Court Opinion

ID: 9764929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:44:09.035302+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:02.399545
License: Public Domain

Justice HUDSON
dissenting.
Sexual offenses are among the most disturbing and damaging of all crimes, and certainly the public supports the General Assembly’s efforts to ensure that victims, both past and potential, are protected from such harm. We all agree that innovative approaches are especially necessary to minimize, if not remove, any contact between vulnerable children and those who would prey on them. My review of the record here, however, reveals that the satellite-based monitoring (SBM) program as implemented through the Department of Correction has marginal, if any, efficacy in accomplishing that important purpose. As such, I conclude that its substantial interferences into the daily lives of those monitored are too punitive in effect to be imposed retroactively on these petitioners. I would therefore reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the trial court’s order.
I agree with the majority opinion that nothing on the face of the statutes in question, N.C.G.S. §§ 14-208.40 to -208.45 (2009), indicates that the General Assembly intended the SBM program as a criminal punishment rather than as a civil regulatory scheme for monitoring sex offenders. Likewise, I recognize that the General Assembly enacted the SBM program “to protect our State’s children from the recidivist tendencies of convicted sex offenders,” specifically those found guilty of aggravated offenses or determined to be sexually violent predators. However, my analysis of the factors laid out in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 168-69, 9 L. Ed. 2d 644, 660-61 (1963), compels the conclusion that the DOC’s implementation has transformed this SBM program from regulatory to punitive in its effects on the liberty interests of these defendants.
When we properly apply Mendoza-Martinez, by giving heavy weight to the two key factors, namely, whether the regulatory scheme “has a rational connection to a nonpunitive purpose; or is excessive with respect to this purpose,” Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 97, 155 L. Ed. 2d 164, 180 (2003), I must conclude this program is punitive in effect. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has emphasized that “[t]he Act’s rational connection to a nonpunitive purpose is a most significant factor in our determination that the statute’s effects are not punitive,” while noting that even “imprecision” or a “lack[] [of] a close or perfect fit” between a statute and its nonpunitive aims does not mean the stated purpose is a “sham or mere pretext.” Id. at 102-03, 155 L. Ed. 2d at 183 (citations, internal quotation *354marks, and alteration omitted). Certainly, a program that affirmatively restrains an enrollee’s liberty — indeed, even one authorizing the involuntary commitment of an individual to an institution — may be found to be nonpunitive if the action at issue advances the program’s regulatory purpose. See Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346, 370-71, 138 L. Ed. 2d 501, 516 (1997) (upholding a statute that provides for the involuntary civil commitment of sexually violent predators who are determined to suffer from a “mental abnormality” or “personality disorder”). A review of the transcripts and exhibits here shows that this program does not protect the public in any effective way. In light of its lack of effectiveness, the SBM program at issue here is so excessively restraining and intrusive that it becomes punitive.
As to this “most significant factor” from Mendoza-Martinez, the majority merely recites the State’s assertion of a “rational connection between SBM and the nonpunitive purpose of protecting the public.” Nowhere does the majority opinion — or even the State, in its brief and arguments to this Court or in the hearing before the trial court— articulate how the SBM program, as currently implemented by the DOC through the Division of Community Corrections (DCC), even begins to further its. stated purpose of protecting our State’s children. Likewise, the majority opinion refers to the risk of recidivism by these offenders and concludes, without any evidence or additional analysis, that “[t]he SBM program at issue is reasonable when compared to the unacceptable risk against which it seeks to protect.”5
Indeed, the trial court returned to this question repeatedly at the hearing, particularly the statements by DCC personnel that inclusion and exclusion zones are not used as part of the program:
*355COURT: Why monitor somebody if you can’t exclude them from going to places you don’t want them to go?
[Todd Carter]: I think part of the problem is like an urban— like Asheville, North Carolina, we have a lot of schools. If somebody’s going up Merrimon Avenue—
COURT: I understand the difficulties of it. The question is what benefit is the state getting from this knowing where the defendants are if there are no places that are excluded that they can’t go? There must be some purpose to doing this, I assume.
[Todd Carter]: Yes, your Honor. I think why they don’t do that is they would get so many false readings.
COURT: I understand that, but why do they? Why do they monitor people at all? Or do you know?
[Todd Carter]: I guess part of it is because it’s the law and policy handed down.
Again, when Lori Anderson was testifying:
COURT: But there’s nothing by regulation or statute that would stop somebody who’s done with all this but still under satellite monitoring from going into a school or park other than Woodfin and other things like that?
A: Not that I’m aware of.
Similarly, Hannah Roland affirmed that, with respect to “unsupervised” offenders, who are no longer on any type of post-release parole or probation, “They are not under any type of supervision, so we don’t want to appear to be supervising them. It’s a periodic check.” Ms. Roland attributed this effort not “to appear to be supervising them” to advice that DOC and DCC had received from their legal counsel.
