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Supreme Court upholds sex-offender label for 21-year-old
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Sex-offender notification requirements instituted on a Clark County man deemed by a psychologist to be a low risk to commit comparable crimes are not cruel or unusual, the state’s high court ruled Thursday.
The 5-2 decision by the Ohio Supreme Court means the state’s registration and address-verification requirements for second-tier offenders don’t violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“The Tier II registration requirements do not meet the burden of being so extreme as to be grossly disproportionate to the crime or shocking to a reasonable person,” Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote in the majority opinion.
The case involves Travis Blankenship, who was convicted of having unlawful sexual conduct with a 15-year-old girl when he was 21.
According to documents, the two met through a social-media website and subsequently began a sexual relationship. The teen in the case reported the sex was consensual.
A psychologist later “characterized Blankenship as showing none of the characteristics of what he considers a sex offender despite his commission of a sex crime and concluded that Blankenship’s risk of re-offending was low.”
Blankenship was sentenced to five years of probation and a short stint in jail.
As a Tier II sex offender, he also is required to register his residence and workplace with county sheriff departments for the next 25 years.
The state’s tiered system for sexually oriented offenders is based on the offenses involved and does not give judges discretion to modify classifications, according to documents.
But Blankenship appealed the registration requirement, calling it cruel and unusual punishment.
According to documents, “He argued that his relationship with [the teen] was ‘caring’ and that the circumstances showed no aggravating facts. He contended that a 25-year registration period would serve no legitimate penological purpose.”
The Ohio Supreme Court took the case to consider the constitutionality of mandatory sex-offender registration requirements.
Lanzinger was joined by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Judith L. French, with Justices Terrence O’Donnell and Sharon L. Kennedy concurring in the judgment only.
Ohio Suprme Court Justices Paul Pfeifer and William M. O’Neill dissented on the opinion.