- Click here for ScotuBlog's page on Grady VS North Carolina.
Here was the specific issue presented to the court:
Whether the state of North Carolina performs an unconstitutional search when it requires a citizen to wear a GPS monitoring ankle bracelet for the rest of his life based only on the citizen's status as a recidivist sex offender and where there is no finding that he is a threat to society.
As best as I can tell, there was no substantive decision on the issue - that is whether the state could force him to wear the monitor - but instead whether having the monitor on amounted to a search, meaning that the case should be considered under the 4th Amendment. The court decided that it was, and sent the issue back down to the lower courts to be reheard.
This should help explain why court proceedings can be so long sometimes. New technologies - like GPS devices - force the court to rethink what otherwise simple terms like "search" mean in a digital age. Students who selected this case might want to consider building on that question. This might be especially pertinent since you may well be holding something right now that allows you to be similarly monitored - or searched.
For background:
- Affixing ankle bracelet to monitor suspect is a “search,” Supreme Court holds.
- GPS monitoring of sex offenders for life? Supreme Court reverses N.C. case.
And some related terms and concepts used in the case:
- United States v Jones: A case which preceded Grady. It argued that placing a GPS tracking device was a search under the 4th Amendment.
- Certiorari: ". . . the writ that the Supreme Court of the United States issues to a lower court to review the lower court's judgment for legal error (reversible error)"
- Granted, vacated, and remanded: From Wikipedia: "a type of order issued on occasion by the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Court grants a petition for certiorari, vacates the decision of the court below, and remands the case for further proceedings (hence the acronym by which they are known). An order of this sort is appropriate when there has been a change in the law or a precedential ruling subsequent to the lower court or agency's decision; the Supreme Court simply sends the case back to the lower court to be reconsidered in light of the new law or the new precedent."
- Discretionary review: "Discretionary power is a judicial appellate power, in which the appellate body may decline to hear the appeal. In this, the appellate courts have the discretionary power to decide on which appeals to be considered from among the cases submitted to them."