This testimony calls into serious question the efficacy of the SBM program as currently implemented without the use of inclusion and exclusion zones. Although, as the Supreme Court stated in Smith, a regulatory scheme need not be “the best choice possible to address the problem,” 538 U.S. at 105, 155 L. Ed. 2d at 185, courts have repeatedly emphasized the need for some showing that the program does, in fact, advance the stated nonpunitive purpose. See, e.g., id. at 102-03, 155 L. Ed. 2d at 183 (observing that the sex offender registry statute in question “has a legitimate nonpunitive purpose of ‘public *356safety, which is advanced by alerting the public to the risk of sex offenders in their communit[y]’ ”); Hendricks, 521 U.S. at 363, 138 L. Ed. 2d at 516 (“Far from any punitive objective, the confinement’s duration is instead linked to the stated purposes of the commitment, namely, to hold the person until his mental abnormality no longer causes him to be a threat to others." (citation omitted) (emphasis . added)); Wallace v. State, 905 N.E.2d 371, 383 (Ind. 2009) (considering whether the registration statute in question, initially enacted as a measure “to give the community notification necessary to protect its children from sex offenders,” “advances a legitimate purpose of public safety” or establishes a framework that is a “legitimate way to protect the public from repeat offenders” (emphasis added)); State v. Letalien, 2009 ME 130, ¶ 54, 985 A.2d 4, 24 (2009) (emphasizing the “positive benefit” of the “over-inclusive aspect of the registration requirement” because “the public has ready access to information for a longer period regarding a group of individuals who, at least as a class of persons, pose a public safety risk”); see also Erin Murphy, Paradigms of Restraint, 57 Duke L.J. 1321, 1407 (“[R]ather than rely upon speculative assessments that a particular technology achieves a particular goal, courts should demand evidence of its capacity to achieve its stated purpose.”).
Here the majority opinion itself repeatedly downplays the intrusive nature of the SBM program and emphasizes that it is “passive,”6 that unsupervised enrollees “are only periodically checked,” that no enrollees are currently subject to inclusion or exclusion zones (and unsupervised enrollees never will be), and that the State is merely “logging and reviewing information about offenders’ whereabouts” after the fact. Most telling, the equipment provides only a “near real-time” log of enrollees’ movements, and DCC personnel testified that they do not always immediately respond to all alerts because the equipment so frequently loses signal.
Moreover, Ms. Roland testified that she had a staff of only two probation officers to oversee the seventy people subject to lifetime monitoring as of May 2009. She agreed that “there’s a lot of randomness to the monitoring” of the lifetime enrollees. The exhibits submitted by the DOC and DCC, including the “agreements”, signed by enrollees, and the testimony at the hearings indicate that the SBM *357program does not provide any information to the public beyond what is already readily available through the sex offender registry.7
Thus, although DOC and DCC may “observe certain patterns of movement or locations that a participant appears to frequent,” prompting follow-up investigation to see if the area has any “vulnerable sites, such as schools or daycare centers,” no evidence or testimony suggests that the SBM program — with its ongoing interference in and with enrollees’ daily lives, even those who have completed all criminal sentences and other post-release supervision — operates to prevent actual harm to our state’s children. Of course, the records maintained by the DCC about enrollees’ movements and whereabouts may be useful in apprehending a suspect after a crime has already taken place, but the SBM program does nothing to bar enrollees — those at high risk of recidivism — from abusing a child anywhere, at any time.8 Rather, the record before us, particularly the testimony of DCC officials, demonstrates that no one knows when one of these offenders is actually in a school, or near a child care center, or talking to a neighborhood child, or even has a child in his home, before any harm might befall that child.9 The General As*358sembly may have intended the SBM program to further the nonpunitive purpose of protecting our children, but the evidence presented here simply does not show that the program’s current implementation, without the use of inclusion or exclusion zones, bears any rational connection to that purpose, beyond conclusory statements claiming a link.
Given that the program as implemented essentially fails in its nonpunitive purpose, the numerous affirmative restraints and intrusions it imposes on its enrollees become, in my view, punitive in effect. These intrusions include the following, found as fact by the trial court and unchallenged by the State, which are binding on this Court on appeal:
7. Generally persons who have completed probation are not subject to supervision by the State. Persons who were not on probation who are subject to satellite based monitoring are subject to supervision by the State in the following ways:
A. If they are in a building and there is a break in contact with the satellite they are ordered to remove themselves from the building until the satellite contact is reconnected.
B. Every 90 days the satellite monitoring equipment in the possession of the Defendant must be checked by a probation officer.
C. Employees of the State are at all times capable of determining the geographical location of the Defendant.
E. Defendants are unable to go swimming or in a hot tub. If it were to become necessary for purposes of physical therapy that the Defendant receive whirlpool therapy or then *359apy within a swimming pool it would be necessary on each occasion for the Defendant to have the probation officer remove the bracelet and reattach it after the therapy was complete. The same would be true with MRI’s or other medical devices.
F. Because the equipment cannot pass security, the Defendants could not fly on a commercial airline. Because the equipment is on constantly and would interfere with important radio transmissions Defendants would not be able to fly on private airplanes.
G. At least once a day for a 4 to 6 hour period the MTD must be recharged in a device which is attached to an electrical outlet and the Defendant must remain in the vicinity of that device for the whole period of recharging.
H. While the Defendant is within the purview of the public the MTD must be worn by the Defendant on a place that is open and in plain view of everyone. The MTD is approximately 4Z inches x 2 inches x 3 inches for the current MTD. The new MTD to be put in use by the State is of slightly different dimensions. Therefore, anyone of the public who knew what the equipment was would know that the Defendant had been convicted or pled guilty to a sex offense. The MTD may not be covered with clothing or anything else.
In a finding of fact challenged by the State, the trial court further found that:
