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Appeals court hears challenge over expert funds for offenders who were ‘emerging adults’
Summary
The Massachusetts Appeals Court heard arguments over whether the Sex Offender Registry Board must pay for an expert to explain how ‘‘emerging adulthood’’ should affect a registrant’s risk classification.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court on Oct. 12 heard oral argument in an impounded appeal challenging the Sex Offender Registry Board’s denial of money for an expert to assess whether ‘‘emerging adulthood’’ should reduce a registrant’s risk level.
Attorney Colin Caffrey, representing the appellant identified in the record as Doe 97,000, told the three-justice panel that his client committed his last offenses when he was an emerging adult and that scientific literature and Supreme Judicial Court decisions (Mathis and related precedent) show emerging adults have greater capacity for change. Caffrey said the hearing examiner acknowledged the registrant’s youth but still denied funding for an expert who could explain how age at the time of offending affects present dangerousness.
SORB lawyer Jessica Blackman and the panel pressed counsel on the record and the limits of the regulations. Blackman argued the SORB factors already distinguish juvenile and adult conduct and that the only convictions that brought the appellant to the board were adult convictions. She told the court the hearing examiner reduced the registrant from level 3 to level 2 after accounting for youthfulness, stability and treatment, and she argued the record shows no entitlement to the extra expert funds sought.
The justices pressed both sides on whether Mathis (and other SJC guidance) requires a change in the board’s regulations or only affects criminal sentencing. Justice Walsh repeatedly described the policy question: whether the regulatory framework needs a facial challenge or instead can be addressed in individual evidentiary hearings on funding for experts.
The panel and counsel also discussed case law about when an expert is required (for low IQ or mental abnormality, for example) and whether that standard can be applied by analogy to the category of 18–21-year-old offenders. Counsel for the appellant said the hearing examiner’s written decision relied on her unguided lay reading of scholarly work and that an expert would have been needed to translate the science into the specific risk assessment for his client.
The court took the case under submission after oral argument.
Why it matters: The outcome will affect how and when registrants who committed offenses as emerging adults may obtain funding for psychiatric or developmental experts at SORB hearings, and whether the court expects the board to update regulations to reflect SJC decisions recognizing developmental differences in that age group.
