Wisconsin High Court: Lifetime GPS Monitoring Not Punishment
The Wisconsin Supreme Court says a judge wasn’t required to tell a man he would face a lifetime of GPS monitoring upon pleading guilty to child sex crimes because such monitoring is a public safety measure, not a form of punishment.
A Wisconsin judge wasn’t required to tell a man he would face a lifetime of GPS monitoring upon pleading guilty to child sex crimes because such monitoring is a public safety measure, not a form of punishment, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The court concluded in a rare 7-0 decision that monitoring is designed to protect the public rather than punish the offender further.
“(Lifetime monitoring) provides a middle ground between releasing dangerous sex offenders into the public wholly unsupervised and civil commitment,” Justice Michael Gableman wrote in the ruling. “In light of the ‘frightening and high’ rate of recidivism for sex offenders, the relatively minimal intrusion of lifetime GPS tracking … is not excessive in relation to protecting the public.”
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This makes me wonder if the federal judge in the Broward County Circuit explained the registration requirements to me when I pled guilty to one count of possession of child pornography in 2001. I’m going to look back at the transcripts if I still have them to find out. I just remember that after he gave me 5 years probation rather than prison time, I went to my first probation officer who told me I had to go and register. I didn’t know anything about that until right then. And I still didn’t realize it was for life until later. And oh, did I mention that the feds took one and a half years to get around to charging me? They told my attorney 3 times that they had bigger fish to fry. But they were also using me as their key witness in a fraud case against a former employer. I didn’t help them like they had hoped, and that case fell apart. So they had to teach me a lesson! And boy, did they!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/supreme-court-repeat-sex-offenders.html
A good article talking about how the “frightening and high” quote ended up in a US Supreme Court decision. Leaves other judges free to quote it as fact, without having to prove it themselves. Very sad.
For those of us either on the registry, or have a loved one or family member on the registry, can we please stop the attempt to divide those on the registry into groups that deserve the “punishment” afforded to all and those who don’t.
The well established and well researched and empirically obtained statistics shows without a doubt that ALL but a miniscule number of those on the registry have very LOW rates of recidivism regardless of whether the crime included a child as a victim, a real child not a digital image of a child, or a real adult. I read comments relating how “non-serious” registrants shouldn’t be included on the registry. This is a bunch of bull crap in my opinion.
Yes, there are the true pyscho/sociopaths who will never change and should probably never be release into society and I believe there are tools that can identify these rare individuals. However, these individuals are extremely few in number and genuine statistical facts show that men/women who sexually abuse others, whether children or adults, do go on to live offense-free lives after they are released from incarceration.
So, enough of this inner division into ranks of who should gain relief from the nightmare of the registry, residency restrictions, travel limitations and placement of an eternal scarlet letter upon “certain” individuals simply because it could prove expedient for your own unique position in the hierarchy of the sex offense levels ( i.e. those who believe they shouldn’t be on the registry because “they ain’t no REAL sex offender” ).
Sorna is wrong for ALL, we should fight this battle as an integral unit. Let’s stand firm, learn the facts and gird ourselves with the armor of truth. That’s the best thing we have going for us, the truth of statistical evidence that we, as a whole, are NOT a continued threat to society. Lets pray, lets continue to educate ourselves and others — lets expose the lies of those who would love to divide and conquer us and show all those around us that we, each of us, have an uncommon amount of courage and resiliency within to take the blows but yet continue to get up and fight back.
agreed
George In Texas – thank you for saying so eloquently what I have tried to say SO many times!
When will they see Frightening and High are lies does anyone point this out before judges deliberate the court clerks need to be flooded with data so they can inform theses judges that these laws are based on incomplete and misinformation