EFF to Court: Lifetime GPS Tracking Violates the Fourth Amendment
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But the EFF's point here is solid: This wasn't a punishment handed down as part of a sentence. This was added to someones sentence ex post facto, and that is not cool. It is fairly cut and dry; You only are sentenced according to the law at the time you committed the crime. Adding new punishments, no matter how well intentioned, is unconstitutional. I don't even have to cite an amendment, it's in article 1.
I can understand a murderer, or gang leader released after serving 20-30 years of a "life sentence" as a conditional parole... or even a true child sex offender, not someone who was 19yo with a 16yo girlfriend (not speaking to this case, but someone I knew who fell into that scenario and now has to register for the rest of his life, even though he later married that same woman).
The ex post facto bit is even more disturbing.
Now, not even a day later we are talking about doing something just as insane. :(
> On Monday, India's Supreme Court dismissed an appeal to stop his release, saying it "shared" the concern of most citizens but its hands were "tied" by the law.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35149409
I hate that politicians all around the world are more than happy to keep the people occupied in these things that don't affect a lot of people.
So I'm not convinced that this isn't the law generation process working exactly as intended. We keep appealing to the Bill of Rights because we just don't like the outcomes democracy gives us.
Just as although paying cash is fine, but actually paying with cash is highly suspicious - why would you ever want to do that if you have nothing to hide?
Coming soon to a future near you.
Mind, I'm not saying Wisconsin's law is well-drafted or demonstrated to work, just observing the existence of a conflict between individual rights and public safety in a context where the risk is very hard to measure.
There is a reason people scream to prevent parole and scream to have life sentences for sexual predators, my friend.
I don't care so much what the rules are, I care that the rules are consistent
Go see how many people are on lifetime lists as sexual offenders because they got caught pissing in the woods. Or someone saw them naked in their own house through their own window (I didn't make that up).
I don't think anyone would disagree about the clear-cut cases (child rapists... actually any rapists), but once you give the government a powerful tool that follows you your entire life they tend to abuse it.
I would be more comfortable if a committee of trained medical professionals put people on lists or GPS trackers, vs. judges or DAs.
As would I, but after reading and listening to the ridiculous statements and ideas from the current batch of "social justice warrior" types, I think the rapists would be back on the street quicker than they are now. Medical professionals are no more immune to this trend of lunacy than are any other people.
I agree that there are too many asinine reasons for being placed on the lists. Who is to blame for that? The lawmakers? The people who elected simpletons? The people who'd rather leave a sexual sadist locked in cage forever? Certainly not those who'd as soon have such a being immediately hung after sentencing.
If there was as cure them, a way to prevent it from happening, I'd be happy. But this is why there are so many no-go zones for sexual offenders. Everyone says NIMBY, but aren't willing to do anything concrete to fix the issue besides add even more laws upon the ones that already result in lax sentencing.
That's where the problem lies. It's very easy to get agreement on such things based on fear rather than probability. You're so worried about giving the government power to make someone wear a monitoring bracelet that you're willing to trade lifelong incarceration on a smaller number of people against the possibility.
I would be more comfortable if a committee of trained medical professionals put people on lists or GPS trackers, vs. judges or DAs.
What do you think that court-ordered psychiatric evaluations are for, if not to get the input of trained medical professionals for use in the deliberations of trained legal professionals?
If a past criminal moved next door, it should not matter what kind of uncontrolled violent behavior they had. Is it that much better to know that instead of sexual violence criminal, you get a person who slashed a knife into a innocent person? What if they shot a person, or kicked and stomped on someones head and cause irreversible brain damage? If Wisconsin's law is good, then why not apply it to all criminals that has been found guilty of serious violence?
I honestly don't have a problem with that.
I think we should acknowledge that some people are psychopaths who are mentally incapable of having moral qualms about hurting people, whether sexually or otherwise. They can't be redeemed; the only thing you can do is keep people safe from them.
What prevents this from degenerating into "You voted for X in 2016, so you have to wear this bracelet / 'voluntarily' attend this re-education camp / only travel in the orange zones on the map"?
