Kansas Supreme Court rules that repeat dog molester can avoid sex offender registration

As reported via this local article, the Kansas Supreme Court "has decided that a Sedgwick County man who molested a rottweiler won’t have to register as a sex offender."  Here is more about the ruling:

The state’s highest court overturned both Sedgwick County District Court Judge Joseph Bribiesca and the Kansas Court of Appeals, who had ruled Joshua Coman would have to register as a sex offender after his second conviction for sodomy involving a dog.

In his appeal, Coman argued that Kansas’s registration law did not apply to him because he was convicted of a misdemeanor that wasn’t on the list of felony offenses for which registration is required....

In 2008, a former roommate of Coman’s “discovered Coman in her garage with the dog in a compromising position,” the court record said.  Police were called and Coman admitted to having penetrated the female rottweiler with his finger, the court record said.  At the time, he was on probation after being prosecuted on a similar incident in Reno County the year before.  Coman pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in jail.

But the question of whether he would have to register as a sex offender came down to interpretation of the way the law is worded.  The statute lists several crimes where sex-offender registration is required, including felony sodomy.  Misdemeanor sodomy is not on the list.

Prosecutors had argued that a “catch all” provision in the law would allow a judge to require offender registration of anyone convicted of a “sexually motivated” crime.  The Supreme Court justices disagreed, concluding that the Legislature excluded misdemeanor sodomy on purpose.

The full opinion in Kansas v. Coman is available at this link. 

I wonder if (when) PETA or similar animal groups in Kansas will soon urge the legislature to fix this registry loophole which, obviously, now places all the innocent dogs in Kansas at greater risk.  (Indeed, I am glad Toto is not alive to learn of this notable jurisprudential development.)