CHEYENNE, Wyo.—A federal appeals court has rejected a convicted sex offender’s argument that he didn’t need to register with Wyoming authorities in part because he claimed the state’s sex offender registration system isn’t up to federal standards.
Kenneth Gibson was convicted of third-degree sexual assault in Colorado before moving to Laramie last year, court records say. He lived there for a few months before the U.S. Marshals Service investigated a complaint that he had failed to register as a sex offender.
Gibson pleaded guilty in federal court in Wyoming to failing to register. U.S. District Judge William F. Downes this February sentenced him to 37 months in prison.
Gibson appealed his conviction to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Jim Barrett, who represented Gibson, argued that provisions of the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act didn’t apply to Gibson and that the prosecution was unconstitutional.
Barrett could not immediately be reached for comment on the appeals court ruling.
The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act is part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. The registration law sets minimum national standards for sex offender registration and notification.
The federal registration law applies retroactively to people who were convicted of sex crimes before it became law in 2006.
Barrett argued that Wyoming hasn’t implemented the federal notification law. He said the federal law has much more stringent requirements than Wyoming’s state registration law.
“Since Wyoming has failed to implement (the federal sex offender registration law), Mr. Gibson cannot possibly be subject to the act’s constraints,” Barrett said in written arguments.
Jim Anderson, assistant U.S. attorney in Cheyenne, filed papers saying it was improper for Gibson to argue that the federal law didn’t apply to him. Anderson said the appeals court had already decided in an earlier case from Oklahoma that as long as states have a sex offender registration system, convicted offenders face criminal penalties for failing to register with them.
Wyoming Attorney General Bruce Salzburg said the U.S. Department of Justice has not yet ruled on whether Wyoming’s sex offender registry is in compliance with the federal law.
Salzburg said Wyoming submitted a compliance package to the U.S. Department of Justice in April but hasn’t received a response.
States that failed to comply with the requirements of the federal law by this summer are subject to losing 10 percent of the funding they receive through a federal justice grant program.
The main difference between the state’s sex offender registration law and the federal act lies in how the state treats juveniles, Salzburg wrote in response to a request for comment.
“Our statute does not require registration for a juvenile who has been adjudicated delinquent for an offense that would subject him/her to registration if committed by an adult,” Salzburg wrote. “If the juvenile is convicted as an adult of a qualifying offense, he/she is required to register. (The federal law) guidelines require that juveniles over the age of 14 who are adjudicated delinquent for such offenses are to register.”
Salzburg also wrote that Wyoming law only requires registration for sex offenders who were sentenced after Jan. 1, 1985, while the federal law doesn’t have that limitation.
“Even with these differences, the Department of Justice may find that our statute substantially complies with (the federal law). We will see,” Salzburg wrote.
