The Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA); The catchall provision (MCL 28.722(r)(vii)); People v Anderson; Whether a violation was sexual in nature; Effect of People v Lymon

The court held that the trial court did not clearly err in ordering that defendant register under SORA’s catchall provision. He was charged with accosting a child for immoral purposes “after he gave two sex toys to the 14-year-old victim. He later pleaded no contest to aggravated assault[.]” He argued on appeal that the trial court erred in “imposing the SORA registration requirement because aggravated assault is a nonsexual offense.” Pursuant to Anderson, “three conditions must exist to order registration under the catchall provision: ‘(1) the defendant must have been convicted of a state-law violation or a municipal-ordinance violation, (2) the violation must, by its nature, constitute a sexual offense, and (3) the victim of the violation must be under 18 years of age.’” Only the second condition was at issue here. The court concluded that the trial court did not clearly err in “finding that defendant’s violation was, by its nature, a sexual offense because the intended purpose of the gift was for sexual conduct.” The court found that Lymon had “no impact on this conclusion because defendant’s violation clearly had a ‘sexual component’ and our Supreme Court in Lymon did not hold that SORA registration for convictions under the ‘catchall provision’ of SORA” was unconstitutional. Affirmed.