Case Title: State v. Strudwick

Citation: 

Docket Number: 334PA19-2

State: north-carolina

Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Date: 2021-10-29T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA 
2021-NCSC-127 
No. 334PA19-2 
Filed 29 October 2021 
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 
v. 
TENEDRICK STRUDWICK 
 
Appeal pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-30(2) from the decision of a divided panel of 
the Court of Appeals, State v. Strudwick, 273 N.C. App. 676 (2020), reversing two 
orders entered on 8 December 2017 and 19 December 2017 by Judge Yvonne Mims 
Evans in Mecklenburg County Superior Court. Heard in the Supreme Court on 17 
May 2021. 
 
Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Sonya Calloway-Durham, Special 
Deputy Attorney General, for the State-appellant. 
 
Glenn Gerding, Appellate Defender, by Nicholas C. Woomer-Deters, Assistant 
Appellate Defender, for defendant-appellee. 
 
 
MORGAN, Justice. 
 
¶ 1 
 
The State appeals on the basis of a dissent filed in the Court of Appeals’ 
consideration of defendant’s challenge to a trial court order imposing lifetime 
satellite-based monitoring (SBM) following this Court’s remand of the case to the 
lower appellate court for reconsideration of defendant’s claims in light of our decision 
in State v. Grady, 372 N.C. 509 (2019) (Grady III). Because the intrusion of lifetime 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
SBM into the privacy interests of defendant is outweighed by lifetime SBM’s 
promotion of a compelling governmental interest, the trial court was without error in 
entering an order requiring defendant to participate in SBM for the remainder of his 
natural life.  
I. 
Factual and Procedural Background 
¶ 2 
 
On 22 March 2016, the victim in this case, a 64-year-old resident of Charlotte, 
was walking her dog along a greenway near her home when she noticed defendant 
was approaching her from the rear. The victim stopped to allow defendant to pass 
her, but once defendant had done so, defendant came back and began speaking with 
the victim while petting her dog. Shortly thereafter, defendant said to the victim “I’m 
sorry about this,” grabbed the victim by her arm, and began to drag the victim into a 
wooded area along the greenway. The victim produced a small taser and managed to 
discharge the device in an effort to protect herself, but with little effect upon 
defendant. Defendant then pulled out a sock filled with concrete and began to beat 
the victim over the head, knocking the taser from her grasp. The victim fell to the 
ground, and defendant dragged her into the woods and across a creek. Once past the 
creek, defendant wrapped a sweatshirt around the victim’s head and threw her face 
down on the ground. Defendant proceeded to rape the victim and to commit multiple 
forms of sexual assault upon her body. Defendant threatened to kill the victim with 
a gun if she did not do what he said and ordered the victim to remain in place for at 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
least one minute while defendant made his escape after defendant had concluded his 
assault. Defendant rummaged through the victim’s purse, took her cellular 
telephone, and then ran out of the woods past a group of bystanders who had gathered 
around the victim’s dog in an attempt to locate its owner. The victim exited the woods 
a short time later and sought assistance from the bystanders, who contacted the 
police on her behalf. Utilizing the description of defendant and his last known 
direction of travel as provided by the victim and the bystanders, law enforcement 
officers located defendant walking along a busy thoroughfare near the crime scene. A 
search of defendant’s person revealed the victim’s cellular telephone and a small 
amount of marijuana. DNA testing ultimately confirmed that defendant was the 
perpetrator of the attack upon the victim. 
¶ 3 
 
On 28 March 2016, a Mecklenburg County grand jury indicted defendant for, 
among other charges, the offenses of first-degree kidnapping, robbery with a 
dangerous weapon, and first-degree forcible rape. Defendant appeared with counsel 
in Superior Court, Mecklenburg County on 2 August 2017, where he pleaded guilty 
to the above-referenced offenses and allowed the State to present an uncontested 
factual basis for a plea agreement which described defendant’s attack upon the 
victim. In consideration of defendant’s guilty plea to the three felony offenses, the 
State agreed to dismiss four counts of first-degree sex offense and the misdemeanor 
charge of possession of marijuana. The trial court accepted defendant’s guilty plea 
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and sentenced defendant, pursuant to the plea arrangement, to an active term of 
incarceration of 360 to 516 months. Defendant was also ordered by the trial court to 
register as a sex offender for life. The prosecution apprised the trial court of the 
State’s intention to seek the imposition of lifetime SBM and to bring defendant back 
at a later date for a hearing on the State’s request.  
¶ 4 
 
The State filed a petition to impose lifetime SBM on defendant upon his release 
from his active sentence. In response, defendant filed a motion to dismiss the State’s 
petition in which he asserted both facial and as-applied challenges under the Fourth 
Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 20 of the North 
Carolina Constitution to North Carolina’s SBM statutory structure. The matter came 
on for hearing on 8 December 2017. At the hearing, the State called Probation Officer 
Shakira Jones as a witness who, while employed as a probation officer for thirteen 
years with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS), had spent most of 
the previous three years specifically supervising sex offenders who were on probation 
or post-release supervision following the completion of active sentences for sex 
crimes. In that capacity, Officer Jones also worked as an instructor who provided 
initial and refresher training sessions to other probation officers who utilized the 
state’s SBM program to monitor sex offenders. Officer Jones explained that when an 
offender is ordered to complete a term of SBM, a 2.5-by-1.5-inch device weighing 8.5 
ounces called an “ET-1” is attached to the offender’s body using fiber optic straps, 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
usually around the offender’s ankle. The ET-1 apparatus is charged using a 10-foot 
cord that allows the offender to move about while the device is charging. Two hours 
of charging provides 100 hours of ET-1 operation, and Officer Jones testified that 
even one of her homeless supervisees had no issues with keeping the unit charged. 
According to Officer Jones, the ET-1 does not restrict travel, work activities, or 
participation in regular sports. It can be concealed by wearing long pants. 
¶ 5 
 
Officer Jones further testified during the State’s presentation that the State’s 
monitoring of sex offenders in the SBM program manifests itself in distinct ways. She 
related that offenders on probation or post-release supervision typically interact with 
their supervising officers on a regular basis through visits at the offender’s home and 
at the probation office, where the equipment is checked for functionality. However, 
individuals placed on unsupervised probation are not actively supervised by an 
officer, but instead are overseen by a central monitoring office in Raleigh. These 
unsupervised offenders receive a new ET-1 once a year. Other than these compulsory 
interactions for supervised offenders and yearly check-ins for unsupervised offenders, 
a person subject to lifetime SBM would have little interaction with the State, unless 
something goes amiss. For example, Officer Jones explained that in the event that 
the ET-1 is low on power or if the device loses its signal, an offender’s supervising 
officer or the Raleigh monitoring office can send a message to the ET-1 which will 
play for the offender until the offender presses a small button on the unit to 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
acknowledge receipt of the message. If an offender fails to respond to a low battery or 
lost signal alert, or if an ET-1 remains dormant for six hours, an officer or other state 
agent will attempt to call the offender to address the issue. In the most extreme cases, 
such as when an offender attempts to tamper with the ET-1 device, when a sex 
offender goes to a location where the offender is prohibited from going, or when the 
offender is unable to independently correct a battery or signal issue, an officer 
attempts to locate the offender in person and to address any noncompliant or criminal 
behavior. 
¶ 6 
 
