Stephen Robert Deck v. California

Whether California’s sex offender registration mandates under Calif. Penal Code section 290 place sufficiently significant burdens on a registrant’s liberty so as to allow a federal habeas corpus petitioner standing to file a timely federal habeas petition under 22 U.S.C. 2254; that is, whether the registration burdens “significantly restrain petitioner’s liberty to do those things which in this country free men are entitled to do[.]” Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 243 (1963). Lower courts are divided on whether a person is “in custody” after being sentenced to sex offender registration requiring lifetime physical appearances at a police station for in-person reporting and registering, fingerprinting, photograph-taking, limitations on travel, and other restrictions, all under threat of a criminal sanction for non-compliance. For habeas purposes, petitioner is in custody, no matter whether registration is retributive, remedial, rehabilitative, administrative, civil, or as a number of state courts have held, criminal.