The courts just rebrand terms when they want to endrun around constitutional limits. See this example of calling a 'punishment' instead a 'civil disability' as it relates to the GCA and the Ex Post Facto prohibition:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_ca...24193340100712
No doubt the court could rinse and repeat on an attainder claim.
So as GunLawyer suggested about Megan's Law attachments, here is a grand example:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_ca...30455469977203
"In Commonwealth v. Gomer Williams, 574 Pa. 487, 832 A.2d 962 (2003) (hereinafter G. Williams), this Court considered and rejected several constitutional challenges to Pennsylvania's Registration of Sexual Offenders Act, Act of May 10, 2000, P.L. 74, No. 18, as amended, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9791, et seq. (Megan's Law II). Specifically, we held that the registration, notification, and counseling (RNC) requirements that attach, under Megan's Law II, to offenders deemed Sexually Violent Predators (SVP) are not punitive. Because we found these provisions to be non-punitive, we held that the full panoply of due process protections that attach where punishment is in the offing, see Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), are not constitutionally required."
You read right, just smack a stamp on there: THE CONSTITUTION NEED NOT APPLY.
Elsewhere,
"Under the trial court's analysis, the designation of these provisions as punitive was dispositive under Apprendi, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, because, in that case, the United States Supreme Court held that any secondary factfinding that leads to an increase in punishment beyond the statutory maximum prescribed for the underlying substantive offense must be subjected to the same procedural protections as apply in assessing guilt of the underlying offense. Thus, in order to impose additional punishment for some aspect of the conduct of the crime, the determination would have to be submitted to a jury and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt carried by the prosecution. Conversely, were the challenged provisions to be
found civil and remedial in nature, no such procedural protections would attach." Rebranding.
But, see the interesting read underlying each of these cases,
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_ca...62002564647640
It's interesting to think that citizenship could not be revoked without due process, and then must be a punishment to fit the crime, yet a person could be condemned to DIE, not by what we call a 'death penalty' but by disarming him, for offenses we could never call 'capital'. On any other day this setting up someone for death is called criminal homicide to one degree or another.