NC: Quarterly in-home maintenance of sex offender monitoring equipment not a Fourth Amendment violation

Quarterly in-home maintenance of electronic monitoring system and thus checking on registered sex offenders does not violate the Fourth Amendment. State v. Bowditch, 364 N.C. 335, 700 S.E.2d 1 (2010):

Noting the maintenance that must be performed by DCC personnel every ninety days, typically within an offender’s residence, the dissenting opinion argues that the SBM program unnecessarily burdens the Fourth Amendment rights of those convicted felons subject to SBM. However, it is beyond dispute that convicted felons do not enjoy the same measure of constitutional protections, including the expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment, as do citizens who have not been convicted of a felony. See, e.g., Velasquez v. Woods, 329 F.3d 420 (5th Cir. 2003) (per curiam) (holding that collecting blood samples from felons for registration in a DNA databank does not violate the Fourth Amendment); Russell v. Gregoire, 124 F.3d 1079 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that convicted sex offenders have no right of privacy preventing a state from requiring them to register as such and be subject to community notification of their residences), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1007, 118 S. Ct. 1191, 140 L. Ed. 2d 321 (1998); Jones v. Murray, 962 F.2d 302, 306 (4th Cir. 1992) (“Even probationers lose the protection of the Fourth Amendment with respect to their right to privacy against searches of their homes pursuant to an established program to ensure rehabilitation and security.” (citing Griffin, 483 U.S. at 868)), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 977, 113 S. Ct. 472, 121 L. Ed. 2d 378 (1992); Standley, 362 N.C. at 329-33, 661 S.E.2d at 730-32 (holding that a convicted sex offender’s constitutional rights were not violated by a municipal ordinance that prohibited him from access to public parks); Bryant, 359 N.C. at 557-70, 614 S.E.2d at 481-89 (holding that no due process violation occurred when a convicted sex offender who was required to register in South Carolina failed to register in North Carolina, even though he received no actual notice of registration requirement). Here felons convicted of multiple counts of indecent liberties with children are not visited by DCC personnel for random searches, but simply to ensure the SBM system is working properly.

Interestingly, the Wisconsin electronic monitoring system went down recently requiring officers to go looking for their charges. Hat tip to Stockycat, http://stockycat.blogspot.com/, which I discovered only today because the author communicated about something else. Great new blog “focused non-exclusively on the intersection between criminal law and emerging technology. Dedicated to the idea that effective law enforcement is not incompatible with a vigorous interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.” More about that later. [Embedding a link isn’t working, and that’s my software.]