Officer Jones elaborated in her testimony for the State on the purpose and 
operation of the SBM program itself. Officer Jones explained that the purpose of SBM 
is “to monitor [offenders’] movement and to work closely with other law enforcement 
agencies so that we can prevent future victims.” The SBM program can be used to 
determine whether an offender was present at a location where a new sexual assault 
or crime has occurred, to generate potential suspects for a crime based on its location, 
or to corroborate a victim’s allegations against a particular offender. Conversely, an 
offender in the SBM program would benefit from being eliminated as a suspect if the 
offender’s tracking device established the offender’s location to be a place other than 
the site at issue. Officer Jones related at the hearing that the State also utilizes the 
SBM program to ensure that registered sex offenders like defendant are actually 
remaining at their registered homes at night and are staying away from “exclusion 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
zones”—areas where offenders are not allowed to go—such as schools and daycare 
facilities. To these ends, the SBM tracker allows the State to access an offender’s 
physical location either in real time or through subsequent review of an offender’s 
movements. The ET-1 only indicates an offender’s physical location through the use 
of cell towers and the Global Positioning System (GPS) and provides no information 
about an offender’s activity at a particular location. Law enforcement officers access 
an offender’s location by interacting with a system operated by the state’s SBM 
vendor BI Incorporated, which displays an offender’s location on a map using GPS. 
Officer Jones testified that offenders on probation and post-release supervision have 
their locations and data checked at least three times a week by their respective 
supervising officers according to DPS policy, but could not testify concerning the 
practices of the Raleigh center in monitoring individuals who had completed their 
terms of judicially ordered state supervision. Only BI Incorporated and DPS 
personnel have access to an offender’s location information in simultaneous time. 
While law enforcement officers may contact DPS to obtain historic information about 
an offender’s location in the performance of their duties, all other parties must obtain 
a court order to be able to access information stored in BI Incorporated’s system. 
¶ 7 
 
Officer Jones also administered a Static-99 test to defendant, which is an 
evaluative tool utilized to assess certain information about an offender and the 
offender’s criminal activity in order to determine the offender’s risk of committing 
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another sex offense. The Static-99 accounts for, inter alia, whether an offender has 
ever lived with a romantic partner for more than two years, whether the offender 
knew or was related to the offender’s victim, and at what age a particular offender 
will be released from prison—all of which are factors deemed relevant to a person’s 
propensity to reoffend. While defendant would have scored a total of four points on 
the Static-99 if the assessment had failed to take into account the age of defendant 
upon defendant’s release from incarceration—an amount which indicates an above-
average risk for reoffending—Officer Jones subtracted one point from the Static-99 
composite score since defendant’s age would fall within the 40-to-59.9-years-old range 
upon his release after serving his sentence. The Static-99 therefore reflected a 
consideration of the lengthy duration of defendant’s prison sentence and the 
corresponding advanced age at which defendant would be released in tallying a total 
of three points for defendant on the Static-99, ultimately concluding that defendant 
would have an average risk of reoffending through the commission of another sex 
offense upon his release from prison in 30 to 43 years.  
¶ 8 
 
After Officer Jones concluded her testimony, defendant lodged an oral motion 
to dismiss. Counsel for the State and for defendant presented arguments as to the 
reasonableness of lifetime SBM. The trial court denied defendant’s motion to dismiss 
and entertained closing arguments from the parties. Defendant reiterated his 
argument that “the North Carolina satellite-based monitoring program is facially 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and 
Article I, Section 20 of the North Carolina Constitution” in opposing the State’s 
petition to impose lifetime SBM. The trial court found the imposition of lifetime SBM 
upon defendant to be reasonable and constitutional under both the federal and state 
constitutions, explaining: 
THE COURT: . . . the Court finds that it is constitutional, 
and I find also that such a requirement is reasonable, and 
so I am going to abide by the statute and require that it be 
satellite-based monitoring for his lifetime.  
Now, having said that, the law changes all the time, and at 
some point in the next 30 years, it may change again, and 
he may [sic] eligible to approach the Court and request a 
different outcome. 
The trial court also declined to dismiss the State’s petition based upon grounds of 
double jeopardy, due process, and cruel and unusual punishment. 
¶ 9 
 
The trial court filed a form order imposing lifetime SBM on 8 December 2017 
pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 14-208.40A(c) (2017) based upon its determination of the 
existence of the statutory factor as defined in N.C.G.S. § 14-208.6(1a) (2017) that 
defendant committed an aggravated offense. On 19 December 2017, the trial court 
filed a more detailed order containing 27 findings of fact and 11 conclusions of law. 
The trial court made the following findings of fact relevant to this appeal: 
7. . . . The monitor consists of a middle unit with two 
adjustable straps. The middle unit is smaller than the palm 
of Officer Jones’ hand. The monitor as worn by 
participants, with straps and battery, weighs 8.5 ounces. 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
Participants typically wear the monitor on their ankle, but 
some choose to wear it on their wrist. If worn on the ankle, 
the device cannot be seen when the participant is wearing 
long pants. The State introduced photographs of the 
monitor being worn on a participant’s ankle. The 
photographs illustrate that the monitor is a small, 
relatively unobtrusive device.  
8. The SBM system used by the State continuously 
monitors a participant’s location using GPS. If a 
participant is traveling in a vehicle, the system monitors 
his speed of travel. The system does not collect any 
additional information, and it does not collect any 
information about what a participant is doing at a 
particular location. 
9. The information collected by the system is stored on 
servers of the State’s vendor, BI. The information is not 
publicly available. Probation officers who supervise SBM 
participants have access to and monitor the information 
online. 
10. Probation officers who supervise SBM participants are 
required to review the information three times per week. 
Some choose to review it daily. They review the 
information to ensure the participant spends nights at his 
registered address.  
11. Probation officers also monitor the information when 
they receive alerts from the system. Alerts are generated 
when a participant tampers with his monitor or enters an 
exclusion zone. Exclusion zones can include the victim’s 
home, the victim’s workplace, schools, and daycare 
facilities. These alerts require an immediate response from 
the officer for safety purposes.  
12. Alerts are also generated when the monitor’s battery is 
low, or when the monitor has a mechanical problem. These 
alerts are sent to the participant as well. This type of alert 
does not require immediate response from the officer. If the 
participant does not begin charging the monitor after 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
receiving a low battery alert, the probation officer can send 
him a message asking him to do so. Following a mechanical 
alert, the officer contacts the participant to schedule an 
appointment to correct the problem. These appointments 
can take place at the probation office or the participant’s 
home.  
13. Participants who are not on supervised probation are 
monitored by an officer for the Department of Public Safety 
in Raleigh. If this officer receives an alert that requires 
immediate response, they contact local probation officers to 
respond.  
14. Probation officers physically check the monitors only 
during alert responses, regular probation appointments, 
and an annual appointment in which they provide 
participants with a new monitor. This annual appointment 
may occur at the probation office or the participant’s home.  
15. The monitor has 100 hours of battery life if charged for 
two hours. Participants charge the monitor by connecting 
the battery to a wall outlet by a charging cord. The 
charging cord is ten feet long, and participants are able to 
move around while charging the monitor.  
16. Officer Jones supervises a homeless participant who 
does not have trouble keeping his monitor charged. 
17. Officer Jones supervises two participants who work in 
construction. Neither of them experiences difficulty 
working because of the monitor. 
18. The monitor is waterproof up to 10 feet. 
19. The only participant Officer Jones has ever supervised 
who experienced issues with sport activities participated in 
extreme sports that caused physical damage to the monitor 
itself. 
20. The monitor does not restrict working activities, ability 
to travel, or sports activities other than extreme sports.  
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
21. Probationers who are participants must receive 
permission to travel out of state, but this permission is 
routinely granted. 
22. Officer Jones supervises a participant who travels out 
of state for work on a weekly basis. 
23. The purpose of SBM is to assist law enforcement in 
protecting communities and [sic] prevent future sexual 
assault victims by monitoring the movement of sex 
offenders. 
24. When a sexual assault is reported, location information 
from the monitor could be used to implicate the participant 
as a suspect if he was in the area of the sexual assault, or 
to eliminate him as a suspect if he was not in the area of a 
sexual assault.  
25. Static-99 is an assessment tool that takes into account 
multiple factors about the defendant’s history in order to 
determine his risk level. 
26. Officer Jones administered a Static-99 to defendant. 
27. Defendant scored a 3 on the Static-99 assessment, 
which indicates average risk. . . . 
The trial court also made several conclusions of law pertinent to this appeal: 
3. Participation in the State’s SBM program constitutes a 
search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment to the 
United States Constitution. Grady v. North Carolina, 135 
S. Ct. 1368, 1371 (2017).  
4. Registered sex offenders have a slightly diminished 
expectation of privacy, as they are subject to the regular 
conditions imposed by the registry. See N.C.G.S. 14 § [sic], 
Article 27A.  
5. Although imposing lifetime SBM results in an intrusion 
of privacy; [sic] when considering the totality of the 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the 
search and the extent to which the search intrudes upon 
reasonable expectations of privacy, lifetime enrollment in 
the State’s SBM program is reasonable in this case. 
6. An order directing defendant to enroll in satellite-based 
monitoring does not constitute a general warrant in 
violation of Article I, § 20 of the North Carolina 
Constitution[,] . . . 
7. . . . is not a criminal punishment, and does not violate 
defendant’s right to be free from double jeopardy[,] . . .  
8. . . . does not violate defendant’s right to be free from cruel 
and unusual punishment[,] . . .  
9. . . . does not increase the maximum penalty for a 
participant’s conviction based upon facts not charged in the 
indictment and not proven beyond a reasonable doubt[,] . . .  
10. . . . [and] does not violate the defendant’s substantive 
due process rights[.] 
[11.] Notwithstanding the arguments made by counsel for 
the defendant both in court and in his written motion, the 
satellite-based monitoring statute is constitutional on its 
face and as applied to defendant under both the United 
States Constitution and the North Carolina Constitution. 
¶ 10 
 
