A Columbus man who pleaded guilty to sexual battery in 1995 does not have to tell authorities his whereabouts because he left prison before sex-offender registration laws took effect, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 7-0 yesterday.
When the state's Adam Walsh Act requirements went on the books in 2008, Paul E. Palmer was reclassified as a Tier III -- or most-dangerous -- sex offender. That meant he had to register his address with law enforcement every three months for the rest of his life.
Palmer challenged his classification in court. While his petition was pending, he was indicted on charges of failing to verify his address and not reporting a change of address.
Judge John Bessey of Franklin County Common Pleas Court dismissed the indictment in 2009 and ruled that the new sex-offender regulations could not apply to Palmer.
The Franklin County Court of Appeals reversed that decision, finding that the Adam Walsh Act was written to apply to past sex offenders.
Since then, though, the Supreme Court has twice struck down parts of the Adam Walsh law as unconstitutional -- saying the reclassification of 26,000 offenders violated the separation-of-powers doctrine and violated the prohibition against retroactive criminal punishment.
In yesterday's ruling, Justice Yvette McGee Brown said that because those rulings did not invalidate the entire law, Palmer was within his rights in asking the trial judge for help. Franklin County prosecutors had argued the opposite.
"The invalidated reclassification provisions created an unconstitutional relationship between two branches of government," she wrote. "By contrast, the petition process involves only one branch of government, the judiciary."
The court also said Bessey was "well within" his authority to dismiss the indictment before trial.
Palmer was sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison and released in 1997.
Copyright 2012 - The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
