A Stitch in Haste

There is a bit of a legal kerfuffle in Missouri over whether one must actually be a sex offender before one is placed on a sex offender registry:

A judge declared Missouri's child abuse registry unconstitutional Thursday, ruling that suspected offenders deserved a court-like hearing before being listed.

The registry is kept secret from the general public, but is used by child care providers and others to screen current and potential employees.

Circuit Judge Richard Callahan concluded that people's reputations and professional careers were damaged when their names were placed in the child abuse registry before a due-process hearing.
...
He also said the hearings must use a tougher-to-prove criterion of "preponderance of the evidence" instead of "probable cause" — a change already made by a 2004 law.

The ruling is stayed pending an appeal.

In my opinion the judge's ruling doesn't go far enough. It seems to me that a sex offender registry should be limited to convicted sex offenders. Allowing for a separate hearing, even one that follows traditional standards of procedural due process, tiptoes dangerously close to double jeopardy.

I have no problem with the idea that a person can be acquitted of a crime but found liable in a civil lawsuit, based on differing burdens of proof. And I also have no problem with the abstract concept of sex offender registries (based mainly on the theory that sex offenders have notoriously high rates of recidivism).

But implementing a dual-hearing system, namely a criminal trial based on "beyond a reasonable doubt" and a second registry hearing based on the lower "preponderance of the evidence" standard means that an acquitted defendant can still be placed on a registry. Innocent can still mean guilty.

If the criminal justice system is going to have a "two bites at the apple" regime for sex offender registries, then at the very least the standard for the registry hearing should be elevated to "clear and convincing evidence" and not the lower "preponderance of the evidence" standard used in civil actions.

Still, at least this Missouri judge properly smacked down the unconscionable practice of informal hearings based only on probable cause. His ruling should clearly be upheld on appeal and hopefully extended with an even higher burden of proof requirement.