Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Probation And Gps topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Appeals court hears challenge to GPS monitoring and probation procedures in Lucero case
Summary
Defense argued that the March 2023 hearing is the only properly appealable event and that the record lacks individualized Grady/Feliz hearings before GPS imposition; Commonwealth urged that multiple violations, interstate convictions and a June 7, 2021 reprobation supported the sentence. The panel questioned the interplay of violations and resentencing needs.
The panel considered arguments in Commonwealth v. Lucero over whether the trial court properly imposed GPS monitoring and extended probation without the individualized procedural protections recent case law requires. "He never had a Felice hearing nor did he have a grading hearing," defense counsel Anne O'Reilly told the court, pressing that later orders could not cure constitutional or statutory defects if the required preconditions were not met.
Counsel described post-sentencing life events, including a May 2022 arson that rendered the defendant homeless and interrupted GPS reliability; she argued those circumstances made strict compliance difficult and that statutory hearings under Grady and Feliz should have occurred. "He was homeless... the GPS stopped holding a charge," counsel said, describing why conditions became unduly burdensome.
The Commonwealth responded that the defendant faced five violation hearings, served time after cutting off his GPS while the probation was transferred to California, and that in June 2021 Judge Wren reprobated him and explicitly imposed GPS given his prior conduct. "We put him back on probation starting for 2 years starting today, which was the June 2021, and he'll be on GPS monitoring," the Commonwealth recounted from the record.
The panel focused on which events are properly before the court on appeal and whether removing the GPS-based violation would leave sufficient other violations to support the sentence without remand for resentencing. Counsel for both sides and the panel highlighted the complexity created by multiple hearings and interstate convictions; the matter was submitted for decision.