D. Each Defendant must wear on their ankle a plainly visible bracelet and must be within two or three feet of a miniature tracking device (hereinafter called MTD) (the one exception to this is that if the MTD is placed in a stable position such as on a table the State would only be notified if the Defendant was more than 30 feet from the MTD which the State is going to use within the next 60 days [within 50 feet with the MTD currently used]) (the 30 feet or 50 feet above stated might be a smaller distance depending upon the configuration of the walls of a building in which the Defendant may be present). As a practical matter the Court finds that the limitations thus stated severely limits [sic] the Defendant’s ability to be present in certain types *360of buildings; as an example: If a Defendant attended a movie in a modem, multiplex theater it would be necessary for the Defendant to place the MTD on a stable surface in order to avoid the State notifying him that he must constantly leave the building. However, if the Defendant found it necessary to go more than 30 feet away from the MTD to purchase a refreshment, go to the restroom or for some other purpose the connection would be broken and it would be necessary for him to leave the theater until the connection was reconnected and therefore in all probability to purchase a new ticket to complete viewing the movie or to explain the circumstances to the movie personnel. The net result of this would be that the Defendant would not be able to go to a movie in a multiplex theater. Likewise, it would be impractical for Defendants to maintain employment that required them to be within a building and to move more than 30 feet from a fixed position.
This finding is based in large part on testimony offered by DCC personnel tasked by the DOC with implementation of the SBM program, much of which is recited by the majority opinion. As the testimony easily meets our standard of “competent evidence,” State v. Williams, 362 N.C. 628, 632, 669 S.E.2d 290, 294 (2008) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted), it should likewise be binding on this Court.
The majority concedes that the SBM program “may render more difficult or prohibit” activities including “bathing, swimming, scuba diving, camping in rural areas, and travel by airplane,” yet concludes that these “interferences” are nonpunitive when compared to the restrictions at issue “in occupational debarment cases or in [.Kansas v.] Hendricks.’’10 However, this analogy is false, as it misapplies the analytical framework outlined by the Supreme Court in Mendoza-Martinez and Smith. In those cases, as Hendricks, the Supreme Court evaluated each factor individually — noting, for example, that the civil commitment scheme in Hendricks “does involve an affirmative restraint,” 521 U.S. at 363, 138 L. Ed. 2d at 516 (emphasis *361added) — but nevertheless concluded that the factors taken together did not transform a regulatory scheme into a punitive one.11
The balance of the Mendoza-Martinez factors should guide courts in determining if a statute’s effects are punitive in spite.of its stated regulatory intent. Three factors determine the nature of these effects: “whether, in its necessary operation, [it]: has been regarded in our history and traditions as a punishment; imposes an affirmative disability or restraint; [or] promotes the traditional aims of punishment.” Smith, 538 U.S. at 97, 155 L. Ed. 2d at 180. Again, from the DCC testimony offered at the hearings and the findings of fact binding on this Court on appeal, the trial court’s conclusion is well supported that the SBM program “is much more similar to electronic house arrest than it is to registration particularly in that sex registration does not require monitoring by anyone nor does it require a waiver of 4th Amendment rights where electronic house arrest implicitly or impliedly includes both.”
Taken together, the findings of fact and the DCC testimony clearly demonstrate that both supervised and unsupervised enrollees in the SBM program are subject to regular, intrusive disruptions in their lives by the State. Moreover, they are exposed to a distinct likelihood of public shame, humiliation, and ostracism because of the visibility of the equipment.12 When asked the difference between the *362restrictions for home confinement (house arrest) and those for the SBM program, Todd Carter answered that the two are “pretty much fairly similar.”13 While it is strictly true that the SBM program “allows offenders to choose where they work and what type of occupation they pursue,” this assertion by the majority opinion ignores the practical reality presented by the technological limitations of the ankle bracelet and the MTD device.
Enrollees are constrained in the type of jobs they may hold; even if the DCC maintains that its staff “attempts ‘to work with [offenders] and get their cooperation to make it as easy and frustrating-free as possible,’ ” such assistance is entirely at the discretion of DCC personnel. In fact, Hannah Roland testified that there are “no written guidelines” on “whether or not an offender can be worked with [regarding] a particular job they have” and such decisions are in the *363discretion of the officer and his or her chief. The written policies make no such allowances, and employers are surely not required to accommodate the need of enrollees to stay within thirty feet of the MTD, take a break to go outside every time an alarm sounds, or have their supervisor confirm to DCC that the enrollee remains at work.
The DCC employees acknowledged both the limitations of the tracking equipment and their susceptibility to disruptive “lost signal” alarms, often triggered when an enrollee is in a building such as one with “a lot of steel.” Lori Anderson testified that the “majority types of problems” relate to “the larger the building, the larger the facility, whichever it may be, the farther, deeper that the offender gets into the facility” and conceded that enrollees employed as janitors or parking deck attendants would be likely to encounter issues with the equipment losing its GPS signal. The DCC policy is written such that the MTD cannot be “covered” or “hidden,” prohibiting offenders even from “put[ting] [a coat] over” the MTD when “it’s cold and winter” or “raining,” yet enrollees are required to go outside immediately upon losing a signal and wait until the signal is restored. Todd Carter admitted that he has had “clients” who had to “stand outside in the elements” while waiting to regain a signal, including on holidays and during family gatherings.
Given that the SBM program does not effectively protect our children from prospective harm, its restrictions and infringements on enrollees’ liberty interests appear only to be retributive and deterrent in purpose and effect, two traditional aims of punishment.14 In particular, as found by the trial court, the requirement that enrollees, both supervised and unsupervised, allow DOC employees into their *364homes for equipment maintenance every ninety days is a clear infringement on their Fourth Amendment rights:
