From our contact at the Ohio Public Defender Office:
Someone in our SB 10 litigation group was able to get some information from the AG’s office today. Here’s the excerpt from that email:
The AG’s office has reclassified all of the Predators and are now working on the Habitual Offenders (those whose original classifications were either Predator or Habitual before Senate Bill 10). They are reclassifying those two groups first because all of those people clearly have a prior judicial registration order (the court order given near time of conviction which originally classified the offender). The Bodyke decision requires that these original court orders shall now go back into effect.
For the originally-classified Sexually Oriented Offenders, they are pulling the final court order to confirm there was a hearing and reclassifying them.
Out of state offenders will not be changed pending the Motion for Clarification, and neither will anyone without a court order.
They believe approximately 2300 offenders will be released from the sex offender registry. They are checking each one individually to make certain there were no tolling events. They are then notifying the Local Sheriff’s Office of whom should be removed from the registry. Notices will be sent to all but the Predators.
They also believe that all the other provisions of SB 10 still apply to the reclassified offenders.
They are reclassifying people whose original classifications (before SB 10) were either Predator or Habitual, because all of those people clearly have a prior judicial order. If you were originally classified as a Sexually Oriented Offender, you probably won’t be getting an official letter from the AG until they start reclassifying people who were originally SOO's. And, it looks like they’ll only reclassify SOO's who have a prior court order labeling them as such. (If you’ve seen the Motion for Clarification that the AG filed last month, they’re unsure of how to classify people who don’t have prior court orders.)
Note: Attorneys for Bodyke have filed a Motion in Opposition to the AG's Motion for Clarification, which was filed immediately after the decision by the Ohio Attorney General office. We said at the time that this was a stalling tactic by the AG to buy time. Let us hope the Ohio Supreme Court quickly denies the AG motion.
