Is the Court of Appeals Signaling Less Forgiveness with SBM cases?

Maybe so, if two decisions from earlier this month are any indication. They are: State v. Bishop, ___ N.C. App. ___ (Oct. 3, 2017), where the court refused to consider arguments about the reasonableness of satellite-based monitoring (“SBM”) when the issue was not preserved or properly appealed, and State v. Greene, ___N.C. App. ___ (Oct. 3, 2017), where the court refused to remand a SBM hearing when the State failed to present sufficient evidence of the reasonableness of SBM. Before I discuss those cases, some background first. Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 1368 (2015), the state appellate division has seen a steady flow of SBM cases. North Carolina’s sex offender registration statutes require automatic and lifetime SBM for certain categories of offenders (among them, recidivists and those convicted of aggravated offenses). Grady held that the imposition of SBM was a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment and dictated that a trial court must determine the reasonableness of that search before imposing SBM. The Supreme Court did not offer much guidance as far as how these hearings would be conducted, stating only that “The reasonableness of a search depends on the totality of the circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the search and the extent to which the search intrudes on reasonable privacy expectations.” Grady at 1371. Since Grady, the companion cases of State v. Morris, 783 S.E.2d 528 (2016) and State v. Blue, 783 S.E.2d 524 (2016) [...]