Thomas H. Andrews v. State of Indiana

978 N.E.2d 494, 2012 Ind. App. LEXIS 579, 2012 WL 5876220
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedNovember 21, 2012
Docket29A02-1112-MI-1166
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 978 N.E.2d 494 (Thomas H. Andrews v. State of Indiana) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Thomas H. Andrews v. State of Indiana, 978 N.E.2d 494, 2012 Ind. App. LEXIS 579, 2012 WL 5876220 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinion

OPINION

MATHIAS, Judge.

Thomas Andrews (“Andrews”) filed a petition in Hamilton Circuit Court requesting that his name be removed from Indiana’s sex offender registry. Specifically, Andrews, who was convicted of sex offenses in Massachusetts in 1984, argued that his name should be removed from the registry pursuant to our supreme court’s decision in Wallace v. State, 905 N.E.2d 371 (Ind.2009). Because we conclude that requiring Andrews to register as a sex offender violates Article 1, Section 24 of the Indiana Constitution prohibiting ex post facto laws, and that Indiana state courts do not have the authority to consider whether federal statutory penalties attach to Andrews’s conduct, we reverse and remand with instructions to the trial court to grant Andrews’s petition for removal from the sex offender registry.

Facts and Procedural History

In 1984, a grand jury in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts indicted Andrews for the following offenses under two separate cause numbers: six counts of rape and abuse of a child under cause number 84-1074 and two counts of indecent assault and battery of a child under the age of fourteen years under cause number 84-1075. Andrews pleaded guilty to four of the six counts of rape and abuse of a child and to both counts of assault and battery of a child. The court imposed consecutive sentences for the convictions under the separate cause numbers, and in the aggregate, Andrews was ordered to serve a minimal term of executed prison time with several years of probation. Ultimately, Andrews was discharged from his probation for all convictions on or about December 14,1989.

In 1993, Andrews, who had married, moved to Indiana to be closer to his wife’s family. In 1996, Andrews moved to Colorado, but then returned to Indiana in 1997. He has resided in Indiana since 1997. For over twenty-five years, Andrews has owned and operated a business that was eventually incorporated under Indiana law and does business as Pro Image & Associates, LLC. Andrews works from his home address, but travels to locations in and out of the state to meet with his company’s clients.

In 2006, the State of Indiana notified Andrews that he was required to register as a sexually violent predator, and that he was required to register for life. Andrews registered as required by the State. But, on January 6, 2011, Andrews filed a petition requesting removal of his name from the registry and arguing that pursuant to our supreme court’s 2009 decision in Wallace v. State, 905 N.E.2d 371 (Ind.2009), he is not required to register as a sex offender. The State opposed Andrews’s petition and the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.

The summary judgment hearing was held on November 17, 2011. At the hearing, the State argued that Wallace did not apply to Andrews’s circumstances, but also that Andrews was required to register as a sex offender under the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which *496 Congress passed in 2006 (hereinafter referred to as “USSORNA”). On November 30, 2011, the trial court granted the State’s motion for summary judgment and denied Andrews’s motion. Andrews now appeals. 1

I. Indiana’s Sex Offender Act and Wallace v. State

Indiana’s Sex Offender Registration Act (“INSORA”) currently codified at Indiana Code chapter 11-8-8 was first enacted in 1994. 2 INSORA required persons convicted of certain sex crimes to register as sex offenders. But sex offenders convicted in another jurisdiction prior to the act’s June 30, 1994 effective date were not required to register. Moreover, the duty to register was prospective only and terminated when the offender was no longer on probation or discharged from parole. See Wallace, 905 N.E.2d at 375. Therefore, when Andrews moved to Indiana, he was not required to register as a sex offender under INSORA in effect at that time.

But in 2001, INSORA was amended to require all offenders convicted of certain sex offenses to register as sex offenders regardless of the date of their conviction. This change in the law was challenged under the Ex Post Facto Clause contained in the Indiana Constitution in Wallace. In that case, Wallace was charged with two counts of child molesting in 1988, and pleaded guilty to one count in 1989. Wallace completed his sentence and probation in 1992, two years before the General Assembly first passed the Act requiring persons convicted of child molesting to register as sex offenders.

In 2003, Wallace was notified that he was required to register as a sex offender. Wallace insisted that he was not required to register because his 1989 plea agreement did not require him to do so. Thereafter, Wallace was charged with Class D felony failing to register as a sex offender, and was found guilty as charged.

On appeal of his conviction, Wallace claimed that INSORA violated the ex post facto prohibitions of Article 1, Section 24 of the Indiana Constitution and Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution because his crime was committed and his sentence was served before the Act was enacted in 1994. Our supreme court initially observed:

The United States Constitution provides that “[n]o State shall ... pass any ... ex post facto Law.” The Indiana Constitution provides that “[n]o ex post facto law ... shall ever be passed.” Among other things “[t]he ex post facto prohibition forbids the Congress and the States to enact any law ‘which imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it was committed; or imposes additional punishment to that then prescribed.’ ” The underlying purpose of the Ex Post Facto Clause is to give effect to the fundamental principle that persons have a right to fair warning of that conduct which will give rise to criminal penalties.

Id. at 377 (internal citations omitted). The court then addressed Wallace’s claims only under the Indiana Constitutional provision 3 and applied the “intent-effects” test *497 to determine whether INSORA imposed punishment. After assuming without deciding that the General Assembly intended INSORA to be non-punitive, the court considered “whether the statutory scheme is so punitive in effect as to negate that intention thereby transforming what had been intended as a civil regulatory scheme into a criminal penalty.” Id. at 878.

To examine INSORA’s effects, our supreme court applied seven factors promulgated by the United States Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 168-69, 83 S.Ct. 554, 9 L.Ed.2d 644 (1963). Those factors are

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Bluebook (online)
978 N.E.2d 494, 2012 Ind. App. LEXIS 579, 2012 WL 5876220, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/thomas-h-andrews-v-state-of-indiana-indctapp-2012.