I. It is required of each Defendant (or the Defendant would be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor) that he allow a probation officer or officers access to his residence for purpose of checking and maintaining the equipment and that he therefore waive his 4th Amendment rights.
The SBM program “requirements” form that supervised enrollees must sign, and the “maintenance agreement” that unsupervised enrollees must sign, both provide for this regular maintenance. Both also state that even if an enrollee refuses to sign the agreement, “these requirements are still in effect.”
Unlike the majority, I would not characterize these forms as “an agreement signed by SBM participants when monitoring begins.” Nor should their acquiescence to this required entry be considered a voluntary waiver of their Fourth Amendment rights, because apparently consent will be implied even if they do not agree, and they are subject to criminal penalties if they refuse. The majority opinion brushes aside these constitutional concerns, maintaining that this requirement is “dissimilar from a parole or probation setting” and acceptable because the purpose is for maintenance on property owned by the State, rather than to supervise or investigate an enrollee. This explanation does not adequately justify such constant intrusion on and monitoring of someone who is not on probation or parole.15
*365Such a 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. See, e.g., Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 32,40 L. Ed. 2d 726, 737 (1963) (“Implicit ip the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches and seizures is its recognition of individual freedom. That safeguard has been declared to be as of the very essence, of constitutional liberty the guaranty of which is as important and as imperative as are the guaranties of the other fundamental rights of the individual citizen . . . .” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); State v. Brown, 320 N.C. 179, 231, 358 S.E.2d 1, 34 (“The sanctity of the home is a revered tenet of Anglo-American jurisprudence.” (citations omitted)), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 970, 98 L. Ed. 2d 406 (1987); State v. Sparrow, 276 N.C. 499, 512, 173 S.E.2d 897, 906 (1970) (emphasizing “the constitutional principle that a person’s home is his castle,” “in accordance with the ancient rules of the common law” (citations omitted)). Even sex offenders continue to have some constitutional rights.16 We may not be fond of this particular class of defendants, *366but that does not lessen their Fourth Amendment rights nor their expectation of privacy in their own homes.
When weighed against its almost complete lack of efficacy in furthering the purpose of protecting our children, the intrusions of the SBM program become punitive in effect. The physical and practical realities of the SBM program — the size and weight of the ankle bracelet and MTD, the requirement to remain in one place for six hours for daily recharging, the degree to which SBM interferes with everyday work and recreation activities, the degree to which the program impedes enrollees’ freedom of travel, and its invasive requirement for consent to enter an enrollee’s home — transform the effect of the scheme from regulatory to punitive. This is particularly true for those enrollees who are “unsupervised,” meaning that they have completed their prison sentences and any post-release supervision ordered by the court.17 Whereas “supervised” enrollees remain on probation and, as such, are already subject to many of the provisions mandated under the SBM program,18 “unsupervised” enrollees have fully paid their debt to society yet continue to be monitored by the State, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Thus, I conclude that, applying the Mendoza-Martinez factors, the SBM program is excessively intrusive in light of its minimal efficacy in advancing its nonpunitive purpose. As such, this SBM program is punitive in effect and should not be applied retroactively. I observe, too, that a number of other state supreme courts have reached a similar conclusion, both regarding GPS monitoring as well as more stringent registration requirements for sex offenders that do not implicate the type of Fourth Amendment issues present here. See, e.g., Wallace, 905 N.E.2d at 384 (concluding that the sex offender registration scheme “imposes burdens that have the effect of adding punishment beyond that which could have been imposed when [a] crime was committed” and that the program cannot be retroactively applied); Letalien, 2009 ME 130, at ¶ 62, 985 A.2d at 26 (finding a life*367time registration requirement, including quarterly in-person verification, “without. . . affording those offenders any opportunity to ever be relieved of the duty” to register to be punitive and barring its retroactive application); Commonwealth v. Cory, 454 Mass. 559, 572, 911 N.E.2d 187, 197 (2009) (holding that “as a result of the substantial burden on liberty [GPS monitoring] imposes as part of the sentence for certain crimes, the statute is punitive in effect” and therefore may not be applied retroactively to a defendant placed on probation for qualifying sex offenses committed before the statute’s effective date); see also Doe v. Schwarzenegger, 476 F. Supp. 2d 1178, 1181 (E.D. Cal. 2007) (“[R]eading the [Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act (SPPCA), which requires, inter alia, GPS monitoring of registered sex offenders] retroactively would raise serious ex post facto concerns, and the court is obligated to avoid doing so if it can reasonably construe the statute prospectively.”). In other states the legislature has explicitly provided that such statutes have only prospective application. See, e.g., Burrell v. State, 993 So.2d 998, 999 (Fla. 2007) (discussing Florida’s version of the Jessica Lunsford Act and noting that “[t]he statute specifically states that it applies to sex offenders whose offenses occurred on or after” the statute’s effective date).19
I conclude only that the retroactive application of these statutes violates the ex post facto clauses of our state and federal constitutions and would therefore prohibit their application solely to those sex offenders who committed their offenses before the effective date of the statute. I respectfully dissent.
Chief Justice PARKER and Justice TIMMONS-GOODSON join in this dissenting opinion.

