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Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Ind. Decisions - One today from Supreme Court

Brian Chism v. State of Indiana (3/14/05 IndSCt) [Criminal Law & Procedure; Statutory Construction]
Shepard, Chief Justice

As technology marches forward, some Indiana trial courts have taken to using home detention monitoring systems that employ global positioning system equipment (commonly called “GPS”). Chism contends that the relevant provisions of the Indiana Code do not authorize these devices. We hold that they do. * * *

The home detention statutes differentiate between “offenders” and “violent offenders.” Ind. Code Ann. § 35-38-2.5-1 to -13 (West 2004). An offender is anyone who is convicted of a crime (and any adjudicated delinquent). Ind. Code Ann. § 35-38-2.5-4 (referring to Ind. Code § 11-8-1-9). As a condition of home detention, a court must require an offender to maintain “a working telephone in the offender’s home” and may require an offender to maintain a “’monitoring device’ in the offender’s home or on the offender’s person, or both.” Ind. Code Ann. § 35-38-2.5-6(6).

This case turns on the definition of “monitoring device.” The Code says that a monitoring device is an electronic device that:

(1) is limited in capability to the recording or transmitting of information regarding an offender’s presence or absence from the offender’s home;

(2) is minimally intrusive upon the privacy of the offender or other persons residing in the offender’s home; and

(3) with the written consent of the offender and with the written consent of other persons residing in the home at the time an order for home detention is entered, may record or transmit:

(A) visual images;

(B) oral or wire communication or any auditory sound; or

(C) information regarding the offender’s activities while inside the offender’s home.

Ind. Code Ann. § 35-38-2.5-3.
Chism acknowledges that the GPS system does not record or transmit any of the sort of information described by subsection (3) above. He argues instead that because GPS monitoring records more than his “presence or absence” from his home, it does not qualify as a “monitoring device” under the Code.

We see the statute as differentiating between (1) those devices that require the offender’s consent (and that of others residing in the home) to allow corrections personnel to watch or listen to things happening inside the offender’s home, and (2) those devices that a court may require without the offender’s consent, devices that simply tell whether the offender is there or not without transmitting images or sound. The GPS monitoring system falls in the latter category. The fact that the GPS will tell corrections where Chism is when he is not at home does not destroy its status as a device that broadcasts only location.

Thus, we hold the Code permits GPS monitoring and affirm the trial court.

Dickson, Sullivan, Boehm, and Rucker, JJ., concur.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 15, 2005 02:46 PM
Posted to Ind. Sup.Ct. Decisions