Defendant perfected an appeal of the trial court’s order imposing lifetime SBM 
to the Court of Appeals, which reversed the trial court’s order in a unanimous, 
unpublished opinion filed on 6 August 2019. State v. Strudwick (Strudwick I), 
COA18-794, 2019 WL 3562352 (N.C. Ct. App. Aug. 6, 2019) (unpublished). The lower 
appellate court cited several of its own opinions in which it had reversed similar trial 
court orders “for the same reasons as argued by [d]efendant” in the wake of the 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U.S. 
306 (2015). Id. at *1. On 4 September 2019, the State filed a petition for discretionary 
review in this Court, seeking an opportunity to argue against the “continued and 
significant expansion” of the State’s burden in cases to prove the reasonableness of 
the imposition of lifetime SBM under the totality of the circumstances. A few weeks 
earlier, however, this Court had announced its decision in Grady III, which was itself 
issued in response to the Supreme Court of the United States’ mandate to this Court 
that we reconsider the Grady defendant’s case in light of the Supreme Court of the 
United States’ conclusion that North Carolina’s SBM program constituted a 
warrantless search which required a reasonableness analysis under the Fourth 
Amendment. Having received the State’s petition for discretionary review in such 
close temporal proximity to our pronouncement in Grady III, this Court allowed the 
State’s petition for discretionary review “for the limited purpose of remanding this 
case to the Court of Appeals for further consideration in light of this Court’s decision 
in [Grady III].” 
¶ 11 
 
Upon remand, the Court of Appeals issued a second opinion in this matter. The 
published decision was rendered by a divided lower appellate court on 6 October 2020, 
with the Court of Appeals again reversing the trial court’s SBM order in this case. 
State v. Strudwick (Strudwick II), 273 N.C. App. 676 (2020). Relying primarily on 
State v. Gordon (Gordon II), 270 N.C. App. 468 (2020), another case in which the 
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Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
Court of Appeals reversed a trial court’s order imposing lifetime SBM, the majority 
lamented the “impossible burden” placed upon the State in the State’s efforts to 
establish the reasonableness of lifetime SBM in cases where such determinations are 
required to be made years and sometimes decades before the search will be effected, 
due to N.C.G.S. § 14-208.40A’s requirement that the State seek the imposition of 
lifetime SBM at the time that a defendant is sentenced. Strudwick II, 273 N.C. App. 
at 681 (quoting State v. Gordon (Gordon I), 261 N.C. App. 247, 261 (2018)). According 
to the Court of Appeals majority’s invocation of the Gordon lineage of cases, 
establishing the reasonableness of lifetime SBM when an offender had decades left 
to serve in prison would require the State to prove that the search would remain 
reasonable despite the inability to know, with any certifiable degree of certainty, the 
circumstances impacting a defendant’s appropriateness for lifetime SBM between 
defendant’s time of sentencing and defendant’s time of release from incarceration. Id. 
The majority concluded that “until we receive further guidance from our Supreme 
Court or new options for addressing the SBM procedure from the General Assembly, 
under existing law, we are required by law to reverse defendant's SBM order.” Id. 
The dissent disagreed with the majority’s assignment of dispositive force to the length 
of time between the moment when the reasonableness determination is made and the 
moment when the search would be effected, observing that the Court of Appeals  
cannot anticipate nor predict what may or may not occur 
well into the future, and a prediction or hunch alone is not 
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a legitimate basis to overturn the trial court's statutorily 
required and lawful imposition of SBM over a defendant 
still in custody or under state supervision on constitutional 
grounds. 
Id. at 684 (Tyson, J, dissenting). The State filed a notice of appeal from the Court of 
Appeals decision pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-30(2), based upon the dissenting opinion1. 
Hence, this Court has been presented with an opportunity to provide the “further 
guidance” beckoned by the lower appellate court regarding the salient considerations 
which should constitute and resolve the timing of the reasonableness determination. 
II. 
Analysis 
¶ 12 
 
Our standard of review is derived from defendant’s claim that the imposition 
of lifetime SBM under the General Assembly’s duly enacted statutory scheme which 
governs the program is unconstitutional. “Whether a statute is constitutional is a 
                                            
1 We recognize that, during the time period between the State’s perfection of its appeal 
and the issuance of this opinion, the General Assembly enacted a major revision of the state’s 
SBM program as it relates to sex offenders by the passage of Session Law 2021-138, § 18. Act 
of 
Sep. 
2, 
2021, 
S.L. 
2021-138, 
§ 
18, 
https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/SessionLaws/PDF/2021-2022/SL2021-138.pdf. 
However, this new legislation does not take effect until 1 December 2021. Id. at § 18(p). 
Nevertheless, although brief in its ongoing applicability, the SBM program as it existed at 
the time of defendant’s SBM determination by the trial court still provides governing 
authority for the trial court’s orders under review in the case sub judice, and the General 
Assembly remains empowered to further amend the SBM program up to or after the effective 
date of the new legislation. This Court is also aware that this case presents us with an issue 
that remains unaltered under the new enactment: the lawfulness of the gapped time 
sequence between the point at which the prosecution seeks, and the trial court potentially 
orders, the imposition of the continuing warrantless search that SBM presents and the point 
at which the search is actually imposed upon defendant. Thus, “the version of the SBM 
program in effect on [8 December 2017], the date of defendant’s SBM determination, governs 
the present case.” State v. Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶ 3, n. 1. 
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question of law that this Court reviews de novo. In exercising de novo review, we 
presume that laws enacted by the General Assembly are constitutional, and we will 
not declare a law invalid unless we determine that it is unconstitutional beyond a 
reasonable doubt.” Grady III, 372 N.C. at 521–22 (quoting first from State v. Romano, 
369 N.C. 678, 685 (2017), then second from Cooper v. Berger, 370 N.C. 392, 413 (2018)) 
(extraneity omitted). It is the burden of the proponent of a finding of facial 
unconstitutionality to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an act of the General 
Assembly is unconstitutional in every sense. State v. Bryant, 359 N.C. 554, 564 
(2005).  
A. Timing of Reasonableness Determination 
¶ 13 
 
