Sex Offenders File Class Action Challenging Minnesota’s ‘Conditional Release’ Policy

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Participants in the State of Minnesota Sex Offender Program claim in a class action that the state’s policy of subjecting sex offenders to conditional release terms after their sentences have expired is unconstitutional.

At the heart of the lawsuit, which was filed pro se by 14 named plaintiffs, is the state’s alleged practice of imposing upon sex offenders who have completed their prison sentences a “conditional release” whereby the offender is subjected to “continuous supervision” for a fixed term. The case argues that this policy, instituted under the Minnesota Sex Offenders Act (MSOA), violates proposed class members’ constitutional rights in that it allows “the making of a new charge leading to criminal punishment” without due process.

“Due Process is violated,” the complaint reads, “because the Sex Offender Conditional Release Statute imposes punishment on the basis of a new finding of fact which was not an element of the crime for which the offender (individual) was convicted.”

In other words, the lawsuit explains, the MSOA allows criminals who are deemed “a threat of bodily harm to the public” to be subjected to additional punishment upon the completion of their original sentences in the absence of “procedural safeguards” such as the right to counsel, an opportunity to be heard, subpoena power, and the right of cross-examination.

The case claims the MSOA is a “product of moral panics” and oversteps convicted individuals’ constitutional rights under the Fourth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments.