WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A recidivist sex offender Torrey Dale Grady, required by the US state of North Carolina to wear a GPS tracking device for life, can challenge the constitutionality of the monitoring program, US Supreme Court said in a ruling.
“The State’s program is plainly designed to obtain information,” the ruling, issued on Monday, said. “And since it does so by physically intruding on a subject’s body, it effects Fourth Amendment search.”
The Supreme Court has unanimously concluded that the ankle-bracelet monitoring amounts to a search, but declined to examine whether the program is reasonable.
“That conclusion, however, does not decide the ultimate question of the program’s constitutionality,” the Supreme Court said.
The Supreme Court justices noted that North Carolina judges will have to re-examine the practice.
Grady was convicted of sexual offences in 1997 and 2006, when he took “indecent liberties with a child,” according to the Supreme Court. North Carolina courts had previously rejected the arguments that the state GPS Monitoring Law violates Grady’s Fourth Amendment rights.
