Commonwealth v. Feliz (Mass. 2019).

Commonwealth v. Feliz, 451 Mass. 689 (Mass. 2019)

Nature of Case: Appellant was convicted of a noncontact sexual offense and sentenced to probation. State law required the imposition of GPS monitoring as a condition of probation, and moved to challenge the constitutionality of this condition in the trial court. Trial court affirmed the constitutionality of the statute, and an appeal resulted.

Holding:  Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the statute was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in Appellant’s case. GPS monitoring is a search that implicates the Fourth Amendment, and there was no evidence adduced that would indicate that the search would be a reasonable one in Appellant’s case so as to satisfy the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.