The U.S. Supreme Court on April 4 overturned a 10th Circuit ruling that a convicted sex offender had violated notification laws by moving to the Philippines without advising officials in Kansas of his new whereabouts.
The court’s ruling in Nichols v. the United States cited an article by Senior Associate Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs Dan Filler that appeared in the Indiana Law Journal in 2002.
Filler’s article, “Making the Case for Megan’s Law,” explores the movement that began in the 1990s to enact notification laws designed to protect children from sex offenders living in their communities.
An authority on criminal law, Filler focuses on the effects of social anxiety on the development of legislation that aims to address crime. He serves on Pennsylvania’s Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment and he previously chaired an American Bar Association team that assessed the fairness and accuracy of Alabama’s death-penalty system.
In a unanimous ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court found that the federal law that existed when convicted sex offender Lester Ray Nichols left Kansas in 2012 did not require him to alert authorities that he planned to move overseas.