Petitions to Terminate Sex Offender Registration

Under G.S. 14-208.12A, registered sex offenders who are not required to register for life can petition the superior court to terminate the registration requirement after 10 years. (The requirement to petition for deregistration came into being in 2006; before then, 10-year registrations terminated automatically after the requisite time had passed.) North Carolina's sex offender registry has been around since 1996, so it's not surprising-a little over a decade later-that these petitions are starting to come before the court more frequently. Unfortunately, the statute setting out the conditions under which the court may grant relief raises a number of difficult questions. One of the most difficult questions involves G.S. 14-208.12A(a1)(2), which prohibits a court from removing someone from the registry unless "[t]he requested relief complies with the provisions of the federal Jacob Wetterling Act, as amended, and any other federal standards applicable to the termination of a registration requirement or required to be met as a condition for the receipt of federal funds by the State . . . ." What does that mean? For over a decade, our state law on sex offender registration has flowed from federal mandates-states must enact laws that meet federal standards or lose certain grant funds. The Jacob Wetterling Act (1994) was the initial federal legislation that established minimum standards for states to register sex offenders. It has since been amended by Megan's Law (1996), the Pam Lychner Act (1996), the Jacob Wetterling Improvements Act (1997), and, most recently, by the Adam Walsh Act (2006). Title [...]