Baby, You Can Drive My Carr . . . Or Maybe Not
The ink is barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Carr v. United States, and already we have a contentious case in the Seventh Circuit questioning its meaning. In Carr, the Court had to interpret a notoriously clumsy bit of legislation from 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (part of the so-called Adam Walsh Act). SORNA makes it a federal crime for a person who is required to register as a sex offender to (1) travel in interstate commerce, and (2) knowingly fail to register or update a registration. In Carr, the Court held that a person may not be convicted under SORNA based on travel that occurred prior to SORNA’s enactment.
At the time Carr was decided, the Seventh Circuit already had pending before it United States v. Vasquez. Vasquez was convicted of a SORNA violation on the basis of stipulated facts that showed (1) he failed to register as a sex offender as he was required to do in Illinois, and (2) he subsequently traveled from Illinois to California for some undetermined purpose. On appeal, Vasquez argued that the statute required the government to prove he had knowledge of his federal registration obligation, and that the statute exceeded Congress’s regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause.
The Seventh Circuit rejected these arguments in a majority opionion authored by Judge Bauer.