Sex offender registration--it depends

People v. Sherlock exemplifies the difficult sometimes when deciding if a court-martial conviction will result in sex offender registration. What was the person convicted of and in what state is the person resident (or otherwise required to register if visiting for an extended period of time).

Often the "foreign registration clause" of the applicable statute is is the issue.

Sherlock was convicted in federal district court of possessing CP. The Court in Sherlock reaffirmed that 

Applying the clear and unambiguous statutory language in this case, defendant cannot be designated as "sexually violent" because he was not required to register as a sex offender in the jurisdiction in which his conviction occurred. This is so because the federal government does not maintain a sex offender registry of the sort that states are required to operate by federal mandate. Although the federal government maintains two sex offender databases, the information contained in them merely represents a collection of registration information acquired from registries maintained by individual state and territorial jurisdictions (see 34 USC § § 20921; 20922). Further, although federal law requires sex offenders convicted of federal sex offenses to register in each jurisdiction where they live, work or go to school (34 § USC 20913[a]), significantly, for purposes of this statutory scheme, the law defines "jurisdiction" as a state or territory and contains no requirement that federally-convicted sex offenders register with the federal government (34 USC § 20911[10]).
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In People v. Kennedy, we considered whether an individual convicted of a sex crime by a Naval Court Martial was required to register as a sexually violent offender as a result of their conviction in a foreign jurisdiction (7 NY3d 87, 89-90 [2006]). We observed that the foreign registration clause "requires that the conviction result in the offender's obligation to register in the `other jurisdiction' i.e., where defendant was convicted—here the United States Navy" (id. at 91)[2]. Thus we held that, because defendant was not required to register as a sex offender with any Naval authority, he was not required to register in New York under Correction Law § 168-a. Similarly, as defendant here was not required to register as a sex offender with the federal government, he was improperly designated as a sexually violent offender under Correction Law § 168-a(3)(b).

The result is that Sherlock must still register as a sex offender, but not as a sexually violent offender. That affects his classification level and the requirements attached to that, for example how long the person will be on the register or the publicly available information about the person.