United States v. Joshua Elkins

Congress, by enacting the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SOR-NA”), 42 U.S.C. § 16901 et seq., in July 2006, sought to establish “a comprehensive national system for the registration” of sex offenders and offenders against children. 42 U.S.C. § 16901 . In October 2010, a single count indictment issued against Joshua A. Elkins in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, charging him with traveling in interstate commerce and knowingly failing to register under SORNA in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250 (a). On Elkins’s motion, the district court dismissed the indictment on the ground that applying SORNA to Elkins on the basis of his pre-SORNA Washington conviction as a juvenile sex offender was punitive and therefore a violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause of the United States Constitution. The government appealed.

Following the approach set forth by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 , 123 S.Ct. 1140 , 155 L.Ed.2d 164 (2003), we conclude that applying SORNA to Elkins based on his state conviction as a juvenile sex offender is not punitive. We further conclude in light of United States v. Crowder, 656 F.3d 870 (9th…