LANCASTER, Pa.– The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has changed a prior ruling and deemed that a Lancaster sex offender must register under Megan’s Law for 15 years.
The court’s decision opposes the state Superior Court’s prior ruling that Thomas Lutz-Morrison must register for life under Megan’s Law because he was convicted of three counts of possessing child pornography in 2013.
State law requires that individuals that are convicted of “two or more” sex offenses to register under Megan’s Law for life.
However, the intermediate appeals courts differed in their interpretations of the law’s language.
In a 4-2 opinion that is filed this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the “two or more” convictions must be for separate acts, and that the sex offender must have already been sentenced for one of the offenses before he was sentenced for the second offense. The Supreme Court ruled that a person must have an opportunity for reform after being convicted for a first offense. If a person were to commit a crime after, it would be considered a second offense.
In Lutz-Morrison’s case, the convictions all regarded a single search and seizure of electronics that contained child pornography.
The Supreme Court’s ruling will set precedent for future cases across the state, and could be applied to cases that have already been prosecuted. Only Megan’s Law registration orders can be impacted by this ruling, while anyone convicted of a crime will not see a change in their sentence.
Assistant District Attorney Travis S. Anderson argued that Megan’s Law is not meant to be rehabilitative in its nature, but is merely designed to provide community notification.
Anderson also argued the statute makes no mention of the timing or sequence of the convictions.
Sex-offense convictions are categorized, for Megan’s Law, in three tiers:
– Tier I offenses: 15-year registration
– Tier II offenses: 25 years registration
– Tier III offenses: lifetime registration