This is the same argument just from the other side.
Now while I don't agree with this law on principle I really hate this type of hypothetical argument. If you embark on this road you can argue that a law which is aimed at fixing pot holes will cause the rise of the 4 riech.
Why not beastiality? Consent.
Why not polygamy? Agency, inherent power inequality.
The reason why gay marriage won't "degenerate to polygamy and beastiality" isn't because people are somehow reasonable and know where to draw the line on the slippery slope.
It's because there's no slippery slope at all.
This is exactly what happened with the legalization of gay marriage through the judicial branch.
Your comment is incredibly naive in the face of even contemporary world history, nevermind the generations of slave and feudalistic societies that came before us.
There's not much more justice in committing him involuntarily, nor would we prefer to incarcerate him for the rest of his life, if we can find other ways to prevent him from coming into contact with children.
In what way are you describing a healthy person? Would we call a person as being healthy if they had a problem with being aggressive, repeatedly committing assault, convicted several times, and admitting that they can't control their aggression and intentionally goes and look for people to beat up?
I think such person is likely to have a medical condition, psychological or actually brain damage, and treatment (involuntarily if needed) is best for both the individual and society. Trying to "find other ways to prevent them for coming into contact with people" would be horrible bad idea and unlikely to work.
From the Wikipedia page on Ankle Monitors [0]:
>GPS units are similar in design, but the offender also carries a GPS cell phone unit that receives a signal from the ankle unit, or both functions may be combined into one ankle unit. Persons subject to a restraining order may also be subject to GPS monitoring.
I'm not saying I support lifetime GPS tracking; just that I don't understand the argument.
The point is, punishments can only be applied to sentences pronounced from this point on, not ones that have already been served or are in the process of being served.
I'm just wondering if there's an argument here past retroactive sentencing.
The problem here is the sentence was already handed down by the judge, and the law seeks to retroactively add to it. If a judge handed down a sentence that included the monitoring as part of the sentence it probably passes constitutional muster.
* The plaintiff is a serial child molester, convicted once in the late 80s, again in the 90s (for which he served a 10-year sentence), paroled in the early 00s, and had his parole revoked after he sought contact with 4-5 year old children and admitted to considering molesting them.
* Following his sentence, he was committed involuntarily to a psychiatric facility after a hearing with a jury found unanimously that he was a danger to the community and likely to offend again.
* As was his right, he annually challenged his commitment, and in 2010 had an evaluation that determined that while he was more likely than not to offend again, his condition didn't then meet the standard required to confine him at the psychiatric facility, and he was released.
* At that point in 2010, he was as a matter of law free, "maximally discharged", with no lawful encumbrances remaining on his whereabouts or activities.
* During the time he was committed (but after his criminal sentence had expired), Wisconsin passed a law requiring lifetime GPS monitoring for people convicted of the kinds of crimes he was convicted for.
* The state contends that because he was involuntarily committed fairly as a matter of law, and because the hearing that released him from that commitment was aware of the GPS monitoring law when they determined he could be released, the GPS monitoring act was fairly applied to him.
* The state also contends that the GPS monitoring requirement isn't a "punishment" but rather a public safety mechanism.
* The court roundly and vividly rejected the idea that the GPS bracelet wasn't punitive, and found that because his commitment followed from a criminal conviction for which his sentence was entirely served, he couldn't be punished retroactively.
* The court also determined that because SCOTUS had already established that merely attaching a GPS monitor to a car temporarily constituted a 4A search, there was no possible way the state could prevail in any argument that suggested that lifetime GPS monitoring of a person was not a 4A search.
As EFF says, this case is really more about retroactive punishment than anything else. This plaintiff if a corner case. 10 years from now, we can expect lifetime GPS monitoring to be the norm in states like Wisconsin.
Irrelevant but interesting note from the article:
Pedophilia is a diagnosis recognized by the court as warranting involuntary commitment, but the state cannot premise arguments on the idea that pedophiles will compelled to molest children. If they were, pedophiles could evade criminal convictions by pleading insanity.
I am nobody's property.
you can keep your GPS devices. I'll stick to my phablet.