I'm 100% for lifetime GPS tracking of certain classes of criminals - It's a far sight nicer than lifetime imprisonment, and that is a legitimate punishment.
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.
It's just another bump on a slippery slope of absolute, no exceptions legalities that now have close to 1% of the U.S. population in Prison... this is insane.
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).
HN makes me sad sometimes. It was less than 24 hours ago that we criticized India for talking about applying the new law concerning crimes committed by minors on a high profile case.
Now, not even a day later we are talking about doing something just as insane. :(
This is the first time I hear of this discussion. That said, are we talking of applying a new law to a situation that has yet to pass sentencing? Then sure, a new law can be applied. If they have already passed sentencing then too little too late.
No, it is too late and thankfully the justice system has not entirely failed. However, I am still appalled by the court's statement:
> 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.
It's amazing that we take for granted our law generation process being so broken, that our only hope at sanity is to appeal to the closest commandment from the Bill of Rights.
Anecdote: the other day I was walking back home from dropping my daughter off at daycare, through a nice residential neighborhood. I see a guy sitting on the sidewalk with a cop standing over him. I gingerly pass them, and about 20 feet away I pass three old people discussing the situation. I can't make out what they're saying, but I hear the phrase "sexual predator" several times.
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.
It's almost (but maybe not quite) a moot point, since the status quo in our society is to carry around a GPS tracking device 24/7, and the authorities can pull the records from it at a whim. Heck, I'm typing this on one.
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?
This is a very tricky issue. I'm against the notion of perpetual punishments in general, but some kinds of sexual behavior are compulsive and historically the response to that has been to detain people who exhibit dangerous behaviors of this sort indefinitely in a psychiatric facility, which is obviously even more restrictive of liberty than tracking their whereabouts.
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.
If a person has a psychiatric illness that makes them hurt others, then treating them in a close facility is right and proper. Its no more restrictive of liberty than any other involuntary hospitalization.
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?
The plaintiff in this case is a serial molester of young children, convicted twice, paroled, and sent back to prison when he acknowledged contact with two kindergarten-aged children (a grave violation of the terms of his parole) and admitted to considering molesting them.
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.
> There's not much more justice in committing him involuntarily
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.
> 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"?
"What prevents gay marriage from degenerating to polygamy and beastiality?"
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 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.
We have involuntary registration of various violent offenders for several decades now.
Some offenders like sexual offenders actually have to go and make it known to all of their neighbors that they are a sexual offender.
However I have yet to see it degenerate to people having to go around admitting that they voted for Bush.
Slippery slopes are only as slipper as people want then to be.
Society knows very well where to draw the line usually if it didn't it wouldn't function, you might not like where it draws it but it's not up to you to decide that on your own anyhow.
The constitution -- and the fundamental inalienable rights it enumerates -- were written to provide a backstop for when society fails to draw the line on a slippery slope.
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.
Their point is that it's more free than that alternative of life imprisonment for comparable crimes which is already well-established and completely legal. How is that remotely wobbly?
It is incredibly wobbly considering it is not being used as an alternative to life imprisonment, but as an addition to sentence already being served or already finished.
Once you have the laws, the "wobbliness" as a weakness becomes apparent.
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.
I don't think anyone would disagree about the clear-cut cases
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?
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.
Why not simply advocate for killing them then? I'm not personally arguing for this, but it would be more honest than purporting to settle on a fixed term while actually creating a shadow life sentence.
It's also completely abandoning any notion of rehabilitation. Prison, in no sense, rehabilitates people, but at least some level of redemption should be possible. It seems as though prison no longer pays back the convict's debt to society.
Then make it capital offense, or a life sentence. I'd be willing to accept that certain kinds of criminals can't be rehabilitated. But (apparently) some jury of his peers decided 15 years + psychiatric care was enough.
I don't care so much what the rules are, I care that the rules are consistent
Requiring someone to wear an ankle monitor for the rest of their life sounds bonkers. You would either have to give him/her the charger or mandate that he/she return to a police station or court house to have the device recharged perhaps every month. If you gave them the charger, couldn't the person just "forget" to charge the device and then drive out of state?
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.
Parolees are already subject to many arcane obligations, such as a rigid schedule of meetings and phone calls with the parole officer. The punishment for a single failure is going back to prison for the remainder of the sentence. You could presumably make regular charging of the device a similar requirement. Low battery indicator for too long = back to life in prison.
The argument is that they already served their sentence. They are free to do as they will. This is effectively in addition to their sentence, retroactively changing the laws. Imagine if suddenly there was a law that said you were to have your tongue cut out if you lied, and that it applied to lies told in the past. How would you feel about that?
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.
This argument seems based much more in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the original text of the constitution. Quoth: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
There are two objections. One based on the article one prohibition of ex post facto laws, and another based on a 4th amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.
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 ACLU and EFF seem clearly to be in the right here, and the district court ruling seems pretty straightforward. Here's a quick sketch of the facts of the case:
* 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.
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.