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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 15–5238
_________________
LESTER RAY NICHOLS, PETITIONER v.UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the tenth circuit
[April 4, 2016]
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the
Court.
Lester Ray Nichols, a registered sex offender
living in the Kansas City area, moved to the Philippines without
notifying Kansas authorities of his change in residence. For that
omission Nichols was convicted of failing to update his
sex-offender registration, in violation of 18 U. S. C.
§2250(a). We must decide whether federal law required Nichols to
update his registration in Kansas to reflect his departure from the
State.
I
A
Following the high-profile and horrific rape
and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by her neighbor, States in the
early 1990’s began enacting registry and community-notification
laws to monitor the whereabouts of individuals previously convicted
of sex crimes. See Smith v. Doe, 538 U. S. 84,
89 (2003) ; Filler, Making the Case for Megan’s Law, 76 Ind.
L. J. 315, 315–317 (2001). Congress followed suit in 1994 with
the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent
Offender Registration Act, 108Stat. 2038, 42 U. S. C.
§14071 et seq. (1994 ed.). Named after an 11-year-old
who was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1989 (and who remains missing
today), the Wetterling Act conditioned federal funds on States’
enacting sex-offender registry laws meeting certain minimum
standards. Smith, 538 U. S., at 89–90. “By 1996, every
State, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government had
enacted some variation of” a sex-offender registry. Id., at
90.
In 2006, Congress replaced the Wetterling Act
with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA),
120Stat. 590, 42 U. S. C. §16901 et seq. Two
changes are pertinent here. First, Congress made it a federal crime
for a sex offender who meets certain requirements to “knowingly
fai[l] to register or update a registration as required by
[SORNA].” 18 U. S. C. §2250(a)(3); see Carr v.
United States, 560 U. S. 438 –442 (2010). Second,
Congress amended the provisions governing the registration
requirements when an offender moves to a different State. The
original Wetterling Act had directed States to require a sex
offender to “register the new address with a designated law
enforcement agency in another State to which the person
moves not later than 10 days after such person establishes
residence in the new State, if the new State has a registration
requirement.” 42 U. S. C. §14071(b)(5) (1994 ed.)
(emphasis added). Congress later amended this provision to direct
States to require a sex offender to “report the change of address
to the responsible agency in the State the person is
leaving, and [to] comply with any registration requirement in
the new State of residence.” 42 U. S. C. §14071(b)(5)
(2000 ed.) (emphasis added).
SORNA repealed this provision of the Wetterling
Act. 120Stat. 600. In its place, federal law now provides:
“A sex offender shall, not later than 3
business days after each change of name, residence, employment, or
student status, appear in person in at least 1 jurisdiction
involved pursuant to subsection (a) and inform that
jurisdiction of all changes in the information required for that
offender in the sex offender registry.” 42 U. S. C.
§16913(c) (emphasis added).
Subsection (a), in turn, provides: “A sex
offender shall register, and keep the registration current, in each
jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is an
employee, and where the offender is a student.” §16913(a). A sex
offender is required to notify only one “jurisdiction involved”;
that jurisdiction must then notify a list of interested parties,
including the other jurisdictions. §§16921(b)(1)–(7). The question
presented in this case is whether the State a sex offender
leaves—that is, the State where he formerly resided—qualifies as an
“involved” jurisdiction under §16913.
B
In 2003, Nichols was convicted of traveling
with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, in
violation of 18 U. S. C. §2423(b). Although his offense
predated SORNA’s enactment, Nichols was nevertheless required upon
his eventual release in December 2011 to register as a sex offender
in Kansas, where he chose to settle. 28 CFR 72.3 (2015). Nichols
complied with SORNA’s registration requirements—until November 9,
2012, when he abruptly disconnected all of his telephone lines,
deposited his apartment keys in his landlord’s drop-box, and
boarded a flight to Manila. When Nichols was a no-show at mandatory
sex-offender treatment, a warrant was issued revoking his
supervised release. With the assistance of American security
forces, local police in Manila arrested Nichols in December 2012,
and federal marshals then escorted him back to the United States,
where he was charged with one count of “knowingly fail[ing] to
register or update a registration as required by [SORNA],” 18
U. S. C. §2250(a)(3). After unsuccessfully moving to
dismiss the indictment on the ground that SORNA did not require him
to update his registration in Kansas, Nichols conditionally pleaded
guilty, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion.
