Do the crime, do the time ... for life, in this case.
A federal appeals court upheld the Wisconsin state law that convicted pedophiles must wear GPS ankle monitors for the rest of their lives, Ars Technica is reporting.
This comes after a convicted Wisconsin man, Michael Belleau, 72, already served his prison sentence for sexually assaulting a boy and a girl and requested to not have to wear the GPS ankle device any longer, arguing that it violated his privacy and that he wasn't on any type of post-sentence supervision.
A federal judge actually sided with the convicted felon, but Wisconsin appealed to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and they weren't hearing it. The federal appeals court stood by the state, upholding the 2008 Wisconsin law that requires sex offenders in the state to wear GPS ankle monitors for life.
In upholding the law, the federal appeals judges reasoned, according to Ars Technica:
"When the ankleted person is wearing trousers the anklet is visible only if he sits down and his trousers hike up several inches and as a result no longer cover it. The plaintiff complains that when this happens in the presence of other people and they spot the anklet, his privacy is invaded, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, because the viewers assume that he is a criminal and decide to shun him. Of course the Fourth Amendment does not mention privacy or create any right of privacy. It requires that searches be reasonable but does not require a warrant or other formality designed to balance investigative need against a desire for privacy; the only reference to warrants is a prohibition of general warrants."
The federal appeals judges also added that the use of GPS devices among California's sex offenders results in those felons less than half as likely to ever commit a new sex crime in comparison to those who don't wear the devices.
