The S.C. Supreme Court has issued three different opinions in a constitutional challenge to the state’s satellite monitoring requirement for certain sex offenders, but the matter appears to be far from settled.
In State v. Dykes, the court’s majority first overturned a law that imposed automatic lifetime GPS monitoring for offenders convicted of first-degree criminal sexual assault with a minor or lewd act on a child, regardless of the threat they posed to society.
Then the court issued another ruling modifying and narrowing the scope of the first opinion, this time upholding the mandatory monitoring requirement for higher-level offenders but also finding that they could petition for the removal of their GPS devices after a decade.
In late July, the court issued a third revised opinion when it denied defendant Jennifer R. Dykes’ petition for rehearing. The latest opinion includes a new ninth footnote, which addresses for the first time several constitutional arguments that Dykes had raised earlier.
But the court rejected her additional claims, including her assertion that mandatory monitoring in her case is unconstitutional because it turns the civil sex offender registry into a form of criminal punishment.
“I think that [footnote] is significant because it dismisses a lot of the other challenges Ms. Dykes brought without any real discussion,” said E. Charles Grose Jr., a Greenwood criminal defense attorney who filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of his client Anthony Nation.
Nation, a convicted sex offender, is bringing similar challenges as Dykes has against mandatory GPS monitoring, asserting that the state’s sex offender registry has over the past several decades become too punitive.
“None of these issues have ever really been addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Grose said.
Now, though, Greenville public defender Christopher D. Scalzo, who represented Dykes in her appeal, is petitioning the nation’s highest court to hear the case. He was disappointed that the state Supreme Court had glossed over Dykes’ additional claims.
“For each issue, they cited a case essentially,” he said. “We would have liked an analysis on those issues, but they’ve ruled and so now we’ll take the next step.”
Follow Phillip Bantz on Twitter @SCLWBantz