The Michigan Hall of Justice, home to the Michigan Supreme Court is photographed May 24, 2023, in Lansing, Michigan (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio). Inset: Cora Ladane Lymon (Michigan Department of Corrections).
In a 5-2 decision from the Michigan Supreme Court, the state justices ruled that Michigan's requirement of placing people on a sex offender registry list even if the crime that person committed was not sexual in nature, is "cruel and unusual punishment."
According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which has challenged aspects of Michigan's Sex Offenders Registration Act, or SORA, for nearly a decade, there are close to 300 people on the state's sex offender registry who have committed nonsexual crimes or offenses.
When SORA was enacted in the mid-1990s, it was only meant to serve as a confidential database for police. But in the years since that registry has gone public, new legal issues and questions over nuances of the registry have cropped up.
One such question arose after the criminal conviction of Michigander Cora Ladane Lymon.
According to court records, Lymon was convicted in 2015 of unlawfully imprisoning his wife and their two teenage children at gunpoint after he accused her of having an affair. He aimed a gun at her and at their children who tried to intervene. Prosecutors said Lymon told them he would shoot them all and even forced his family to kneel in front of a fireplace and ready themselves for execution.
But instead of shooting them, the man temporarily separated his wife from their children while holding a gun to her and threatened to commit suicide. At one point, he even asked his family to pull the trigger but they would not. Over several hours, prosecutors say he refused to let anyone leave, telling one of his children to urinate against a family room wall instead of leaving to use a bathroom. He kept his family in the living room overnight and in the morning apologized and told his children he just "had a bad night and that they would forget about it."
His wife took the first chance she had to file a police report.
Lymon was charged with nearly a dozen counts including three counts of unlawful imprisonment and three counts of torture. He was sentenced to 10 1/2 to 20 years in prison for the torture convictions, 7 to 15 years for each of the unlawful imprisonment convictions plus 2 to 4 years for a felonious assault conviction and another 2 years for a felony firearm conviction. The sentences were to be served consecutively, court records show.
And since two of the three unlawful imprisonment convictions involved his 15-year-old and 16-year-old children, Michigan law required Lymon to register as a Tier 1 sex offender in the state and remain on the registry for 15 years.
Lymon appealed and his conviction was upheld but his case was remanded for the entry of an order removing him from the sex offender registry. Prosecutors cross-appealed and the Michigan Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
In their ruling on July 29, the majority explained that when it came to the inclusion of nonsexual offenders like Lymon onto the list, they recognized that some "uncertainty" exists around the efficacy of the registry.
While the registry is intended to be a public safety service, "a growing body of research," the justices noted, has evidenced that sex offender registries do not necessarily decrease recidivism but might actually increase it because of its collateral effects — being on the list ups "notoriety in the community, unstable housing and employment and barriers to reintegration."
The concurrence was careful to clarify that this research and the majority's acknowledgment did not represent a "clear consensus" or position on the efficacy of sex offender registries or lack thereof.
But the majority said it still believed there were "excessive" restraints imposed on nonsexual offenders by being placed on the list.
What Lymon did was "disturbing" and "severe," the majority wrote, noting there were no sexual elements to his crime and "no indication that defendant poses a risk of committing sexual crimes in the future."
"Nonetheless, for 15 years beyond the imprisonment served for his crimes, defendant is subject to the onerous requirements of a registry designed to 'prevent and protect against the commission of future criminal sexual acts,'" the majority wrote.
By identifying Lymon as a sex offender, the state has subjected him "to the same societal stigma and punishment as if defendant had committed a sexual offense."
"Defendant is not personally or morally responsible for having committed a sex offense, and yet SORA treats him as if he is," the concurring opinion continued. "This penalty of being subject to the sex offender registry for a non-sexual crime, imposed in addition to a defendant's prison sentence for the non-sexual crime committed, is excessive in comparison to the offense committed and so weighs in favor of a conclusion of gross disproportionality. "
In other states, like Illinois, the state government found a nexus between crimes like kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment to sexual assault against a minor and agreed that such individuals could be placed on the sex offender list if convicted.
The concurring justices, which include Justices Elizabeth Clement, Richard Bernstein, Megan Cavanagh, Elizabeth Welch and Kyra Bolden — acknowledged this but were unpersuaded.
In Justice Brian Zahra's dissent, he slammed the majority's ruling, saying that it was "not a reasonable measure" to advance public safety and that it "ignores that countless Michigan families rely on the registry to ensure their safety."
Michigan signed SORA into law with provisions that included offenders who kidnapped and imprisoned children, "as did 42 other states and the federal government itself with the enactment of analogous registries."
"For all intents and purposes, this Court holds that the policy choice of the residents of this state and an overwhelming number of other American jurisdictions lacks a substantial basis in public protection," Zahra wrote.
It would be a "misnomer, " he added, to call the list a "punishment," instead, he argued, it was akin to a "regulatory measure designed for public protection."
Justice David Viviano joined Zahra's dissent.
