Anthony Rayshon Bethea v. North Carolina

The first generation of sex offender registration statutes required only that offenders register with the government and that information about the offenders be available to the public. In Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003), the Court rejected an Ex Post Facto Clause challenge to the retroactive application of one of these statutes, on the ground that such statutes were not punitive. In the years since Smith v. Doe, the states have enacted a second generation of sex offender statutes that impose much harsher restrictions on registrants than the first generation of statutes did. North Carolina’s is typical. It prohibits registrants from being on the premises of schools, parks, libraries, and swimming pools. It bars registrants from residing within 1,000 feet of any school. It excludes registrants from certain occupations. It imposes onerous in-person reporting requirements. It mandates extremely long registration periods. And it punishes violations of these restrictions as felonies. The lower courts are divided over whether these second-generation statutes are sufficiently punitive to distinguish them from the statute the Court considered in Smith v. Doe. The Question Presented is whether the retroactive application of North Carolina’s sex offender registration statute violates the Ex Post Facto Clause.