As an initial matter, the Court of Appeals determined in this case that the 
State had failed to meet its burden of showing that lifetime SBM constituted a 
reasonable search in defendant’s case because such a demonstration of 
reasonableness in light of defendant’s incarceration over the course of at least thirty 
years required that  
the State must divine all the possible future events that 
might occur over the ten or twenty years that the offender 
sits in prison and then prove that satellite-based 
monitoring will be reasonable in every one of those 
alternate future realities. That is an impossible burden and 
one that the State will never satisfy. 
Strudwick II, 273 N.C. App. at 681. In employing this premise as a guidepost in its 
examination of the State’s ability to show the reasonableness of the implementation 
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of SBM in a case such as the present one in which a defendant is subject to the State’s 
oversight for a substantial period prior to the imposition of SBM, the lower appellate 
court expands its perception that the State cannot possibly satisfy the reasonableness 
standard under such circumstances to a conclusion that the entirety of the lifetime 
SBM statutory structure is facially unconstitutional. However, this approach 
overlooks, undervalues, or otherwise misidentifies the aspect here that the State is 
not tasked with the responsibility to demonstrate the reasonableness of a search at 
its effectuation in the future for which the State is bound to apply in the present; 
rather, the State is tasked under a legislative enactment presumed to be 
constitutional with the responsibility to demonstrate the reasonableness of a search 
at its evaluation in the present for which the State is bound to apply for the future 
effectuation of a search.  
¶ 14 
 
Just as “[f]airness and common sense dictate that an accused must be tried 
and sentenced under the state of the law as it exists” at the time of his crime, State 
v. Stockton, 1979 WL 208803, *3 (Ohio Ct. App. April, 4 1979) (citing Dobbert v. 
Florida, 432 U.S. 282, 301 (1977)), identical guidance should apply in the 
circumstance at issue wherein the current state of the law mandates that the 
prosecution must request a trial court’s imposition of lifetime SBM on a duly 
convicted sex offender at the offender’s sentencing hearing if SBM is being sought. 
Under this Court’s enduring principles, the General Assembly’s requirement that the 
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determination of the imposition of lifetime SBM is to be conducted “during the 
sentencing phase,” N.C.G.S. § 14-208.40A (2019), is presumptively constitutional. 
Hart v. State, 368 N.C. 122, 126 (2015). While the State properly faces a challenging 
hurdle when attempting to overcome the Fourth Amendment’s protections against 
unreasonable searches when the State requests at a defendant’s sentencing hearing 
that a trial court order the imposition of lifetime SBM, nonetheless the challenge is 
not intensified or heightened concerning the State’s necessity to establish the 
reasonableness of lifetime SBM merely because the State’s compliance with the 
General Assembly’s procedural requirements at a defendant’s sentencing hearing 
includes the State’s request for the lifetime SBM at the end of the State’s oversight 
of a defendant, which does not happen to end until decades later. In light of these 
considerations, defendant in the instant case has failed to satisfy his burden to show, 
as the proponent of a facial constitutional challenge, that the legislative enactment 
governing lifetime SBM is unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. 
¶ 15 
 
Defendant’s dispute about the timing of the reasonableness determination in 
light of the timing of the actual effectuation of the SBM search, decades later, as 
reflected in the dispositive discussion of the issue by the lower appellate court, is 
largely allayed by the civil nature of the penalty imposed upon him. Our decision here 
applies to defendant as he is currently assessed, to the law as it is currently applied, 
and to the search as it is currently adapted. In the event that defendant is 
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subsequently assessed more favorably such that the search becomes unreasonable 
because defendant is deemed to no longer constitute the threat to public safety that 
he has been determined to pose at the present time2, then he may petition the Post-
Release Supervision and Parole Commission for release from the SBM program upon 
the passage of one year from his release from prison if defendant can show that he 
has “not received any additional reportable convictions during the period of satellite-
based monitoring and [he] has substantially complied with the provisions of” the SBM 
program, and that he is “not likely to pose a threat to the safety of others.” N.C.G.S. 
§ 14-208.43 (2019). However, this statutory relief from the continued imposition of 
SBM upon defendant, which is readily available to him, is not the sole vehicle through 
which defendant could be released from the obligation of SBM upon the trial court’s 
determination that the search has become unreasonable.  
¶ 16 
 
Rule 60 of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure also affords potential 
relief to defendant from prospective application of lifetime SBM or other relief from 
the SBM order, while maintaining deference to the constitutionality of any search 
effected during the relevant time period. Rule 60 provides, in pertinent part: 
On motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may 
relieve a party or his legal representative from a final 
                                            
2 In his brief, defendant provides examples of such developments which may, if they 
come to fruition, reduce his threat to the public: “positive clinical assessments after years of 
cognitive and psychological counseling; educational achievement; skill development; an 
improved prognosis due to advancements in psychiatric medication; as well as any physical 
disabilities [defendant] may develop far in the future.” 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
judgment, order, or proceeding for the following reasons: 
(5) . . . it is no longer equitable that the judgment 
should have prospective application; or 
(6) Any other reason justifying relief from the 
operation of the judgment. 
The motion shall be made within a reasonable time. . . . 
N.C. R. Civ. P. 60(b) (2019). A Rule 60(b) motion “may not be used as a substitute for 
appeal,” and the appellate process, not Rule 60(b), is the proper apparatus for the 
correction of errors of law committed by a trial court. Davis v. Davis, 360 N.C. 518, 
523 (2006). Nonetheless, a trial court that has ordered the imposition of a continuing, 
warrantless search at a time when such a search was reasonable has not committed 
an error of law if the continuing, warrantless search becomes unreasonable through 
changes in circumstances pertaining to the nature, character, and subject of the 
search. While an otherwise reasonable, warrantless Fourth Amendment search may 
become unreasonable “by virtue of its intolerable intensity and scope,” Terry v. Ohio, 
392 U.S. 1, 18 (1968), or “as a result of its duration or for other reasons,” Segura v. 
United States, 468 U.S. 796, 812 (1984), such circumstances do not render impossible, 
as the Court of Appeals perceived, the ability of the State to show, and the properness 
of a trial court to find, the present reasonableness of a search to be conducted in the 
future. This is particularly true in the event that each of the reasonableness factors 
which are currently germane to the present case remain materially unchanged in the 
interim. After all, it has been long established by this Court that “[a]n individual 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
challenging the facial constitutionality of a legislative act must establish that no set 
of circumstances exists under which the act would be valid.” State v. Thompson, 349 
N.C. 483, 491 (1998) (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987)) 
(emphasis added) (extraneity omitted). It is likewise noteworthy that the only 
circumstance preventing the immediate imposition of lifetime SBM upon defendant 
is his superseding term of lengthy incarceration which delays the identified efficacy 
of SBM. 
¶ 17 
 
The availability of the application of Rule 60’s provisions to a case such as the 
current one effectively preserves the rights of individuals like defendant who are 
subject to the imposition of lifetime SBM only after a significant duration of time has 
passed, while protecting the sanctity of the constitutionality of the statutory 
structure of the SBM program which has been legislatively created. Over the course 
of time, in the event that the circumstances of defendant change in such a manner 
that the intrusion of lifetime SBM upon defendant’s privacy is no longer reasonable 
to promote a legitimate governmental interest, then defendant may petition the trial 
court to consider, as to the civil order of SBM, that “it is no longer equitable that the 
judgment should have prospective application,” and defendant may move the trial 
court to have the judgment set aside. N.C. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(5). And ironically, while 
the lower appellate court opined that the State’s inherent inability to “divine all the 
possible events that might occur over the ten or twenty years that the offender sits in 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
prison” negatively impacted the State’s ability to establish reasonableness, on the 
other hand such an inability to predict all eventualities with certainty inures to the 
benefit of defendant, who is not curtailed in his opportunity to show “any other reason 
justifying relief from the operation of the judgment” which may occur or develop 
during the time period under scrutiny. N.C. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(6) (emphasis added). The 
trial courts of this state are endowed with “ample power to vacate judgments 
whenever such action is appropriate to accomplish justice” through the operation of 
Rule 60(b)(6) and are invited to wield that power in a judicious manner. Brady v. 
Town of Chapel Hill, 277 N.C. 720, 723 (1971) (extraneity omitted). 
¶ 18 
 
