Bills of Attainder/Outlawry/Civil Death

In a strictly technical sense it may be said that a Bill of Attainder is a legislative act inflicting the punishment of death without a trial, and that Bill of Pains and Penalties is such an act inflicting a milder punishment. In the popular sense, however, the term "Bill of Attainder" embraces both classes of acts, and in that sense it is evidently used in the Constitution of the United States, as the Supreme Court has declared in Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch, 138, that a "Bill of Attainder may affect the life of an individual, or may confiscate his property or both." Such a bill deals with the merits of a particular case and inflicts penalties, more or less severe, ex post facto, without trial in the usual form.

Such attainder took place after judgment of death, or upon such circumstances as were equivalent to such judgment or "outlawry" on a capital crime. Historically outlawry, that is, declaring a person as an outlaw, was a common form of "civil death." Civil death is a term that refers to the loss of all or almost all civil rights by a person due to a conviction for a felony.
The linking of Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto laws is explained by the fact that legislative denunciation and condemnation of an individual often acted to impose retroactive punishment. Nixon v. Administrator General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 468 fn.30. The Bill of Attainder Clause has two elements: 1) Specificity; and 2) Punishment.

In Massachusetts, the Sex Offender Registry Law (SORL) retroactively applies to persons who have been convicted of a particular offense since August 1, 1981 and declares those persons as "Sex Offenders" M.G.L. c.6, s.178C. As a result, under threat of criminal penalties making it "obligatory to register" and sign under the pains and penalties of perjury that a prior convicted offender is now deemed a "sexually violent sex offender" and that he is in a continuing course of reoffending and therefore a dangerous threat to the public ? It is one thing to require offenders to register prospectively under the Commonwealth's registry law, but it is a different issue when the legislature has conclusively presumed directly or by implication written into a law, that persons previously convicted of an enumerated offense are now deemed to be "Sexually Violent and Dangerous Sex Offenders" retroactively.

This unilateral change in the status of the penal laws for which persons were previously convicted, and prospective application of this 'new rule of legislative judgment,' denies those persons their fundamental right of fair warning, the means to exonerate themselves or escaping the ramifications of the registry law. It subjects persons to a lifetime of governmental supervision and monitoring, which is the fundamental equivalent to a lifetime on parole or probation.

The Due Process Clause also protects the interest in fair notice and repose that may be compromised by retroactive legislation; a justification sufficient to validate a statutes 'prospective' application under the clause "may not suffice" to warrant its retroactive application.

The SORL, a law that regulates the person rather than his participation in an activity or profession, and based solely upon the past conviction, is 'punitive.'

Therefore, is this enough to justify the second element of the Bill of Attainder Clause or Ex Post Facto Clauses of both the Massachusetts Constitution and United States Constitution ?