Hands off his Johnson!
That’s the message a Manhattan federal appeals panel had for a Vermont judge who ordered that a convicted sex offender had to have a device attached to his private parts to monitor erections.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lower court order requiring David McLaurin to undergo penile plethysmography testing was “unduly intrusive” and “an abuse of discretion.”
“A person, even if convicted of a crime, retains his humanity,” the panel wrote.
McLaurin, while living in Alabama, was busted in 2001 for taking photos of his 13-year-old daughter with her breasts exposed. Although his daughter claimed the photo shoot was to help her modeling career, McLaurin pleaded guilty to producing child porn and was sentenced to 10 years behind bars, most of which was later suspended.
In 2008, he pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex of offender in Alabama. After he moved to Vermont in 2011, he again failed to register as a sex offender there and was arrested again.
In April 2012, he pleaded guilty to not registering as a sex offender. