317 (2001). Congress followed suit in 1994 with the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, 108 Stat. 2038, 42 U.S.C. § 14071 et seq. (1994 ed.). Named after an 11–year–old who was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1989 (and who remains missing today), the Wetterling Act conditioned federal funds on States' enacting sex-offender registry laws meeting certain minimum standards. Smith, 538 U.S., at 89–90, 123 S.Ct. 1140. "By 1996, every State, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government had enacted some variation of" a sex-offender registry. Id., at 90, 123 S.Ct. 1140.

In 2006, Congress replaced the Wetterling Act with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 120 Stat. 590, 42 U.S.C. § 16901 et seq. Two changes are pertinent here. First, Congress made it a federal crime for a sex offender who meets certain requirements to "knowingly fai[l] to register or update a registration as required by [SORNA]." 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(3) ; see Carr v. United States, 560 U.S. 438, 441–442, 130 S.Ct. 2229, 176 L.Ed.2d 1152 (2010). Second, Congress amended the provisions governing the registration requirements when an offender moves to a different State. The original Wetterling Act had directed States to require a sex offender to "register the new address with a designated law enforcement agency in another State to which the person moves not later than 10 days after such person establishes residence in the new State, if the new State has a registration requirement." 42 U.S.C. § 14071(b)(5) (1994 ed.) (emphasis added). Congress later amended this provision to direct States to require a sex offender to "report the change of address to the responsible agency in the State the person is leaving, and [to] comply with any registration requirement in the new State of residence." 42 U.S.C. § 14071(b)(5) (2000 ed.) (emphasis added).

SORNA repealed this provision of the Wetterling Act. 120 Stat. 600. In its place, federal law now provides:

"A sex offender shall, not later than 3 business days after each change of name, residence, employment, or student status, appear in person in at least 1 jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection (a) and inform that jurisdiction of all changes in the information required for that offender in the sex offender registry." 42 U.S.C. § 16913(c) (emphasis added).

Subsection (a), in turn, provides: "A sex offender shall register, and keep the registration current, in each jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student." § 16913(a). A sex offender is required to notify only one "jurisdiction involved"; that jurisdiction must then notify a list of interested parties, including the other jurisdictions. §§ 16921(b)(1)–(7). The question presented in this case is whether the State a sex offender leaves—that is, the State where he formerly resided—qualifies as an "involved" jurisdiction under § 16913.

B

In 2003, Nichols was convicted of traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b). Although his offense predated SORNA's enactment, Nichols was nevertheless required upon his eventual release in December 2011 to register as a sex offender in Kansas, where he chose to settle. 28 CFR 72.3 (2015). Nichols complied with SORNA's registration requirements—until November 9, 2012, when he abruptly disconnected all of his telephone lines, deposited his apartment keys in his landlord's drop-box, and boarded a flight to Manila. When Nichols was a no-show at mandatory sex-offender treatment, a warrant was issued revoking his supervised release. With the assistance of American security forces, local police in Manila arrested Nichols in December 2012, and federal marshals then escorted him back to the United States, where he was charged with one count of "knowingly fail[ing] to register or update a registration as required by [SORNA]," 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(3). After unsuccessfully moving to dismiss the indictment on the ground that SORNA did not require him to update his registration in Kansas, Nichols conditionally pleaded guilty, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion.

The Tenth Circuit affirmed. 775 F.3d 1225 (2014). Following its own precedent in United States v. Murphy, 664 F.3d 798 (C.A.10 2011), the panel held that when a sex offender " ‘leaves a residence in a state, and then leaves the state entirely, that state remains a jurisdiction involved’ " under § 16913. 775 F.3d, at 1229. Over four dissenting votes, the court denied Nichols's petition for rehearing en banc. 784 F.3d 666 (C.A.10 2015). In adhering to Murphy, the Tenth Circuit reentrenched a split created by the Eighth Circuit's decision in United States v. Lunsford, 725 F.3d 859 (2013). Remarkably, Lunsford also involved a sex offender who moved from the Kansas City area—on the Missouri side—to the Philippines. Contra the Tenth Circuit's decision below, Lunsford held that that defendant had no obligation to update his registration in Missouri because a sex offender is required "to ‘keep the registration current’ in the jurisdiction where he ‘resides,’ not a jurisdiction where he ‘resided.’ " Id., at 861 (citation omitted). We granted certiorari to resolve the split. 577 U.S. ––––, 136 S.Ct. 445, 193 L.Ed.2d 346 (2015).

II

As noted, Nichols was required to "appear in person in at least 1 jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection (a) and inform that jurisdiction of" his change of residence. 42 U.S.C. § 16913(c). Subsection (a) mentions three possible jurisdictions: "where the offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student." § 16913(a). The Philippines is not a "jurisdiction" under SORNA; no foreign country is. See § 16911(10). Putting these provisions together, SORNA therefore requires a sex offender who changes his residence to appear, within three business days of the change, in person in at least one jurisdiction (but not a foreign country) where he resides, works, or studies, and to inform that jurisdiction of the address change. Critically, § 16913(a) uses only the present tense: "resides," "is an employee," "is a student." A person who moves from Leavenworth to Manila no longer "resides" (present tense) in Kansas; although he once resided in Kansas, after his move he "resides" in the Philippines. It follows that once Nichols moved to Manila, he was no longer required to appear in person in Kansas to update his registration, for Kansas was no longer a "jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection (a)" of § 16913.

The requirement in § 16913(c) to appear in person and register "not later than 3 business days after each change of ... residence" points to the same conclusion. Nichols could not have appeared in person in Kansas "after" leaving the State. To be sure, one may argue that the day before his departure was "not later than 3 business days after" his departure, but no one in ordinary speech uses language in such a strained and hypertechnical way.

If the drafters of SORNA had thought about the problem of sex offenders who leave the country and had sought to require them to (de)register in the departure jurisdiction, they could easily have said so; indeed, that is exactly what the amended Wetterling Act had required. 42 U.S.C. § 14071(b)(5) (2000 ed.) ("report the change of address to the responsible agency in the State the person is leaving"). It is also what Kansas state law requires: Nichols had a duty to notify, among other entities, "the registering law enforcement agency or agencies where last registered ." Kan. Stat. Ann. § 22–4905(g) (2014 Cum. Supp.) (emphasis added).

Congress could have chosen to retain the language in the amended Wetterling Act, or to adopt locution similar to that of the Kansas statute (and echoed in the statutes of many other States, cf. Brief for Petitioner 6, n. 1). It did neither. SORNA's plain text—in particular, § 16913(a)'s consistent use of the present tense—therefore did not require Nichols to update his registration in Kansas once he no longer resided there.

III

The Government resists this straightforward reading of the statutory text, arguing instead that once an offender registers in a jurisdiction, "that jurisdiction necessarily remains ‘involved pursuant to subsection (a),’ because the...