Revisions to North Carolina's Satellite-Based Monitoring Law

After years of litigation concerning the constitutionality of satellite-based monitoring (SBM) of sex offenders, the General Assembly has amended the law pretty dramatically. Today’s post describes those changes. The Supreme Court of the United States made clear in Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U.S. 306 (2015), that SBM was a search, but remanded the case for a determination of whether it was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment. In the vast majority of state appellate cases considering the question—including in Grady’s case itself—our courts have concluded that SBM is an unreasonable search, at least once a person’s period of formal supervision (probation, parole, or post-release supervision) ends. State v. Grady, 372 N.C. 509 (2019) (Grady III) (SBM is facially unconstitutional for unsupervised recidivists). But see State v. Hilton, ___ N.C. ___, 2021 NCSC-115 (Sept. 24, 2021) (lifetime SBM is constitutional for a defendant convicted of an aggravated offense). Session Law 2021-138 (Senate Bill 300) amends the SBM program in several ways in response to the dozens of appellate cases finding constitutional issues with the law. Legislative findings of efficacy. As a preliminary matter, the General Assembly included a legislative finding in new G.S. 14-208.39 that SBM is an effective tool to deter criminal behavior among sex offenders. That finding was based in part on a 2015 study from California entitled “Does GPS Improve Recidivism among High Risk Sex Offenders? Outcomes for California’s GPS Pilot for High Risk Sex Offender Parolees.” Including this finding responds to a common thread in many [...]