Supreme Court Says Lifetime GPS Monitoring Of Sex Offenders May Be Unconstitutional
from the slowly-restoring-the-Fourth dept
Most people would agree that cops slapping a GPS device on a suspect's vehicle for months or years at a time would have Fourth Amendment implications. It's often the length of the intrusion that has bothered courts the most (and mostly at state level, not federal), not the initial surreptitiousness of the GPS placement. Once it starts resembling a long-term tracking of a person's movements, some courts (including the Supreme Court) have declared a warrant requirement should be in place.
When it comes to tracking recidivist sex offenders for the rest of their lives, most people -- and most courts -- don't see this as much of an issue. Both involve the long-term tracking of individuals, but more people can stomach the idea of permanent tab-keeping on known sex offenders than on people only suspected of criminal activity.
The context matters -- at least in terms of how much of the population views the potential intrusion. But context doesn't matter when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, as the US Supreme Court recently ruled.
If the government puts a GPS tracker on you, your car, or any of your personal effects, it counts as a search—and is therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment.What's interesting about this recent unanimous ruling is that it extends Fourth Amendment protections to convicted criminals, rather than just to suspected criminals. It's also a very short opinion -- partially due to the lack of dissent -- that gets straight to the heart of why the lower court's decision was wrong, starting with its rejection of the ruling in US v. Jones.
The Supreme Court clarified and affirmed that law on Monday, when it ruled on Torrey Dale Grady v. North Carolina, before sending the case back to that state’s high court. The Court’s short but unanimous opinion helps make sense of how the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, interacts with the expanding technological powers of the U.S. government.
The only explanation provided below for the rejection of Grady’s challenge is the quoted passage from State v. Jones. And the only theory we discern in that passage is that the State’s system of nonconsensual satellite-based monitoring does not entail a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. That theory is inconsistent with this Court’s precedents.The State further argued that the Jones decision did not apply because the monitoring program is civil in nature, rather than criminal. The Supreme Court corrects this misconception.
It is well settled,” however, “that the Fourth Amendment’s protection extends beyond the sphere of criminal investigations,” Ontario v. Quon, 560 U. S. 746, 755 (2010), and the government’s purpose in collecting information does not control whether the method of collection constitutes a search. A building inspector who enters a home simply to ensure compliance with civil safety regulations has undoubtedly conducted a search under the Fourth Amendment.More ridiculously, the State tried to claim that a lifetime monitoring program may not actually collect information about the subject's movements and whereabouts -- a non-conclusion it reached by dumping the burden of proof on the plaintiff. This, too, is treated harshly by the Justices.
Without evidence that it is acting to obtain information, the State argues, “there is no basis upon which this Court can determine whether North Carolina conducts a ‘search’ of an offender enrolled in its SBM program.” Ibid. (citing Jones, 565 U. S., at ___, n. 5 (slip op., at 7, n. 5) (noting that a government intrusion is not a search unless “done to obtain information”)). In other words, the State argues that we cannot be sure its program for satellite-based monitoring of sex offenders collects any information. If the very name of the program does not suffice to rebut this contention, the text of the statute surely does:While the Supreme Court didn't go so far as to rule all such tracking programs as Fourth Amendment searches, it did vacate the state Supreme Court's decision and makes it clear that lower courts are to address this issue, rather than gloss over potential Fourth Amendment ramifications.
“The satellite-based monitoring program shall use a system that provides all of the following:
“(1) Time-correlated and continuous tracking of the geographic location of the subject . . . .
“(2) Reporting of subject’s violations of prescriptive and proscriptive schedule or location requirements.” N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §14–208.40(c).
The State’s program is plainly designed to obtain information. And since it does so by physically intruding on a Cite as: 575 U. S. ____ (2015) 5 Per Curiam subject’s body, it effects a Fourth Amendment search.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, gps, monitoring, supreme court, torrey dale grady
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I wish they left out 1 detail
It leaves open the question of whether listening to a tracker that you put on yourself (i.e. your cell phone) for the rest of your life counts as a search.
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Re: I wish they left out 1 detail
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Re: I wish they left out 1 detail
Wait: you mean I don't have a choice to have a cel phone on my person?
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Re: Re: I wish they left out 1 detail
Sadly, a realistic person would at this point - so yeah.
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Re: Re: I wish they left out 1 detail
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How come felons losing the right to vote isn't...
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Re: How come felons losing the right to vote isn't...
I'm of the opinion that these sorts of programs should be thrown out entirely. If he's that dangerous that he can never be trusted again, why is he being let out of jail? And if he's safe enough to re-enter the community, why are we treating him like he'll never be? Either up-front sentence him to a lifetime or other term on parole, or let him get on with his life.
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Re: Re: How come felons losing the right to vote isn't...
That would require the system, and society, to admit that they consider murdering someone to be a lesser crime than peeing in public, or flashing someone(kid or otherwise), or whatever other crime landed someone on the sex offender registry. Much easier to just have on 'official' punishment for a set amount of time, and then an 'unofficial' one after that that never ends.
Assault, manslaughter, outright murder? Once you've done your time your 'debt' to society is considered fulfilled, and you can go on with your life.
Commit any sort of sexual based crime? Yeah, your life is over, you're going to carry that with you until you die.
Western society has it's priorities all sorts of screwed up, and how it treats violence versus anything sexual is probably one of the greater examples of this.
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Re: Re: Re: How come felons losing the right to vote isn't...
While other Western societies also have a somewhat inordinate interest in sexual matters, it is mostly the U.S. which has had this obsession infiltrate laws and constitutional guarantees to a ridiculous degree.
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Re: How come felons losing the right to vote isn't...
Loss of voting rights and firearms rights are PART of the sentencing after conviction (and once the sentence is met, you can petition a court to have them reinstated).
A LOT of this tracking of pedophiles is being done AFTER they've served whatever sentence and/or parole they were given.
In the letter of the law, they're "rehabilitated" and can live in society. Even though there's a 100% recidivism rate (we're not talking peeing in public here).
If the courts made lifetime BPS monitoring a PART of the Sentence, there wouldn't be a 4th Amendment (or any other) Constitutional issue.
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Bride Living
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'Who cares about stopping crime or protecting kids, I've got soundbites to make!'
So making it impossible for sex-offenders to find housing increases the odds for them to re-offend, yet even faced with these findings the city doubled-down and insisted that the laws that caused the 'colony' stayed in place... gotta love pure emotional-based laws, especially when they are directly contradicted by the evidence. /s
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I'm curious as to who you would have decide constitutional issues in instead of SCOTUS? A jury? A popularity poll? Law scholars? Space aliens? A flip of a coin?
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Don't say I agreed to location tracking when I signed up for my cellphone. I didn't agree to any location tracking. Please don't say the phone companies need location information for billing purposes. Most phone companies bill customers every 30 days, so there's no reason to store location information for 5 years. Or 20+ years in AT&T's case.
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Worst argument ever
So if you're not collecting any information, then why are you wasting money on this. Basically, the State has argued that it either violates the Fourth Amendment or is stupid.
Probably a little bit of both.
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Simple fix really...
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GPS Tracker
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GPS benefits
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GPS
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GPS
-No, it's a part of the sentencing. Not sure where you're getting your information. When a person is sentenced to, for example, 7 years, that person is supposed to be told in court at the same time of the lifetime supervision too. It can be taken off of some people in some states, after age 65 or so.
In the letter of the law, they're "rehabilitated" and can live in society. Even though there's a 100% recidivism rate (we're not talking peeing in public here).
-Again, not sure in where you get your information. Recidivism rates for convicted sex offenders in the United States is 7%.
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