In sum, we conclude that the combination of the available resources for 
defendant’s potential relief from the continued imposition of lifetime SBM, in the 
criminal administrative review form of the Post-Release Supervision and Parole 
Commission and the civil judicial review form of Rule 60 of the North Carolina Rules 
of Civil Procedure3, are sufficient substantive and procedural safeguards to protect 
defendant’s constitutional rights against unreasonable searches, while preserving 
the constitutionality of the General Assembly’s SBM statutory structure which 
requires the establishment of reasonableness at the mandated time of a defendant’s 
                                            
3 While cautiously refraining from the inappropriate rendition of an advisory opinion, 
we further note that the passage of S.L. 2021-138, § 18(i) presents a potential additional 
avenue of relief to defendant as “[a]n offender who is enrolled in a satellite-based monitoring 
[sic] 
for 
life.” 
Act 
of 
Sep. 
2, 
2021, 
S.L. 
2021-138, 
§ 
18, 
https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/SessionLaws/PDF/2021-2022/SL2021-138.pdf. 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
sentencing hearing when the State’s request for SBM monitoring must be made for a 
trial court’s consideration. 
B. Reasonableness of Lifetime SBM 
¶ 19 
 
Having addressed the concerns of the Court of Appeals regarding the timing of 
the entry of the lifetime SBM determination upon defendant, we next consider the 
implication of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and particularly the application of 
Grady III, to the specific facts of defendant’s case. In Grady v. North Carolina, the 
Supreme Court of the United States held that, because the state’s SBM program 
operates “by physically intruding on a subject’s body, it effects a Fourth Amendment 
search.” 575 U.S. 306, 310 (2015). Due to the lifetime SBM program’s coverage by the 
Fourth Amendment, the high court vacated our dismissal of defendant’s appeal in the 
Grady case and remanded the matter to this Court for an analysis of whether “the 
totality of the circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the search and the 
extent to which the search intrudes upon reasonable privacy expectations” resulted 
in the conclusion that the ongoing, warrantless search imposed by the SBM program 
was reasonable. Id. at 310. We fulfilled this directive from our nation’s highest 
tribunal through the issuance of our opinion in Grady III, in which we affirmed as 
modified a Court of Appeals decision reversing a trial court’s order which imposed 
lifetime SBM on the Grady defendant based solely upon his status as a recidivist. 
Grady III, 372 N.C. at 545, 550–51. This Court first addressed the intrusion upon 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
reasonable privacy expectations which is created by the imposition of lifetime SBM. 
Our approach ultimately employed a three-pronged inquiry into (1) the nature of the 
Grady defendant’s privacy interest itself, id. at 527, (2) the character of the intrusion 
effected by the lifetime SBM program, id. at 527, 534 (citing Vernonia School Dist. 
47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 652–53, 658 (1995)), and (3) the “nature and purpose of 
the search” where we “consider[ed] the nature and immediacy of the governmental 
concern at issue here, and the efficacy of this means for meeting it.” Id. at 538 
(quoting Vernonia, 515 U.S. at 652–53) (extraneity omitted).  
¶ 20 
 
This Court in Grady III, “mindful of our duty . . . to not undertake to pass upon 
the validity of the statute as it may be applied to factual situations materially 
different from that before it,” id. at 549, expressly limited our as-applied 
determination of unconstitutionality to defendants who fit squarely within the Grady 
defendant’s exact status: (1) a criminal defendant (2) not currently under any 
supervisory relationship with the State (3) who is ordered to submit to lifetime SBM 
based solely on the fact that the defendant is a recidivist as defined by statute, and 
(4) who also is not “classified as a sexually violent predator, convicted of an 
aggravated offense, or . . . convicted of statutory rape or statutory sex offense with a 
victim under the age of thirteen.” Id. at 550. As defendant in the case sub judice was 
ordered to submit to lifetime SBM based upon his conviction for an aggravated 
offense, the holding of Grady III concerning the unconstitutionality of North 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
Carolina’s lifetime SBM scheme as it applies to recidivists, including Grady III’s 
discussion concerning the State’s burden of proof as to the effect of lifetime SBM on 
reducing recidivism, is wholly inapplicable to the instant case. Ayotte v. Planned 
Parenthood of N. New England, 546 U.S. 320, 329 (2006) (“It is axiomatic that a 
statute may be invalid as applied to one state of facts and yet valid as applied to 
another.” (extraneity omitted)). Instead, we are bound to apply the instructions which 
we enunciated in Grady III—and further developed in Hilton—in order to determine 
the reasonableness of the trial court’s imposition of lifetime SBM in defendant’s case. 
See Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶ 18 (recognizing that Grady III’s as-applied holding was 
limited to the facts of that case, while employing the Fourth Amendment 
reasonableness analysis utilized in Grady III as drawn from the Supreme Court’s 
guidance in Grady I). 
¶ 21 
 
Starting with the nature of defendant’s privacy interest, the State surely gains 
pervasive access to defendant’s person, home, vehicle, and location through the 
imposition of lifetime SBM that the State would not acquire otherwise if defendant 
were not subject to lifetime SBM monitoring. In Grady III, we noted that the search 
impinges upon defendant’s “right to be secure in his person [and] his expectation of 
privacy in the whole of his physical movements.” 372 N.C. at 531 (extraneity omitted). 
This conclusion in Grady III regarding the nature of defendant’s privacy interest once 
he is subject to lifetime SBM remains intact and must be considered in the case at 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
bar. However, defendant’s expectation of privacy is duly diminished by virtue of his 
status as a convicted felon generally and as a convicted sex offender specifically. 
Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶ 30 (“Though an aggravated offender regains some of his 
privacy interests upon the completion of his post-release supervision term, these 
interests remain impaired for the remainder of his life due to his status as a convicted 
aggravated sex offender.”). 
¶ 22 
 
Secondly, while we noted in Grady III that our decision in State v. Bowditch 
“did not address the defendants’ expectations of privacy with respect to the physical 
search of their person or their expectations of privacy in their location and 
movements,” we did sufficiently incorporate in Bowditch the invasion of a defendant’s 
home—another bastion zealously guarded under the Fourth Amendment—for 
purposes of maintaining SBM equipment. Grady III, 372 N.C. at 532 (discussing State 
v. Bowditch, 364 N.C. 335 (2010)). In Bowditch, this Court recognized that “it is 
beyond dispute that convicted felons do not enjoy the same measure of constitutional 
protections, including the expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment, as do 
citizens who have not been convicted of a felony.” Bowditch, 364 N.C. at 349–50. The 
Bowditch Court cited a plethora of cases which illustrate the principle that the Fourth 
Amendment expectation of privacy of persons convicted of felonious sex offenses is 
routinely subject to encroachment by civil regulations and acts of criminal procedure. 
Id. at 350 (citing Velasquez v. Woods, 329 F.3d 420 (5th Cir. 2003) (per curiam) for 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
the constitutional, forced collection of blood samples from felons; citing Russell v. 
Gregoire, 124 F.3d 1079 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1007 (1998) for its 
discussion of sex offender registries; citing Jones v. Murray, 962 F.2d 302, 306 (4th 
Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 977 (1992) for its holding that probationers lose their 
Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches of their home pursuant 
to established supervision programs; citing Standley v. Town of Woodfin, 362 N.C. 
328, 329–30 (2008) for its holding that municipalities may constitutionally ban sex 
offenders from public parks; citing State v. Bryant, 359 N.C. 554, 557–70 (2005) for 
its conclusion that no due process violation occurs when a sex offender is required to 
register in North Carolina upon moving to the state despite only being informed of 
his duty to register in his original state). While we further noted in Grady III that 
the cases relied upon by Bowditch “either deal exclusively with prisoners and 
probationers, do not hold that a conviction creates a diminished expectation of 
privacy, or do not address privacy rights at all,” 372 N.C. at 532, it is clear that 
Bowditch establishes that it is constitutionally permissible for the State to treat a sex 
offender differently than a member of the general population as a result of the 
offender’s felony conviction for a sex offense. Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶ 30. 
Concomitantly, a sex offender such as defendant possesses a constitutionally 
permissible reduction in the offender’s expectation of privacy in matters such as the 
imposition of lifetime SBM.  
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
¶ 23 
 
