{"id":39104,"date":"2022-08-03T16:31:31","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T22:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ankle-monitor-gps-data-ruling-may-be-appealed\/"},"modified":"2022-08-03T22:31:31","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T22:31:31","slug":"ankle-monitor-gps-data-ruling-may-be-appealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ankle-monitor-gps-data-ruling-may-be-appealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Ankle monitor GPS data ruling may be appealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A New Mexico Department of Corrections official walks toward the front entrance of the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants in November 2021. (Austin Fisher\/Source New Mexico)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
2nd Judicial District Court in New Mexico evaluating next step<\/div>\n

A fight between the local prosecutor and the state district court in Albuquerque over public access to the location data of people ordered to wear ankle monitors while awaiting their day in court may become a constitutional battle over the right to privacy.<\/p>\n

Thirteenth Judicial District Court Judge James Noel ruled on Monday that the Second Judicial District Court violated the state\u2019s public records law last year when it denied requests from Second Judicial District Attorney Ra\u00fal Torrez for GPS data of people on pretrial release wearing ankle monitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the Second Judicial District Court respects the analysis and decision in the Order issued on August 1, 2022, the Second Judicial District Court is evaluating its right to appeal,\u201d Sidney Hill, a spokesperson for the court, said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Hill could not confirm whether the court will appeal the ruling to the New Mexico Court of Appeals. As of Tuesday, no appeal in the case had been filed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Second Judicial District Court is committed to fully responding to all records requests that come in from the public and to diligently comply with the Inspection of Public Records Act,\u201d Hill said. \u201cThe Court understands the importance of each public records request and takes each request seriously. The Court has at all times acted in good faith and will continue to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Court argued that people awaiting trial who are ordered to wear an ankle monitor have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their GPS data. They pointed to three prior cases dealing with the Fourth Amendment right to privacy.<\/p>\n

But Noel wrote that the protections in those cases \u201chave not been extended to individuals on probation and parole\u201d nor to \u201cindividuals on pretrial release.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noel wrote that since people on pretrial release are \u201cunambiguously aware\u201d that they will be tracked 24\/7 by the ankle monitor, they do not have \u201ca reasonable expectation of privacy as to their location.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not clear if the defendants are ever made aware that their location data could be made available to the public rather than just police, prosecutors or other authorities in the criminal legal system.<\/p>\n

At a news conference on Tuesday morning, Torrez said if the Court appeals the ruling he thinks the privacy argument will come back up again, and that hopes the state Attorney General \u201cwould be committed to seeing this appeal through to its conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Location data is public, judge rules<\/div>\n

The Second Judicial District Court has its own GPS monitoring system called the Judicial Supervision and Diversion Program. It is separate from the GPS systems operated by the Probation and Parole Division and the Administrative Office of the Courts.<\/p>\n

Torrez asked the Court for the GPS data for two defendants on April 30, 2021 and Nov. 12, 2021.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s records custodian denied inspection of GPS records for both defendants saying they are confidential based on \u201cconstitutional rights of criminal defendants to a fair trial and presumption of innocence,\u201d along with their right to privacy.<\/p>\n

The Court argued that the GPS data \u201cdoes not pertain to public actors\u201d but rather relates to the location of \u201cprivate citizens,\u201d and therefore are not \u201cpublic records\u201d as defined by the Inspection of Public Records Act. Noel disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat a record may contain information relating to the location of private citizens is not an exemption or exclusion from this definition,\u201d Noel wrote.<\/p>\n

Read more New Mexico news at sourceNM.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A New Mexico Department of Corrections official walks toward the front entrance of the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants in November 2021. (Austin Fisher\/Source New Mexico) 2nd Judicial District Court in New Mexico evaluating next step A fight between the local prosecutor and the state district court in Albuquerque over public access to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39104"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}