WASHINGTON — A North Carolina program of monitoring sex offenders by GPS needs closer judicial scrutiny, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
In an unsigned and unanimous decision that could rattle a number of states, the court rejected North Carolina’s arguments and concluded the ankle-bracelet monitoring program amounts to a search. The decision means convicted felons like Torrey Dale Grady can now challenge the lifelong monitoring.
“That conclusion, however, does not decide the ultimate question of the program’s constitutionality,” the court stated, noting that “the Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches.”
North Carolina judges must now re-examine the GPS monitoring program through a Fourth Amendment lens that’s adapting to new technologies. Whether it’s permitted, the high court explained Monday, depends on “the nature and purpose of the search and the extent to which the search intrudes upon reasonable privacy expectations.”
Luke Everett, one of the Durham, N.C.-based defense attorneys who petitioned the Supreme Court on Grady’s behalf, said in an email Monday that the court’s decision could prove “very significant” beyond his specific case.
“North Carolina and other states have basically taken the position that they can strap a GPS monitoring device to whomever they want to,” Everett said. “The court here is saying, no, that search has to be reasonable. In many cases, that’s going to be impossible to demonstrate.”
Other states that can impose GPS monitoring requirements on released sexual offenders include California, where legislators likewise adopted a lifelong monitoring program in 2006. Florida and Kansas also require lifelong monitoring for some offenders.
Grady was indicted in 2006 in New Hanover County, N.C., for statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with a child. He pleaded guilty to one count of taking indecent liberties with a child and was sentenced to serve between 31 and 38 months in prison. He was released in 2009.
Grady, who is now 36, had previously been convicted of a second-degree sexual offense in 1997. The two convictions made him a recidivist under North Carolina law, leading to a judge’s determination in 2013 after a 20-minute hearing that he was subject to GPS monitoring for the rest of his life.
North Carolina’s monitoring program, established by state legislators in 2006, requires participants to wear transmitters around their ankles and a miniature tracking device around the shoulder or on a belt. A base unit, typically kept at home, is used to charge the equipment.
North Carolina officials had urged the Supreme Court not to consider Grady’s petitition, arguing in part that an insufficient factual record made it impossible “to balance the state’s perceived need to monitor sex offenders and the intrusions, if any, on (Grady) and other sex offenders like him.”
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