Here’s why some of SC’s sex offenders could soon get a path for removal from state registry
South Carolina’s 17,000 registered sex offenders must have a legal pathway to request and get their names removed from the state registry, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled last year, telling the Legislature to quickly get to work.
Ten months later, state lawmakers still haven’t adopted a framework.
And lawmakers to prosecutors worry without a law passed in time the state will face two options: the state’s sex offenders will be dumped from the list altogether, or every one will apply at the same time and further clog up the judicial system.
“The hard deadline is we have to come up with a bill before the end of session (May 12), or it’s not really clear what’s going to happen,” said state Sen. Greg Hembree R-Horry, who is sponsoring legislation to set up a system that would outline how people on the state’s sex offender registry could apply to be removed from the list.
“We are already in a very overburdened court system trying to catch up from COVID,” Hembree continued. “The time, expense, energy, heartbreak that would take place if that were to happen on our justice system would be very difficult to bear.”
The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in June 2021 that it was unconstitutional for people to stay on the state’s sex offender registry for the rest of their lives without having an opportunity to apply to be removed. The justices gave the state one year to set up an application process to come off the list.
Absent the passage of any legislation, the state’s more than 17,000 sex offenders can start requesting hearings to come off the list starting June 9 — one year from the court ruling — with the possible scenario Hembree said that they all get removed from the registry.
Senators are considering legislation that would give offenders a legal path to come off the list, depending on the severity of their crime, if they’ve spent 15 to 30 years on the registry. Requests would be reviewed by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division or a court.
Victims would be notified if SLED or a court considers removing an offender from the registry, the proposal says.
Laura Hudson, the CEO of the South Carolina Crime Victims’ Council, said she wants anyone applying to come off of the list to have to go through a court hearing to ensure they won’t offend again.
“There has to be a hearing, to say, ‘OK, you have not had anymore sex offenses, you have not had any more assault and batteries, you haven’t had things that have been pleaded down,” Hudson said. “The hearing would necessitate a thorough investigation of their record in South Carolina and everywhere else.”
Removal dependent on crime, behavior after conviction
Some lawmakers say the law requiring that sex offenders be kept on the registry for life is too harsh in some situations.
“That’s too harsh, because there are those offenses ... they are sex offenses, but they’re just not that bad,” Hembree said. “You try to weed those out at the court level. I can tell you many, many times, ... when I was a prosecutor, we would have crimes, that there had a sexual element to it. But it was not the kind of crime that somebody should be on a sex offender (list).”
Though the Supreme Court made its ruling last year, lawmakers didn’t start working on legislation until about last month after the S.C. Solicitor Association and Office of Indigent Defense tried to hammer out an agreement.
“There was just a lot of lawyers debating with lawyers, which is what we do,” said Hembree, an attorney and former state solicitor. “In the off season, the product didn’t pop out. It was just getting yanked back and forth.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin, R-Horry, said lawmakers plan to move the legislation through the General Assembly quickly to alleviate obstacles that might derail getting the bill to the governor’s desk.
A general framework has been agreed to.
It includes giving SLED the power to remove offenders from the list if they don’t have other sex offenses, if they have completed all required treatment programs and if they have properly registered with the county sheriff’s department twice a year to prove where they live.
Other details are still being worked out.
“At issue is what this hearing process should be and who is required to participate,” Rankin told The State by text. “We are getting input from all appropriate stakeholders, including SLED, law enforcement, the Attorney General’s office, defense attorneys, crime victims advocates and the Office of Indigent Defense.”
Under the proposed system, sex offenders would be separated into three groups:
▪ About 700 offenders convicted of crimes, such as kidnapping someone 18 or older, incest, peeping or using a date rape drug, could apply to be removed from the registry after being on the registry for at least 15 years.
▪ About 5,800 people on the registry for offenses, including criminal sexual assault in the second degree, producing child porn, or engaging with a child for sexual performance, would have to wait 25 years before applying to be removed.
SLED would have 90 days to review cases from those two groups. The original prosecuting agency, however, could object, which would lead to a court hearing to determine if the offender can be removed.
▪ About 11,000 people convicted of the most serious offenses — criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, sexual battery of a spouse, kidnapping a person younger than 18 that is not the offender’s child, or criminal sexual conduct with a minor — would need court approval to leave the registry 30 years after their release from prison.
In addition, an offender who is registered in South Carolina because of a federal conviction or a conviction in another state could apply to be removed after they’re eligible to be removed in the original jurisdiction.
Juveniles convicted of criminal sexual conduct, or rape, would be placed on the registry.
However, Hudson said she’s still concerned that the current proposal will give family court judges discretion to put juvenile offenders on the registry if they’re convicted of other sex offenses, leading to inconsistencies over which offenses wind up putting juveniles on the list.
“They’re already pleading those down to anything and everything to keep them off of that registry,” Hudson said.