Lastly, regarding the character of the intrusion which defendant challenges, 
we recognized in Grady III that this factor requires us to “contemplate[ ] the degree 
of and manner in which the search intrudes upon legitimate expectations of privacy.” 
Grady III, 372 N.C. at 534 (extraneity omitted). During the sentencing phase of 
defendant’s trial, the uncontroverted evidence presented by the State showed that 
the search occasioned by SBM reveals only defendant’s physical location, and nothing 
“about what a participant is doing at a particular location.” Testimony also indicated 
that the State is not allowed to utilize the data which it collects through the SBM 
program for any unauthorized purpose without running afoul of the Fourth 
Amendment. This Court in Grady III expressed our awareness of the “intimate 
window into an individual’s privacies of life” that the state’s SBM program provides. 
Grady III, 372 N.C. at 538 (extraneity omitted). The purposes of the SBM program—
to assist the State in both preventing and solving crime—are universally recognized 
as legitimate and compelling. Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. 435, 453 (2013) (“The 
government's interest in preventing crime by arrestees is both legitimate and 
compelling.” (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 749 (1987))). In directing 
our attention to, and in placing such dispositive weight on, this clearly legitimate goal 
of the SBM program, the State has compellingly highlighted the safeguards which 
effectively narrow the State’s utilization of SBM to a singular permissible scope of 
the search effected: to track the location of convicted sex offenders in order to promote 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
the prevention and prosecution of future crimes by those individuals. Any extension 
of this use of the compiled data would present an impermissible extension of the scope 
of the authorized search. Terry, 392 U.S. at 19 (“The scope of the search must be 
strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation 
permissible.”) (extraneity omitted). The State’s burden of establishing the 
reasonableness of a warrantless search therefore is ongoing because “in determining 
whether the seizure and search were ‘unreasonable’ our inquiry is a dual one—
whether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it was 
reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in 
the first place.” Id. at 19–20. 
¶ 24 
 
The trial court found that the ET-1 is a “relatively small, unobtrusive device” 
that cannot “be seen when the participant is wearing long pants.” As defendant has 
failed to challenge any of the trial court’s findings of fact, and as “unchallenged 
findings of fact are binding on appeal,” Brackett v. Thomas, 371 N.C. 121, 127 (2018), 
we are constrained to this description of the instrument. And while we rued in Grady 
III “[t]he lack of judicial discretion in ordering the imposition of SBM on any 
particular individual and the absence of judicial review of the continued need for 
SBM,” Grady III, 372 N.C. at 535, the present case allows us to assuage these 
lamentations through a combination of the promulgation of Grady III itself—which 
now requires trial courts to determine the reasonableness of the search imposed on a 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
particular defendant upon that defendant’s challenge to the State’s efforts to impose 
SBM—and our previous discussion of Rule 60 which illuminates the availability of 
post hoc judicial review of the reasonableness of the search in the event that a change 
in circumstances warrants such a review. The utility of these methods of judicial 
review, in conjunction with the access to subsequent, periodic review by the Post-
Release Supervision and Parole Commission afforded defendant by N.C.G.S. § 14-
208.43, is reflected in the General Assembly’s aforementioned codification of similar 
procedures in its reconstruction of the state’s SBM scheme after our opinion in Grady 
III. 
Act 
of 
Sep. 
2, 
2021, 
S.L. 
2021-138, 
§ 
18, 
https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/SessionLaws/PDF/2021-2022/SL2021-
138.pdf. The law-making branch of North Carolina has deemed it appropriate to 
legislatively memorialize the protections afforded by the overlapping substantive, 
procedural, administrative, and judicial routes discussed herein, which remain 
available to defendant and others similarly situated—namely, those sex offenders 
ordered to submit to lifetime SBM—up to the designated effective date of 1 December 
2021 for Session Law 2021-138, § 18, when the provisions of the recent legislative 
enactment are slated to supplant the outgoing SBM program which presently 
prevails.  
¶ 25 
 
 Therefore, as we consider the inconvenience to defendant in wearing a small, 
unobtrusive device pursuant to SBM protocols that only provides the State with his 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
physical location which the State may use solely for its legitimate governmental 
interest in preventing and prosecuting future crimes committed by defendant, in 
conjunction with the added protection of judicial review as to the reasonableness of 
the search both at its imposition and at such times as circumstances may render the 
search unreasonable, we conclude that the imposition of lifetime SBM on defendant 
constitutes a pervasive but tempered intrusion upon his Fourth Amendment 
interests. Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶ 35 (“SBM’s collection of information regarding 
physical location and movements effects only an incremental intrusion into an 
aggravated offender’s diminished expectation of privacy.”). 
¶ 26 
 
The governmental interest which the State advances as the purpose served by 
the imposition of lifetime SBM upon a sex offender is well documented as being both 
legitimate and compelling. King, 569 U.S. at 453. This governmental interest serves 
to assist law enforcement in preventing and prosecuting future crimes committed by 
sex offenders. See Bowditch, 364 N.C. at 342–43 (“The purpose of this Article is to 
assist law enforcement agencies' efforts to protect communities. Understandably, 
section 14–208.5 explicitly refers to registration, but the SBM program is consistent 
with that section's express goals of compiling and fostering the ‘exchange of relevant 
information’ concerning sex offenders.”) (extraneity omitted); see also Grady III, 372 
N.C. at 539 (“Sexual offenses are among the most disturbing and damaging of all 
crimes, and certainly the public supports the General Assembly's efforts to ensure 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
that victims, both past and potential, are protected from such harm.”) (quoting 
Bowditch, 364 N.C. at 353 (Hudson, J., dissenting)). As we recognized in both Grady 
III and Hilton, “the State’s interest in solving crimes and facilitating apprehension of 
suspects so as to protect the public from sex offenders” is both legitimate and 
supported by the public through acts promulgated by the General Assembly. Grady 
III, 372 N.C. at 538–39; accord Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶¶ 19–23. More broadly, the 
maintenance of public safety is “a legitimate nonpunitive purpose” of civil regulatory 
schemes so long as the legislative enactments which provide operative force to the 
civil regulations bear some potency in addressing the societal ill of crime. Smith v. 
Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 102–03 (2003). 
¶ 27 
 
In her testimony before the trial court and unlike the testimony provided by 
the State’s witness in Grady III, Officer Jones testified concerning situations in which 
lifetime SBM would be obviously effective in assisting law enforcement with 
achieving the constitutionally endorsed purpose of preventing and solving future 
crimes by sex offenders. As reflected in the trial court’s findings of fact, which we are 
bound to accept as supported by competent evidence in light of their uncontested 
nature, Brackett, 371 N.C. at 127, “when a sexual assault is reported, location 
information from the monitor could be used to implicate the participant as a suspect 
if he was in the area of the sexual assault, or to eliminate him as a suspect if he was 
not in the area of a sexual assault.” Law enforcement may also use the fact that a sex 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
offender is subject to lifetime SBM to ensure that the offender is actually residing at 
the residence that he is statutorily required to report to the local sheriff, the violation 
of which is a Class F felony. N.C.G.S. § 14-208.11 (2019). These observations further 
buttress the reasonableness of lifetime SBM in appropriate cases, including the 
instant one.  
¶ 28 
 
