State in the Interest of C.K.

When C.K. (defendant) was 15, he sexually abused his younger brother, A.K., who was seven. A.K. did not reveal the abuse to police until years later, and the state (plaintiff) charged C.K. with committing aggravated sexual assault as a juvenile when he was 23. As part of his sentence, C.K. was required to comply with Megan’s Law, including its lifetime-registration and community-notification provisions. In the following years, C.K. attended college, worked, and had no further contact with the criminal-justice system. At age 38, C.K. filed a petition for post-conviction relief (PCR), contending that the registration requirements were unconstitutional. Expert testimony at the evidentiary hearing revealed that juvenile offenders, unlike their adult counterparts, were less likely to reoffend and more likely to benefit from rehabilitation—generally, that the longer it had been since a juvenile had offended, the less likely he was to offend again. Experts also opined that individualized risk assessments were the best way to determine a person’s likeliness to reoffend. In C.K.’s case, multiple assessments deemed him a low risk. The PCR court denied C.K.’s petition. The New Jersey Supreme Court granted certification to decide the constitutionality under the substantive-due-process clause of the lifetime-registration provision as applied to juveniles ages 14 to 18, as offenders under age 14 were not subject to lifetime registration.