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An Elkhart County man does not have to register as a sex offender for a crime that doesn’t fall under Indiana’s registration requirement just because he registered for it in Virginia, the Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled in a Friday reversal.
According to court records, the state charged Fernando Marroquin in 1998 with Class D felony sexual misconduct with a minor. Marroquin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a short period of incarceration followed by 2½ years of probation.
Marroquin’s conviction did not require him to register as a sex offender in Indiana.
But Marroquin moved to Virginia in 2000 and lived there until 2018. Virginia law required that he register for 10 years based on the Indiana conviction.
Then in 2007, Virginia amended its law to require lifetime registration for offenders like Marroquin.
In 2018, Marroquin moved back to Indiana. The Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office told him he needed to register in Indiana for life, just as he had been required to do in Virginia.
Marroquin sued the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction, seeking a declaratory judgment that he need not register.
The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
The Elkhart Superior Court denied Marroquin’s motion and granted the commissioner’s.
The trial court held that, under Ammons v. State, 50 N.E.3d 143 (Ind. 2016), the registration requirement under Indiana Code § 11-8-8-19(f) “is triggered if, when an offender moves to Indiana, he is required to register in the state from which he came, regardless of the state of conviction.”
Marroquin appealed, arguing the statute didn’t apply when the requirement to register in another jurisdiction is based entirely on the existence of an Indiana conviction — that is, when there is no “independent requirement” to register in another jurisdiction.
The Court of Appeals agreed and reversed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the commissioner and remanded for the entry of summary judgment for Marroquin.
Judge Nancy Vaidik wrote the opinion for the appellate court.
According to Vaidik, the purpose of I.C. 11-8-8-19(f) is to ensure that a person who is required to register in another jurisdiction because of a sex offense in that jurisdiction cannot avoid registration by moving to Indiana.
“And Section 11-8-8-19(f) simply establishes how long such out-of-state offenders must register in Indiana,” she wrote. “Because Marroquin committed his sex offense in Indiana, he is not included in Section 11-8-8-5(b)(1) and is not subject to Section 11-8-8-19(f).”
Vaidik pointed out that the offender in Ammons didn’t raise the statutory issue Marroquin raised, and had only argued that applying the statutes to him violated the ex post facto clause of the Indiana Constitution because the statutes didn’t exist when he committed his crime.
“Our Supreme Court addressed and rejected that constitutional argument, but it didn’t address the statutory argument Marroquin makes here,” she wrote. “Therefore, the Court’s holding doesn’t control the outcome of this appeal.”
Judges Melissa May and Dana Kenworthy concurred in Fernando Marroquin v. Christina Reagle, 23A-MI-2545.
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