The state’s lifetime SBM program promotes a legitimate and compelling 
governmental interest. When utilized for the stated purpose, the lifetime SBM 
program is constitutional due to its promotion of the legitimate and compelling 
governmental interest which outweighs its narrow, tailored intrusion into 
defendant’s expectation of privacy in his person, home, vehicle, and location. 
Therefore, the search authorized by the trial court’s orders in this case is reasonable 
and permissible under the Fourth Amendment.  
III. 
Conclusion 
¶ 29 
 
Based upon the foregoing factual background, procedural background, and 
legal analysis, this Court concludes that the implementation of lifetime satellite-
based monitoring is constitutionally permissible and is applicable to defendant under 
the Fourth Amendment as a reasonable, continuing, and warrantless search based 
upon the specific facts of defendant’s case. The conclusion of this analysis renders the 
trial court’s order in this case, which imposed continuous GPS tracking using a small, 
unobtrusive ankle monitor on defendant for life based upon the specific facts of his 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Opinion of the Court 
 
 
 
case, constitutionally permissible under the Fourth Amendment as a reasonable, 
continuing, warrantless search. Therefore, the opinion of the Court of Appeals is 
reversed, and the trial court’s 8 December 2017 and 19 December 2017 orders remain 
in full force and effect. 
REVERSED. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
Justice EARLS dissenting. 
¶ 30 
 
The Fourth Amendment only functions if courts are willing to enforce it. 
Unfortunately, today, this Court has once again proven unwilling to give meaning to 
the protections the Fourth Amendment provides to the people of North Carolina. As 
it did in State v. Hilton, the majority here resuscitates numerous arguments 
previously rejected by this Court and bends over backwards to save the State from a 
constitutional problem of its own making. This time, the majority does so in the 
service of its remarkable conclusion that a court today can assess the reasonableness 
of a search that will be initiated when (and if) Mr. Strudwick is released from prison 
decades in the future, a search will be carried out for as long as Mr. Strudwick lives 
beyond his release. Fortunately, as the majority now recognizes, its decision is of 
limited practical importance, given that the General Assembly has just “enacted a 
major revision of the state’s SBM program as it relates to sex offenders” which 
effectively eliminates lifetime SBM in this state. Regardless, I cannot join the 
majority in its cavalier disregard for the protections afforded to all North Carolinians 
under the state and federal constitutions.  
¶ 31 
 
To justify flouting the precedent we established in Grady III, the majority 
again reaches for the canard that when a defendant is ordered to enroll in lifetime 
SBM “based upon his conviction for an aggravated offense, the holding of Grady III 
. . . is wholly inapplicable[.]” Once again, I note that the Fourth Amendment we 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
interpreted in Grady III is the same Fourth Amendment we interpreted in Hilton, 
which is the same Fourth Amendment we are called upon to interpret in this case. 
We articulated legal principles regarding the proper interpretation of the scope of 
protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment in Grady III. We reserved judgment 
as to how those principles should be applied in a different case on different facts. But 
it is sophistry to, once again, treat Grady III as if it had nothing to say about the 
constitutionality of ordering a sex offender to enroll in lifetime SBM. The majority’s 
circumlocutions are window dressing for what is, at its core, a declaration that 
precedents which this majority does not like will not be respected simply because the 
majority does not like them. 
¶ 32 
 
The majority’s labored efforts to reconcile Hilton with Grady III are 
unconvincing. Invoking Grady III and then adopting legal principles we expressly 
rejected in that case is not respecting precedent.  
¶ 33 
 
To pick just one example, the majority duly notes that Grady III’s conclusion 
“regarding the nature of defendant’s privacy once he is subject to lifetime SBM 
remains intact and must be considered in the case at bar.” In Grady III we stated 
that “[w]e cannot agree” with the proposition that the “physical restrictions” 
associated with enrolling in SBM “which require defendant to be tethered to a wall 
for what amounts to one month out of every year, are ‘more inconvenient than 
intrusive.’ ” State v. Grady, 372 N.C. 509, 536 (2019) (Grady III). We held that “being 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
required to wear an ankle appendage, which emits repeating voice commands when 
the signal is lost or when the battery is low, and which requires the individual to 
remain plugged into a wall every day for two hours,” and which constantly tracks an 
individual’s real-time location data in perpetuity, is a significant intrusion on the 
individual’s privacy interests and is “distinct in its nature from that attendant upon 
sex offender registration.” Id. at 537; see also id. at 529 (“SBM does not, as the trial 
court concluded, ‘merely monitor[ ] [defendant’s] location’; instead, it ‘gives police 
access to a category of information otherwise unknowable,’ by ‘provid[ing] an all-
encompassing record of the holder's whereabouts,’ and ‘an intimate window into 
[defendant’s] life, revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his 
‘familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.’ ” (quoting 
Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2217–2218 (2018))). Yet the majority 
decides it is not bound by this reasoning and instead minimizes “the inconvenience 
to defendant in wearing a small, unobtrusive device pursuant to SBM protocols that 
only provides the State with his physical location,” an intrusion the majority then 
justifies by emphasizing that a defendant’s “expectation of privacy is duly diminished 
by virtue of his status as a convicted felon generally and as a convicted sex offender 
specifically.”  
¶ 34 
 
The myriad ways in which this majority has turned Grady III on its head are 
comprehensively addressed in dissenting opinions in Hilton and Ricks. See generally  
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
State v. Hilton, 2021-NCSC-115, ¶ 43–83 (Earls, J., dissenting); State v. Ricks, 2021-
NCSC-116, ¶ 12–21 (Hudson, J., dissenting). I will not rehash every instance here. I 
will only suggest that, once again, the majority refuses to own up to the 
jurisprudential havoc it wreaks on its way to reaching its desired outcome.  
¶ 35 
 
However, I am compelled to address two additional arguments the majority 
endorses in this case which further compound the errors it committed in Hilton. First, 
the majority transforms the longstanding but always rebuttable presumption that 
legislation enacted by the General Assembly respects constitutional bounds into an 
impenetrable fortress shielding this version of the SBM statutes from judicial review. 
The majority appears to suggest that the State’s actions are constitutional because 
they were undertaken in accordance with “a legislative enactment presumed to be 
constitutional[.]” But the question before this Court is precisely whether or not the 
“legislative enactment” the State is acting in accordance with is or is not 
constitutional. The fact that the SBM statute, like all statutes, is “presumptively 
constitutional” does not mean that the statute is actually constitutional. See Moore v. 
Knightdale Bd. of Elections, 331 N.C. 1, 4 (1992) (“The presumption of 
constitutionality is not, however, and should not be, conclusive.”).  
¶ 36 
 
The presumption of constitutionality is, essentially, a substantive canon of 
interpretation which reminds courts to “not lightly assume that an act of the 
legislature,” the “agent of the people for enacting laws,” “violates the will of the people 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
of North Carolina as expressed by them in their Constitution.” State ex rel. Martin v. 
Preston, 325 N.C. 438, 448 (1989). It counsels deference towards legislative 
enactments, not an abdication of our “duty . . . in proper cases, to declare an act of the 
Legislature unconstitutional, [an] obligation imposed upon the courts to declare what 
the law is.” State v. Knight, 169 N.C. 333, 351–52 (1915). The majority tries to prove 
the constitutionality of the SBM statute by reference to the fact that the General 
Assembly chose to enact it, but that ship sailed “nearly sixteen years before Marbury 
v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803),” when this Court recognized 
“that it is the duty of the judicial branch to interpret the law, including the North 
Carolina Constitution. See Bayard v. Singleton, 1 N.C. (Mart.) 5 (1787).” Comm. to 
Elect Dan Forest v. Emps. Pol. Action Comm., 2021-NCSC-6, ¶ 14. In its application 
of the presumption of constitutionality, the majority deals the General Assembly a 
trump card it can play any time the constitutionality of a legislative enactment is 
challenged. 
¶ 37 
 