The Tenth Circuit affirmed. 775 F. 3d 1225
(2014). Following its own precedent in United States v.
Murphy, 664 F. 3d 798 (2011), the panel held that when
a sex offender “ ‘leaves a residence in a state, and then
leaves the state entirely, that state remains a jurisdiction
involved’ ” under §16913. 775 F. 3d, at 1229. Over
four dissenting votes, the court denied Nichols’s petition for
rehearing en banc. 784 F. 3d 666 (2015). In adhering to
Murphy, the Tenth Circuit reentrenched a split created by
the Eighth Circuit’s decision in United States v.
Lunsford, 725 F. 3d 859 (2013). Remarkably,
Lunsford also involved a sex offender who moved from the
Kansas City area—on the Missouri side—to the Philippines. Contra
the Tenth Circuit’s decision below, Lunsford held that that
defendant had no obligation to update his registration in Missouri
because a sex offender is required “to ‘keep the registration
current’ in the jurisdiction where he ‘resides,’ not a jurisdiction
where he ‘resided.’ ” Id., at 861 (citation omitted).
We granted certiorari to resolve the split. 577 U. S. ___
(2015).
II
As noted, Nichols was required to “appear in
person in at least 1 jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection
(a) and inform that jurisdiction of” his change of residence. 42
U. S. C. §16913(c). Subsection (a) mentions three
possible jurisdictions: “where the offender resides, where the
offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student.”
§16913(a). The Philippines is not a “jurisdiction” under SORNA; no
foreign country is. See §16911(10). Putting these provisions
together, SORNA therefore requires a sex offender who changes his
residence to appear, within three business days of the change, in
person in at least one jurisdiction (but not a foreign country)
where he resides, works, or studies, and to inform that
jurisdiction of the address change. Critically, §16913(a) uses only
the present tense: “resides,” “is an employee,” “is a student.” A
person who moves from Leavenworth to Manila no longer “resides”
(present tense) in Kansas; although he once resided in
Kansas, after his move he “resides” in the Philippines. It follows
that once Nichols moved to Manila, he was no longer required to
appear in person in Kansas to update his registration, for Kansas
was no longer a “jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection (a)”
of §16913.
The requirement in §16913(c) to appear in person
and register “not later than 3 business days after each
change of . . . residence” points to the same conclusion.
Nichols could not have appeared in person in Kansas “after” leaving
the State. To be sure, one may argue that the day before his
departure was “not later than 3 business days after” his departure,
but no one in ordinary speech uses language in such a strained and
hypertechnical way.
If the drafters of SORNA had thought about the
problem of sex offenders who leave the country and had sought to
require them to (de)register in the departure jurisdiction, they
could easily have said so; indeed, that is exactly what the amended
Wetterling Act had required. 42 U. S. C. §14071(b)(5)
(2000 ed.) (“report the change of address to the responsible agency
in the State the person is leaving”). It is also what Kansas
state law requires: Nichols had a duty to notify, among
other entities, “the registering law enforcement agency or agencies
where last registered.” Kan. Stat. Ann. §22–4905(g) (2014
Cum. Supp.) (emphasis added). Congress could have chosen to retain
the language in the amended Wetterling Act, or to adopt locution
similar to that of the Kansas statute (and echoed in the statutes
of many other States, cf. Brief for Petitioner 6, n. 1). It
did neither. SORNA’s plain text—in particular, §16913(a)’s
consistent use of the present tense—therefore did not require
Nichols to update his registration in Kansas once he no longer
resided there.
