189 P.3d 999 (Alaska 2008)
Five years after Smith v. Doe upheld Alaska’s registry under the U.S. Constitution, Alaska’s own court found the same law punitive.
Limited. Still binding in Alaska (State v. Doe A, 2013), but the court later declined to extend it to people convicted elsewhere who move to Alaska (2019). Final word on that state’s own law and constitution — in that state only.
The plaintiff was one of the two men in Smith v. Doe. He had pleaded no contest in 1985 and was released in 1990, before Alaska’s registration act took effect on August 10, 1994. Having lost under the federal Constitution, he challenged the act under Alaska’s.
By 2–1, the court held that the act’s effects are punitive under the Alaska Constitution’s ex post facto clause (art. I, § 15), so its registration requirements cannot apply to people who committed their crimes before August 10, 1994. The court assumed, without deciding, that the legislature meant the law to be civil.
It is the clearest example that a win for the state in the U.S. Supreme Court does not end the question: the same law, judged by the same kind of test under a state constitution, came out the other way.
It is a state-law ruling only; Smith v. Doe still controls the federal question. It protects people whose offenses predate the act in Alaska, not people convicted in other states who later move there.
Last verified against the sources above on September 30, 2026.
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