Nichols v. United States (578 U.S. 104)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 4, 2016 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 578 U.S. 104 · 136 S. Ct. 1113
- Decided
- April 4, 2016
- Term
- October Term 2015
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Alito
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice ALITOdelivered the opinion of the Court. Lester Ray Nichols, a registered sex offender living in the Kansas City area, moved to the Philippines without notifying Kansas authorities of his change in residence. For that omission Nichols was convicted of failing to update his sex-offender registration, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). We must decide whether federal law required Nichols to update his registration in Kansas to reflect his departure from the State. I A Following the high-profile and horrific rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by her neighbor, States in the early 1990's began enacting registry and community-notification laws to monitor the whereabouts of individuals previously convicted of sex crimes. See Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 89, 123 S.Ct. 1140, 155 L.Ed.2d 164 (2003); Filler, Making the Case for Megan's Law, 76 Ind. L.J. 315, 315-317 (2001). Congress followed suit in 1994 with the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, 108 Stat. 2038, 42 U.S.C. § 14071 et seq. (1994 ed.). Named after an 11-year-old who was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1989 (and who remains missing today), the Wetterling Act conditioned federal funds on States' enacting sex-offender registry laws meeting certain minimum standards. Smith, 538 U.S., at 89-90, 123 S.Ct. 1140. "By 1996, every State, the District of Columbia, and the…
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