State v. Jeffrey Z.

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted, on a plea of guilty, of crimes including sexual assault in the third degree, appealed following the trial court's denial of his motion to terminate his registration as a convicted sex offender and his petition to restrict the dissemination of that information. The defendant had been sentenced to five years of incarceration, execution suspended after time served, and three years of probation, as a result of his participation with two other individuals in the sexual assault of a minor. The defendant claimed, inter alia, that his sex offender registration requirement should have been limited to ten years, as set forth in the statute ((Rev. to 1997) § 54-102r (f)) in effect at the time he was required to register, instead of a lifetime registration requirement, as the court found, pursuant to the statu- tory (§ 54-250 et seq.) scheme that took effect upon the legislature's repeal of (Rev. to 1997) § 54-102r (f). Held: The trial court properly denied the defendant's motion to terminate his reg- istration as a convicted sex offender, as the state, contrary to the defendant's assertion, did not fail to keep a promise, in exchange for his guilty plea, to limit his registration period to ten years, and, because of the mandatory nature of the fixed ten year period under (Rev. to 1997) § 54-102r (f), whether or for how long the defendant should register could not be a negotiable term of a plea agreement. The defendant's right to due process was not violated by the retroactive appli- cation of the statutory (§ 54-252 (b)) requirement that he register for life as a convicted sex offender, which was a nonpunitive, regulatory consequence of his conviction that the legislature can modify as it deems necessary to promote the public interest. The trial court's implied factual finding that the defendant's underlying criminal conduct was a \sexually violent offense\ in violation of subdivi- sion (1) of the statute ((Rev. to 1995) § 53a-72a (a)) cr