Recent cases have highlighted a couple of common issues in cases involving alleged violations of the Sex Offender Registry Statute, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 40-39-201 to -218. Pre-trial motions are recommended to deal with these issues preemptively and preserve them for appeal.
When the State charges a violation of the Sex Offender Registry Statute, one of the elements is that the defendant was subject to the registry. To prove that element, the State will put in evidence of the specific crime that landed your client on the registry, such as rape, aggravated sexual battery, or some other highly prejudicial offense. Fortunately, you can prevent that by offering to stipulate to your client’s sex offender status. Even if the State rejects the stipulation, there is case law holding that the offer of stipulation makes it improper for the State to bring in evidence of the name and nature of the offense to show the defendant’s status as a sex offender. And if the State wants to bring in that information for some other purpose, it must satisfy Tennessee Rule of Evidence 404(b). The best practice is to file a pretrial notice of offer of stipulation and motion in limine to exclude evidence related to past offenses. Even if the court denies the motion or lets in the evidence after the offer of stipulation, you will have a solid issue for appeal.
Another issue seen in recent cases occurs when the defendant’s registry officer does not testify for some reason and the State tries to bring in a substitute witness, such as another officer from the same office. This tends to come up when the officer who documented the alleged violation is no longer a state employee by the time the case is litigated. The best practice in this situation is to file a pretrial motion in limine to exclude any testimonial hearsay statements pursuant to the Federal Confrontation Clause and article 1, section 9 of the Tennessee Constitution. Confrontation Clause issues can be tricky, so feel free to consult with the Appellate Division about this type of motion.
Finally, in some recent registry cases, prosecutors have asked courts to admit a defendant’s entire TBI file into evidence. Absent an appropriate objection, judges have admitted such files, which are often hundreds of pages long and tend to be full of irrelevant, prejudicial information. To prevent this practice, consider filing a pre-trial motion in limine based on Tennessee Rules of Evidence 401, 402, 403, and 404. This will serve the dual purpose of preventing the admission of prejudicial information and forcing the State to do some work up front to identify the small number of relevant records in the file.