The PA Superior Court has recently decided the case of Commonwealth v. Leonard, No. 1368 MDA 2016 (October 17, 2017), holding that Defendant should not have been required to register as a lifetime offender under SORNA where he entered a negotiated guilty plea to multiple Tier I and Tier II offenses, arising from the same arrest, on the same date.
Leonard appealed from the judgment of sentence of two and one-half to ten years of incarceration he received, following a negotiated guilty plea resulting in his conviction for one count of distribution of child pornography, seven counts of possession of child pornography, and two counts of criminal use of a communication facility. As part of his sentence, Leonard was required to register as a lifetime offender pursuant to the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”).
At sentencing, Leonard’s counsel argued that Leonard should be treated as a Tier II sexual offender, as all convictions had arisen from the same criminal episode and Leonard was convicted of all offenses on the same date.
Upon review, the Superior Court noted that SORNA requires an act, conviction, and subsequent act to trigger lifetime registration for multiple offenses that are otherwise subject to fifteen- or twenty-five-year periods of registration. Thus, multiple convictions based upon charges in a single information for possession of child pornography do not qualify for Tier III classification. Accordingly, the Court agreed with Leonard and that his case was within the scope of the Lutz-Morrison precedent. Specifically, he entered a negotiated guilty plea to multiple Tier I and Tier II offenses, arising from the same arrest, on the same date.
Accordingly, the Superior Court remanded Leonard’s case for the trial court to impose a twenty-five-year registration requirement under SORNA.
CASE LINK: http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Superior/out/J-S55025-17Ao.pdf?cb=1