. The State did not submit any evidence or data to support the assertion that sex offenders are more recidivist than other criminals. In fact, several reputable sources, including North Carolina’s own Sexual Offender Accountability and Responsibility (SOAR) program, identify this notion as one of the fop “myths” concerning sex offenders, although the data are somewhat murky. See SOAR Program Presentation, Conference of North Carolina Superior Court Judges (June 14, 2006), http://www.sog.unc.edu/faculty/smithjess/200606conference/200606CarboStat.doc (listing a series of “Myths,” including: “Sex offenders have the highest recidivism rates of all criminals.”); Melissa D. Grady, Sex Offender Myths: Fact or Fiction: What do we know about sex offenders and how to prevent sex crimes? [hereinafter Sex Offender Myths], http://www.preventchildabusenc.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ October-Sex-Offender-Myths_Finall.pdf (“Myth #8: Most sex offenders reoffend,” but in reality, “the rate varies depending on the types of crimes or the types of victims an offender targets”; “Myth #5: Current laws . . . have been effective in reducing the number of sex crimes committed,” but actually, “nearly 96% of all sex crimes are committed by first-time offenders.” (emphases omitted)).

. In fact, while the majority uses the word “passive” to characterize the monitoring, the SBM program actually falls under the “active” category of monitoring as defined by the manufacturer of the devices and by the DCC’s own Sex Offender Management Interim Policy, because the device provides an .immediate notification, or “near real-time reporting,” of an alert or violation.

