DUTY TO REGISTER AS SEX OFFENDER ONLY TRIGGERED BY OUT-OF-STATE OFFENSES SPECIFIED BY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY


 

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent a failure-to-register-as-a-sex-offender case back to the Dallas Court of Appeals last week with instructions for the Court of Appeals to re-decide in view of a decision in a recent case from Tyler, in Smith County, where the Court of Criminal Appeals held that an out-of-state conviction does not trigger the reporting requirements unless it has been considered to be substantially similar to a Texas offense by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

In the Dallas case, the Dallas Police Department arrested the defendant because he had been convicted of "sexual battery" in Louisiana. The legal question for the Dallas Court to now decide is whether the Department of Public Safety has made a "substantial similarity" determination with respect to that offense; if not, the conviction should be set aside, according to the majority of the Court of Criminal Appeals. Violent crimes lawyer. The Court of Criminal Appeals instructed the Dallas Court of Appeals to reconsider the Dallas Court's original holding that: "[w]hile the statute obligates the Department [of Public Safety] to make such [substantial similarity] determinations, it does not condition statutes being substantially similar on such a determination."

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