The majority’s unwillingness to enforce constitutional limitations on the 
General Assembly’s authority is especially inappropriate in this case given the nature 
of the legislation at issue and the category of individuals the legislation targets. 
Mandatory lifetime enrollment in the SBM program necessarily implicates an 
individual’s “fundamental right to privacy . . . [in] his home,” State v. Elder, 368 N.C. 
70, 74 (2015), “which is protected by the highest constitutional threshold and thus 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
may only be breached in specific, narrow circumstances.” State v. Grice, 367 N.C. 753, 
760 (2015). When the State asserts for itself the authority to cross that threshold, and 
in the process puts in jeopardy a fundamental right that the people of North Carolina 
have reserved for themselves in their state and federal constitutions, we have an 
obligation to rigorously scrutinize the challenged enactment. Our obligation cannot 
be discharged by outsourcing our work to the General Assembly, particularly when 
the legislation imposes debilities upon a class of individuals who are subject to 
widespread public opprobrium. Cf. Texfi Indus., Inc. v. City of Fayetteville, 301 N.C. 
1, 11 (1980) (“[W]here legislation or governmental action affects discrete and insular 
minorities, the presumption of constitutionality fades because the traditional political 
processes may have broken down.”). The majority’s “casual dismissal of Fourth 
Amendment rights runs contrary to one of this nation's most cherished ideals: the 
notion of the right to privacy in our own homes and protection against intrusion by 
the State into our personal effects and property.” State v. Bowditch, 364 N.C. 335, 
365 (2010) (Hudson, J., dissenting). 
¶ 38 
 
Second, the majority improperly excuses the State from its burden of proving 
the reasonableness of the search it seeks to conduct. Under the Fourth Amendment, 
the burden is on the State to demonstrate that a search is reasonable. See, e.g., Grady 
III, 372 N.C. at 543 (“[T]he State bears the burden of proving the reasonableness of a 
warrantless search.”). When an individual is ordered to enroll in SBM, the State 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
continues to effectuate a search of that individual within the meaning of the Fourth 
Amendment unless and until that individual’s requirement to enroll in SBM is 
terminated. Thus, to prove that SBM is constitutional, the State must provide 
evidence to support its assertion that it is reasonable to initiate the search when the 
search will be initiated and to carry out the search for as long as the search will be 
carried out.  
¶ 39 
 
Rather than determine whether the State has proven that a search it will not 
initiate for decades is reasonable—or whether the State has proven that it will be 
reasonable to continue this search in perpetuity—the majority wishes away the 
problem. According to the majority, to hold the State to its burden to prove 
reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment under the current SBM statute is to 
impose an “impossible burden.” In my view, the majority is correct that it is 
impossible for the State to prove it is reasonable to order Mr. Strudwick to submit to 
SBM decades from now and remain enrolled for the remainder of his life, after he has 
completed the terms of a 360 to 516 month period of incarceration ostensibly imposed 
at least in part to rehabilitate him, and given the likely evolutions in technology that 
very well could change both the nature and the intrusiveness of the search. Yet that 
is reason to hold the statute unconstitutional under circumstances in which it 
requires the State to do the impossible, not to absolve the State of its obligation to 
meet constitutional requirements.  
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
¶ 40 
 
The crux of the majority’s position appears to be that because “the State is 
tasked under a legislative enactment presumed to be constitutional with the 
responsibility to demonstrate the reasonableness of a search,” the State must be able 
to demonstrate that a search is reasonable in all of the circumstances contemplated 
by the statute. Put another way, the majority appears to be saying that because 
N.C.G.S. § 14-208.40A (2019) is “presumptively constitutional,” and because the State 
is acting in accordance with this provision when it “requests at a defendant’s 
sentencing hearing that a trial court order the imposition of lifetime SBM,” then the 
State’s actions undertaken in accordance with subsection § 14-208.40A are ipso facto 
constitutional. Again, the fact that the State is acting pursuant to a legislative 
enactment presumed to be constitutional does not immunize that enactment from 
constitutional challenge. Under the procedure set forth in N.C.G.S. § 14-208.40A, it 
is impossible for the State to demonstrate that ordering an individual to enroll in 
lifetime SBM to begin after a period of incarceration that will last decades, because 
the State “is hampered by a lack of knowledge concerning the unknown future 
circumstances relevant to that analysis.” State v. Strudwick, 273 N.C. App. 676, 680 
(2020) (quoting State v. Gordon, 270 N.C. App. 468, 475 (2020), review allowed, writ 
allowed, 853 S.E.2d 148 (N.C. 2021)). Our obligation under these circumstances is to 
enforce the Fourth Amendment. Any remedy lies with the legislature, who possesses 
the indisputable authority to amend a statute to bring it into compliance with the 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
constitutions of North Carolina and the United States. See id. at 681 (“Our General 
Assembly could remedy this ‘impossible burden’ imposed upon the State by amending 
the relevant statutes . . . .”). Moreover, that is precisely what the legislature has 
attempted in enacting Session Law 2021-138, § 18. The Court of Appeals recognized 
that it lacked the authority to suspend the constitution to salvage a statute which 
compelled the State to violate an individual’s fundamental constitutional rights. We 
should not shirk our obligation to do the same. 
¶ 41 
 
The majority’s other attempts to rescue the order requiring Mr. Strudwick to 
enroll in lifetime SBM are similarly unavailing. Once again ignoring a legal principle 
we established in Grady III that it now finds inconvenient, the majority asserts that 
lifetime SBM is not really lifetime SBM because “Rule 60 of the North Carolina Rules 
of Civil Procedure also affords potential relief to defendant from prospective 
application of lifetime SBM or other relief from the SBM order, while maintaining 
deference to the constitutionality of any search effected during the relevant time 
period.” If it is the duration of the search contemplated that renders an SBM order 
unconstitutional, then the solution is to limit the duration of the search, which the 
legislature did when it functionally ended lifetime SBM. See Session Law 2021-138, 
§ 18.(d) (providing that an offender eligible for SBM pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 14-
208.40(a)(1) shall be ordered to enroll in SBM for a maximum period of ten years). 
The solution is not to endorse an open-ended search on the promise that someday, 
STATE V. STRUDWICK 
2021-NCSC-127 
Earls, J., dissenting 
 
 
 
some other court might step in to relieve an individual of an unconstitutional order.  
¶ 42 
 
Mr. Strudwick pleaded guilty to committing an egregious crime. He will spend 
360 to 516 months in prison as a consequence. No one disputes that the State can 
take reasonable measures to mitigate the risk that Mr. Strudwick will commit 
another crime when and if he is released from prison. Where I diverge from the 
majority is in its willingness to condone the State’s failure to adhere to constitutional 
limits. In its rush to ensure that the State can claim the constitutional authority to 
order Mr. Strudwick to enroll in SBM after he completes the terms of his sentence, 
for the rest of his life, regardless of how Mr. Strudwick or monitoring technologies 
change over the next thirty to forty-three years, and notwithstanding a recent 
revision to the SBM statute which will reduce his period of enrollment to ten years 
and provides him with significantly enhanced procedural protections, the majority 
once again treats the Fourth Amendment as a dead letter. Therefore, I respectfully 
dissent. 
 
Justices HUDSON and ERVIN join in this dissenting opinion.