. The sex offender registry allows members of the public to take steps to protect themselves, for example, by researching the publicly available list if they have doubts about a caregiver, coach, or neighbor. The SBM program does not involve any such release of information or provide additional means for the public to avoid these offenders found to be at high risk of recidivism, aside from their possible identification through the ankle bracelet and MTD — yet the majority opinion notes that these devices “could [be] perceive[d] to be any number of personal electronic devices” and thus essentially do nothing to alert the public that a dangerous sex offender is in their midst.

. Even worse, the SBM program may provide a false sense of security in this regard, as another common myth about sex offenders is that they are strangers to the victims. See Sex Offender Myths. According to this report,
[N]early 97% of all sexual crimes against children under the age of 5 are committed by either a relative (48.6%) or someone the victim knows (48.3%) and for children ages 6 to 11 who were sexually assaulted, 42% of their perpetrators were relatives and 52.9% were acquaintances. Those percentages only begin to change slightly with age, with studies showing that as individuals get older, they are more likely to be assaulted by a stranger.
Id. (internal citations omitted). For that reason, Grady concludes that “[c]urrent laws ... do nothing to protect the nearly half of child sexual crime victims who are living in the same home as their perpetrator.” Id. The SBM program does nothing to mitigate these real risks.

. Todd Carter testified that “they can go wherever they want to,” and Lori Anderson stated she was not aware of anything preventing someone under SBM from going into a school or park. Hannah Roland also confirmed that there is no immediate alert if a lifetime tracker goes within three hundred feet of a school. But see Act of July *35818, 2008, ch. 117, sec. 12, 2008 N.C. Sess. Laws 426, 432 (the “Jessica Lunsford Act,” providing in part that registered sex offenders are prohibited from knowingly being “[o]n the premises of any place intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors, including, but not limited to, schools, children’s museums, child care centers, nurseries, and playgrounds” with limited exceptions).
Tragically, law enforcement authorities in at least one other state have been forced to confront this very problem. See Eliott C. McLaughlin & Patrick Oppmann, Sex offender kills teen while under GPS monitoring, police say, CNN.com (Mar. 12, 2009), http://articles.cnn.com/2009-03-12/justice/sex.offender.gps_l_gps-monitoringoffender-death-penalty-arguments?_s=PM:CRIME (recounting the story of a thirteen-year-old Washington State girl killed in a field by a sex offender wearing a GPS monitoring device).

. The Supreme Court did not explicitly apply the Mendoza-Martinez factors in Hendricks and in fact found that the statute there had no retroactive application. In Hendricks eligibility for involuntary confinement was predicated on an additional finding, separate and apart from the underlying conviction, that the individual currently suffers from a “mental abnormality” or “personality disorder” and is likely to pose a future danger to the public. 521 U.S. at 371, 138 L. Ed. 2d at 520. Here, enrollment is based solely on the prior conviction and the details of that offense.

