OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Federal appellate judges are questioning prosecutors’ push to list a young teenager on Nebraska’s sex offender registry.
The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office is fighting a federal judge’s ruling last year that blocked the state from putting a then-13-year-old boy on the list, the Lincoln Journal Star reported (https://bit.ly/2qerCWp ).
Prosecutors told the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that the boy was listed on the Minnesota juvenile sex offender registry before moving to Nebraska, and that Nebraska law requires all sex offenders who move to the state to publicly register as sex offenders. Court documents don’t detail what the boy did to be included on Minnesota’s list, but indicate he was 11 at the time.
Judge William Jay Riley said making the boy’s name public seemed contrary to policies in Nebraska and Minnesota. Nebraska’s registry excludes juveniles unless they were prosecuted criminally in adult court. Minnesota’s juvenile registry isn’t public.
Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Ryan Post conceded that if the boy had done in Nebraska what he did in Minnesota, he wouldn’t have been required to register as a sex offender. But the way the Nebraska law is written, all sex offenders who move here must register, regardless of age, Post said.
Riley was among three 8th Circuit judges who heard the appeal in the federal courthouse in Omaha. The panel will issue its opinion in the case at a later date.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf ruled that it “makes no sense to believe that the Nebraska statutes were intended to be more punitive to juveniles adjudicated out of state as compared to juveniles adjudicated in Nebraska.”
If the boy had done in Nebraska what he did in Minnesota, he would not have been required to register as a sex offender, Kopf said.
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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, https://www.journalstar.com
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