{"id":10865,"date":"2010-07-11T12:21:18","date_gmt":"2010-07-11T17:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=10865"},"modified":"2010-07-13T12:04:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T17:04:50","slug":"baby-you-can-drive-my-carr-or-maybe-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/07\/baby-you-can-drive-my-carr-or-maybe-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby, You Can Drive My Carr . . . Or Maybe Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The ink is barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Carr v. United States<\/em><\/a>, and already we have a contentious case in the Seventh Circuit\u00a0questioning its meaning.\u00a0 In Carr,<\/em> the Court had to interpret a notoriously clumsy bit of legislation from 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act<\/a> (part of the so-called\u00a0Adam Walsh Act).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In Carr<\/em>, the Court held that a person may not be convicted under SORNA based on travel that occurred prior to SORNA’s enactment.<\/p>\n

At the time Carr <\/em>was decided, the Seventh Circuit already had pending before it United States v. Vasquez.<\/em>\u00a0 Vasquez was convicted of a SORNA violation\u00a0on 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The Seventh Circuit rejected these arguments in a\u00a0majority opionion <\/a>authored by Judge Bauer.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Barely mentioning Carr<\/em>, the majority relied heavily on the reasoning of\u00a0pre-Carr <\/em>opinions from other circuits.\u00a0 At least implicitly, Vasquez <\/em>seems to take the view that Carr <\/em>has little significance beyond the retroactivity question that was the subject of its holding.<\/p>\n

In an interesting dissent, though, Judge Manion advanced a quite different interpretation of Carr —<\/em>\u00a0one that would put the prosecution to a considerably\u00a0more demanding burden in SORNA cases.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under Carr<\/em>, in Manion’s view,\u00a0<\/em>the travel element is not merely a “hook” for federal jurisdiction, but “part of the behavior Congress is regulating” (15).\u00a0 Thus, there must be a nexus between the travel and the failure to register.\u00a0 Such a nexus was lacking in the Vasquez <\/em>stipulated facts:<\/p>\n

Vasquez’s only duty to register as a sex offender arose in Illinois . . . . He didn’t have a duty to register in California . . . . So, his interstate travel did not culminate in his failure to register, nor was it in any way connected to his failure to register.\u00a0 Thus, it was not part of the harm that Congress was addressing, but a mere jurisdictional hook for making this a federal crime.\u00a0 (16-17)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although this conclusion would be enough to justify a reversal, Manion went on to argue that even a bare nexus between the travel and the failure to register should not be enough —\u00a0Carr <\/em>actually contemplated a purpose element:<\/p>\n

[T]he Supreme Court views [SORNA] as requiring that some purpose to avoid, evade, or elude registering attach to the defendant’s travel; it is not enough that the defendant travels across state lines to run an errand or visit a friend.\u00a0 (17)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, moving beyond the statutory interpretation questions potentially affected by Carr<\/em>, Manion considered whether SORNA (as understood by the majority) was consitutional.\u00a0 Given an interpretation of SORNA that does not include a nexus requirement, Manion concluded that the statute amounts to “a significant expansion of congressional power” (18) and exceeds what is permitted by the Commerce Clause.<\/p>\n

As new SORNA cases are decided, it will be interesting to see whether Judge Manion’s interpretation of Carr<\/em> gains traction elsewhere\u00a0or whether other circuits will also take a “business as usual” approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0questioning its meaning.\u00a0 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\u00a0Adam Walsh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,23,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-seventh-circuit","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}