. If one were to engage in such analogies, it would be equally easy to find examples of recent federal court cases that have addressed more technologically advanced attempts to monitor sex offenders and their activities that also do not involve occupational debarment or confinement and have concluded that such regulatory schemes are punitive and may not be retroactively applied. See, e.g., Doe v. Nebraska, No. 8:09CV456, 2009 WL 5184328, at *8 (D. Neb. Dec. 30, 2009) (barring the State of Nebraska from the retroactive application of “probation-like” statutes requiring consent to search and allow installation of monitoring hardware and software and making it a crime to use Internet social networking sites accessible by minors for persons who have been convicted of sex offenses but who have completed their criminal sentences and who are not on probation, parole, or court-ordered supervision); Doe v. Prosecutor, Marion Cty., Ind., 566 F. Supp. 2d 862, 865, 882-83 (S.D. Ind. 2008) (finding punitive in effect a new requirement that sex offenders no longer subject to State supervision “must also consent to the search of their personal computers or devices with internet capability at any time, and they must consent to installation on the same devices ... of hardware or software to monitor their internet use,” as this “unconstitutional chilling of and intrusion upon plaintiffs’ privacy and security at home, and in their papers and effects” is even greater than the requirement to register public information or prohibitions against working in a particular profession).

. In a dissent from the Sixth Circuit’s denial of the defendant’s petition for rehearing en banc regarding the retroactive application of satellite-based monitoring in Doe v. Bredesen, 507 F.3d 998 (6th Cir. 2007), cert. denied, — U.S. — 172 L. Ed. 2d 210 (2008), six judges on that court characterized the GPS device used there as “a cat*362alyst for public ridicule ... a form of shaming, humiliation, and banishment, which are well-recognized historical forms of punishment.” 521 F.3d 680, 681 (6th Cir. 2008) (citations omitted). They further concluded that the program is “excessive in forcing [the defendant] to broadcast his sex offender status not only to those who choose to inquire, but also to the general public” and decried that “[t]he majority, in upholding the Surveillance Act, deliberately turned a blind eye to the obvious effects of forcing [the defendant] to wear such a large box on his person.” Id.

. Electronic monitoring, or electronic house arrest, in North Carolina has been described as “involving] the use of electronic equipment to ensure that a person remains in his or her residence or some other place during specific periods. . . . As a condition of adult criminal probation, electronic monitoring now qualifies as an intermediate punishment . . . .” Stevens H. Clarke, Law of Sentencing, Probation, and Parole in North Carolina 13 (Inst, of Gov’t, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2d ed. 1997). More specifically,
In the system usually used in North Carolina, the monitoring device is a transmitter attached to the probationer’s ankle. The transmitter has a battery life of approximately ninety days. It transmits a continuous signal to a receiver that is installed in the probationer’s home, plugged into the electric power and telephone lines. As long as the probationer is within range of the receiver, the system is passive. If the probationer steps beyond the transmitter’s range, the receiver initiates a call from the probationer’s home over existing telephone lines to a host computer located in the Department of Correction’s monitoring center in Raleigh. The computer then records the date and the exact time that the signal was absent from the offender’s transmitter. When the receiver obtains a signal from the transmitter indicating that the offender is again within range, another call is made to the host computer indicating the time that the signal resumed. In addition to active calls, the system malees routine calls approximately every four hours to see that the system is operating correctly and that the offender has not tampered with the equipment. The system operates at all hours throughout the period of electronic house arrest.
Id. (citing N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.11(4), (6)(d) (1996); N.C. Dep’t of Corn, Div. of Adult Prob. & Parole, Policies and Procedures (1996)). Thus, in effect, the current SBM program is electronic house arrest without the use of inclusion and exclusion zones.

. The majority maintains that the SBM program’s deterrent effect is “secondary” and “does not transform SBM into a form of punishment,” yet Steve Chapin, the Chief Executive Officer of Pro Tech Monitoring, the company that provides the equipment for North Carolina’s SBM program, has observed that, “GPS will not prevent a crime. It’s a crime deterrent. It has proven to be a good tool, but you can’t oversell it — there’s no physical barrier that it creates that can prevent a crime.” Randy Dotinga, Attack of the Peru Trackers, Wired Magazine (Nov. 9, 2006), available at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/ll/72094 (emphasis added). Similarly, a special report by the Pennsylvania Auditor General, whose office surveyed all fifty states regarding their GPS monitoring practices, concluded that “GPS technology cannot prevent a crime from occurring or show exactly what the offender is doing, but it can provide critical, verifiable information either to place a sex offender at the scene of a committed crime or to rule the offender out. Moreover, it can serve as a deterrent.” Jack Wagner, Using GPS technology to track sex offenders: Should Pennsylvania do more?, Special Report, Pa. Dep’t of the Auditor Gen. (July 2008), available at www.auditorgen.state.pa.us/Reports/Performance/Special/speGPS0721 08.pdf (emphasis added) (bold type omitted).