III
The Government resists this straightforward
reading of the statutory text, arguing instead that once an
offender registers in a jurisdiction, “that jurisdiction
necessarily remains ‘involved pursuant to subsection (a),’
because the offender continues to appear on its registry as a
current resident.” Brief for United States 24. But §16913(a) lists
only three possibilities for an “involved” jurisdiction: “where the
offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and where the
offender is a student.” Notably absent is “where the offender
appears on a registry.” We decline the Government’s invitation to
add an extra clause to the text of §16913(a). As we long ago
remarked in another context, “[w]hat the government asks is not a
construction of a statute, but, in effect, an enlargement of it by
the court, so that what was omitted, presumably by inadvertence,
may be included within its scope. To supply omissions transcends
the judicial function.” Iselin v. United States, 270
U. S. 245, 251 (1926) . Just so here.
Relatedly, the Government points out that among
the pieces of information a sex offender must provide as part of
his registration is “[t]he address of each residence at which the
sex offender resides or will reside.” §16914(a)(3) (emphasis
added). The use of the future tense, says the Government, shows
that SORNA contemplates the possibility of an offender’s updating
his registration before actually moving. But §16914(a) merely lists
the pieces of information that a sex offender must provide if and
when he updates his registration; it says nothing about whether the
offender has an obligation to update his registration in the first
place.
Finally, the Government argues that Nichols
actually experienced not one but two “changes” of residence—the
first when he “abandoned” his apartment in Leavenworth by turning
in his keys, and the second when he checked into his hotel in
Manila. On the Government’s view, a sex offender’s “residence
information will change when he leaves the place where he has been
residing, and it will change again when he arrives at his new
residence. He must report both of those changes in a timely
fashion.” Brief for United States 21. We think this argument too
clever by half; when someone moves from, say, Kansas City, Kansas,
to Kansas City, Missouri, we ordinarily would not say he moved
twice: once from Kansas City, Kansas, to a state of homelessness,
and then again from homelessness to Kansas City, Missouri. Nor,
were he to drive an RV between the cities, would we say that he
changed his residence four times (from the house on the
Kansas side of the Missouri River to a state of homelessness when
he locks the door behind him; then to the RV when he climbs into
the vehicle; then back to homelessness when he alights in the new
house’s driveway; and then, finally, to the new house in Missouri).
And what if he were to move from Kansas to California and spend
several nights in hotels along the way? Such ponderings cannot be
the basis for imposing criminal punishment. “We interpret criminal
statutes, like other statutes, in a manner consistent with ordinary
English usage.” Abramski v. United States, 573
U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (slip op., at
4); Flores-Figueroa v. United States, 556 U. S.
646, 652 (2009) . In ordinary English, Nichols changed his
residence just once: from Kansas to the Philippines.
We are mindful that SORNA’s purpose was to “make
more uniform what had remained ‘a patchwork of federal and 50
individual state registration systems,’ with ‘loopholes and
deficiencies’ that had resulted in an estimated 100,000 sex
offenders becoming ‘missing’ or ‘lost.’ ” United States
v. Kebodeaux, 570 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2013) (slip op.,
at 11–12) (citation omitted). Yet “even the most formidable
argument concerning the statute’s purposes couldnot overcome the
clarity we find in the statute’s text.” Kloeckner v.
Solis, 568 U. S. ___, ___, n. 4 (2012) (slip op.,
at 14, n. 4).
Our interpretation of the SORNA provisions at
issue in this case in no way means that sex offenders will be able
to escape punishment for leaving the United States without
notifying the jurisdictions in which they lived while in this
country. Congress has recently criminalized the “knowin[g]
fail[ure] to provide information required by [SORNA] relating to
intended travel in foreign commerce.” International Megan’s Law to
Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advanced
Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders, Pub. L. 114–119, §6(b)(2),
130Stat. 23, to be codified at 18 U. S. C. §2250(b). Such
information includes “anticipated dates and places of departure,
arrival, or return[;] carrier and flight numbers for air travel[;]
destination country and address or other contact information
therein,” et cetera. §6(a)(1)(B), 130Stat. 22, to be codified at 42
U. S. C. §16914(a)(7). Both parties agree that the new
law captures Nichols’s conduct. Supp. Brief for United States 3;
Reply Brief 10; Tr. of Oral Arg. 18, 35. And, of course, Nichols’s
failure to update his registration in Kansas violated state law.
Kan. Stat. Ann. §22–4905(g). We are thus reassured that our holding
today is not likely to create “loopholes and deficiencies” in
SORNA’s nationwide sex-offender registration scheme.
* * *
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the
Tenth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
