Paul Chatman v. Rob Jeffreys

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted January 4, 2024 *
Decided January 9, 2024
Before
ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
No. 23-1401
PAUL CHATMAN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
ROB JEFFREYS, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Central District of Illinois.
No. 1:22-1314-MMM
Michael M. Mihm,
Judge.
O R D E R
Paul Chatman, who was convicted in Illinois state court of murder, sued three
Illinois officials, challenging the constitutionality of Illinois’s Murderer and Violent
Offender Against Youth Registration Act (“the Act”), 730 ILCS 154, as applied to him.
* The appellees were not served with process and are not participating in this
appeal. After examining the appellant’s brief and the record, we have concluded that
the case is appropriate for summary disposition. See FED. R. A PP. P. 34(a)(2).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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No. 23-1401 Page 2
The district court screened and dismissed his complaint for failure to state a claim. We
affirm.
Chatman was convicted in 1984 of first-degree murder of an adult. See People v.
Chatman, 495 N.E.2d 1067, 1074 (Ill. App. Ct. 1986). In 2006, while he was incarcerated,
the Illinois legislature passed the Act, which at the time required those convicted of
violent crimes against juveniles to register with the state. See 730 ILCS 154/10. Six years
later, the Act was amended to extend to those—like Chatman—who had been convicted
of first-degree murder of an adult. Id. 154/5(c-6).
While still in prison (the time is not specified in the record), Chatman filed a
lawsuit in Illinois state court seeking an order exempting him from the Act’s
registration requirements. He argued that the Act, which came into being only after his
conviction, violated the Ex Post Facto Clauses of the United States and Illinois
Constitutions as well as the Illinois Constitution’s single-subject requirement (which
provides that each Illinois statute must concern only one topic). The state courts rejected
Chatman’s contentions on the merits. Chatman v. People, No. 1-21-0925, 2022 WL 612607,
at *4–6 (Ill. App. Ct. Mar. 2, 2022).
In 2022, after his release from prison, Chatman filed a complaint in federal court
arguing that the Act violates (1) the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution; (2) the
Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment; (3) the Due Process
Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments; and (4) the single-subject rule of the
Illinois Constitution.
The district court screened his complaint, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a), (e)(2), and
rejected all four claims on the merits. The court concluded, first, that Chatman’s ex post
facto claim lacked merit because the Act is a civil regulatory scheme and not punitive in
nature. Next, the court determined that the Act did not violate the Eighth Amendment
because the registration requirements cannot fairly be characterized as punishment, let
alone punishment that is cruel and unusual. Third, the court—construing Chatman’s
due process claim to suggest that he should have been afforded a hearing—found that
no hearing was necessary because the obligation to register did not deprive him of any
liberty interest. Finally, as to the claim that the Act violated Illinois’s single-subject rule,
the court deferred to the state appellate court’s ruling that there was no violation

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because the registration requirements for both types of offenders have a natural and
logical connection. 1
On appeal, Chatman first challenges the district court’s conclusion that the Act’s
registration requirements do not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S.
Constitution. The Ex Post Facto Clause prohibits retroactive punishment—in other
words, “the imposition of punishment more severe than the punishment assigned by
law when the act to be punished occurred.” Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 30 (1981). A
statute, then, is not an impermissible ex post facto law unless it is both retroactive and
punitive. See Koch v. Village of Hartland, 43 F.4th 747, 756–57 (7th Cir. 2022). Our focus is
on the latter: To determine whether the Act is punitive, we ask, first, whether the
legislature intended to impose punishment, and if not, whether the scheme’s punitive
effect outweighs its stated, nonpunitive intention. Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 92 (2003).
The district court, citing cases that characterized sex-offender-registration obligations as
nonpunitive civil regulations, concluded that the Act’s registration requirements lacked
punitive intent or effect.
Chatman contends that the Act is punitive in both intent and effect. As to intent,
he alludes to a reference by the trial judge in his state court proceeding, in which the
judge acknowledges “confusion” about the intended nature of the Act, be it punitive or
not. But the legislature that enacted the Act has been understood to have had a
nonpunitive intent. According to the Illinois Supreme Court, the Act was passed not to
punish violent offenders but rather to create a separate registry—distinct from the
existing sex-offender registry—exclusively for violent offenders. See In re M.A.,
43 N.E.3d 86, 102 (Ill. 2015); Chatman, 2022 WL 612607, at *3, *5.
Chatman relatedly argues that the Act is punitive in effect. He maintains, for
instance, that registering under the Act causes public humiliation, thus outweighing
any stated nonpunitive intent behind the Act. But the district court rightly determined
that the Act’s purpose is to ensure public safety, not to humiliate or punish people with
criminal histories. See Miranda v. Madigan, 888 N.E.2d 158, 162 (Ill. App. Ct. 2008). And
contrary to Chatman’s claim that registration invites public humiliation, “the
1 The district court did not address whether the prior state court litigation
precluded Chatman from raising identical claims in these proceedings. But preclusion—
a waivable defense, see Simstad v. Scheub, 816 F.3d 893, 898 (7th Cir. 2016)—was not
raised by the defendants, understandably so, given that they were not served in the
district court.

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dissemination of accurate information about a criminal record, most of which is already
public” is not punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Smith, 538 U.S.
at 98–99.2
Chatman additionally argues that the district court was wrong to analogize his
circumstances to cases that addressed the distinctly different matter of sex-offender
registries. But the Act here is comparable in legally relevant ways. For example, the sex-
offender registration laws impose nearly identical registration requirements as the Act.
Compare, e.g., 730 ILCS 154/10(a) (requiring that violent-offender registration include
photograph, address, place of employment, and phone number), with 34 U.S.C. § 20914
(requiring that sex-offender registration include photograph, name, Social Security
number, address, and place of employment). The district court thus properly relied on
our analysis in Vasquez v. Foxx, 895 F.3d 515, 521–22 (7th Cir. 2018), overruled on other
grounds by Koch, 43 F.4th at 755, that evaluated sex-offender-registration laws and
determined that such laws were nonpunitive.
Next, Chatman maintains that he was denied due process because he was not
informed by a court that he was obligated to register upon release. But Chatman’s due
process claim is premature because he has not alleged that he suffered a deprivation of
a liberty or property interest resulting from insufficient notice. See Tucker v. City of
Chicago, 907 F.3d 487, 492 (7th Cir. 2018).
Finally, Chatman insists that the Act runs afoul of the Illinois Constitution’s
single-subject rule because the Act concerns registration by two groups—those who
commit violent offenses against minors and those who murder adults. But a state’s
alleged failure to follow its own laws does not involve the federal Constitution,
see Linear v. Village of University Park, 887 F.3d 842, 844 (7th Cir. 2018) (citing cases), so
we say nothing further on the subject.
AFFIRMED
2 Because the Act imposes no punishment, it necessarily cannot violate the
Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

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