Predatory Offender Registration – Whether Offense of Conviction “Arises out of same set of circumstances” as Dismissed Predatory Offense is Issue of Fact.

State v. Lopez, Minn.S.Ct., 02/11/2010.  We last heard from the Lopez brothers back in May when the court of appeals held that they had to register as predatory offenders.  Go here.  You’ll recall that the brothers sold methamphetamine to a confidential informant.  Later that month, the brothers allegedly held the informant hostage for about forty minutes until the informant’s minder arranged to pay the $300.00 that he owed on the earlier drug deal.  This lead to drug and kidnapping charges.  Each was convicted on the drug offense but the kidnapping charges were dismissed.

Even so, the district court ordered the brothers to register as predatory offenders, saying that the kidnapping charges arose out of the same set of circumstances as the drug charges.  The court of appeals upheld the trial court but the supreme court now reverses.

The court construes the language of Minn.Stat. 243.166 in reaching its conclusion.  The “same set of circumstances” provision of the statute requires registration:

where the same general group of facts gives rise to both the conviction offense and the charged predatory offense. In other words, the circumstances underlying both must overlap with regard to time, location, persons involved, and basic facts. Although the conviction offense need not be based on identical facts to the charged predatory offense, the facts underlying the two must be sufficiently linked in time, location, people, and events …

Here, there is only one single common circumstance, payment of a debt from the drug sale.  The drug sale was complete upon transfer of the drugs; the confinement ten days later was only to collect the debt, too tenuous a connection to require registration under the statute.