. Indeed, the majority opinion’s lengthy and numerous citations to cases involving the “lessened” Fourth Amendment rights of convicted sex offenders are both inapposite and unavailing in the context at hand. All the cases cited by the majority opinion involve the prospective loss of Fourth Amendment rights by convicted felons; I take no issue with that contention and recognize that it is well supported in the law. Rather, I emphasize again that here, we are concerned with the retroactive stripping of the fundamental right to privacy in one’s own home. Cf. Standley v. Town of Woodfin, 362 N.C. 328, 332, 661 S.E.2d 728, 731 (2008) (observing that the right to travel is not “fundamental” and thus, an ordinance infringing that right need only meet the rational basis test of review).
The sex offender registry cases cited by the majority do not allow the State to enter the convicted offender’s home on a regular, warrantless basis, but instead addressed only the right to privacy with respect to dissemination of the offender’s name, address, and other identifying information. Russell v. Gregoire, 124 F.3d 1079, 1093 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1007, 140 L. Ed. 2d 321 (1998); see also State v. Bryant, 359 N.C. 554, 568, 614 S.E.2d 479,488 (2005) (finding that the “defendant had actual notice of his lifelong duty to register with the State of South Carolina as a convicted sex offender” and thus, suffered no due process violation).
Furthermore, the majority also relies on cases in which the defendant in question remains in prison. Velasquez v. Woods, 329 F.3d 420, 421 (5th Cir. 2003) (per curiam)); *365Jones v. Murray, 962 F.2d 302, 306 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 977, 121 L. Ed. 2d 378 (1992). By contrast, the SBM program at issue here subjects certain convicted offenders to lifetime tracking and can be applied even after those individuals have paid their debt to society by serving their criminal sentences and completing their terms of parole, probation, or any other court-ordered supervision.

. As one federal district judge'recently wrote in the context of warrantless searches and monitoring of sex offenders’ Internet and computer use, which is less intrusive than governmental entry into a home:
As heinous as sex and violent crimes are, many other crimes are also threats to our Nation. The social contract reflected in our Constitution imposes limits on law enforcement to protect liberty and privacy. Americans invest a significant portion of public resources to promote social peace and safety. But our founders drew a clear line, based on observed and experienced abuses, on the government’s ability to invade fundamentally personal areas. To enter the homes of or to search the personal effects, papers, and bodies of persons in the general population, public officials must have cause to believe that they will find evidence of a crime. It is almost always possible to characterize the Fourth Amendment as an inconvenience to law enforcement officials as they carry out their vital duties. That inconvenience, however, is one of the fundamental protections that separates the United States of America from totalitarian regimes. The right to feel safe and secure in one’s own home, person, and belongings is central to our way of life.
Prosecutor, Marion Cty., Ind., 566 F. Supp. 2d at 887 (citations omitted). Likewise, in his dissent from the Sixth Circuit’s denial of the defendant’s petition for rehearing en banc in Doe v. Bredesen, Judge Damon Keith observed, “We must be careful, in our rush to condemn one of the most despicable crimes in our society, not to undermine the freedom and constitutional rights that make our nation great.” 521 F.3d at 681.

. Of course, as convicted sex offenders found to be recidivists, to have committed aggravated offenses, or to be sexually violent predators, even “unsupervised” offenders are still required to maintain lifetime registration on the sex offender registry. As such, unless the offender successfully petitions a court for termination, the public will forever have access to information including the offender’s name and identifying features, offense history, home address, a current photograph, and fingerprints. N.C.G.S. §§ 14-208.6A, -208.7, -208.22.

. For example, probationers are generally subject to curfews and travel restrictions; others may be prohibited from visiting certain locations or spending time anywhere other than home or work.

. Likewise, following the federal district court’s ruling in Doe v. Schwarzenegger, the State of California declined to appeal, instead stating its agreement that the SPPCA should be applied prospectively only.