The Divergent Series: Why Lower Courts will Narrow Fourth Amendment Protections and Allow Fundamental Freedoms to be Sacrificed in the Name of Perceived Exigency after Grady v. North Carolina

• In Event: Assessing, Treating, and Managing Sex Offenders

Abstract

In Grady v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court allowed a two-time sex offender to challenge the use of a global positioning system (GPS) tracking device as a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
In light of two earlier decisions, United States v. Jones, and Florida v. Jardines, the Supreme Court said that “[t]he 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 upon reasonable privacy expectations.” The Supreme Court did not determine that Satellite Based Monitoring programs (SBM) are overall unconstitutional and instead left that decision to state courts. This paper will examine prior court decisions that allow governmental interests to override sex offender rights, the reasonableness of an offender’s expectation of privacy and recent studies on sex offender recidivism to analyze and project how future courts will rule on this issue.

Author

• Heather Cucolo, New York Law School