Bellflower, Termination of 290 Registration Obligation
In 2005, our client was arrested and later convicted in the Whittier Superior Court of indecent exposure (Penal Code § 314) as a felony. His conviction carried with it an obligation to register as a sex offender for life under Penal Code § 290. Our client was 36 years old at the time.
As our client explained the facts, his soon-to-be ex-wife called the police on our client for our client being naked in the back yard and the police arrested him. It was unclear who our client was trying to offend, shock or excite by his nudity.
Our client’s supervision and registration were later transferred to the Long Beach Police Department when, in October 2017, Senate Bill 384 was passed into law.
Senate Bill (SB) 384 provided that certain registered sex offenders could petition a judge for an order terminating his or her obligation to continue to register, depending upon the type of conviction and the length of time the person had registered since the conviction or leaving prison or jail. The law did not before effective until July 1, 2021.
Our client learned about this new law in late 2022 and called Greg Hill & Associates about ending his registration obligation.
The client explained his indecent exposure conviction and Greg said he expected such a conviction to be classified as a “Tier One” conviction, meaning the client would be eligible after ten years of registration, assuming he did not have any failures to register (for a felony failure to register, three years are added to the registration period; for a misdemeanor, one year) and was not convicted of any other offenses (and any commitment for such offense(s) tolls the registration period).
The client explained that he had no failures to register convictions and no further convictions.
Greg then explained the process and the time involved in the process of seeking a termination of one’s obligation to register as a sex offender. Greg explained that since the client resided in Long Beach and registered with the Long Beach Police Department, the proper courthouse to file the petition was the Long Beach Superior Court.
Greg described his experience in prior petitions with long delays from the registering law enforcement agency in filing the sex offender checklist and confusion by judges over how the new law was to be applied, but commented that the courts seemed to be getting more comfortable with the petitions as time passed.
Greg explained that he did not need to serve the Whittier Police Department, who arrested our client originally and with whom he first registered, because Whitter was within the same county as the Long Beach Police Department. Likewise, our office did not need to serve the petition to the Whittier District Attorney’s Office because it was within the same county (Los Angeles) as the Long Beach District Attorney’s office.
Our office then prepared the CR-415 and CR-416 and filed both and served both, while also enclosing the CR-417 and CR-418 in each service copy.
To Greg’s surprise, as well as the client’s, the Long Beach Superior Court transferred the case to the Bellflower courthouse for a hearing.
Greg then had to appear in the Bellflower courthouse four times over about a six month period before the petition was finally granted. At the first three hearings, the Long Beach Police Department simply did not file the sex offender checklist. Finally, both Greg and the District Attorney assigned to the case called the detective in charge of registering our client and responsible for preparing the sex offender checklist and filing it.
On the fourth hearing, our office learned that the detective had finally filed the sex offender checklist, but had not served it. Making matters worse, she filed it in the wrong courthouse and then she was transferred.
So on the fourth hearing, the judge in the Bellflower Courthouse, feeling frustration for our client and Greg, ordered that the new detective in charge of filing the sex offender checklist prepare it that morning. Whether the judge had power over this detective was another issue, but the detective complied with the order and the judge received the checklist and granted our client’s petition for termination of registration.
Our client was happy.
For more information about a petition to terminate one’s ‘sex registration as a sex offender, please click on the following articles:
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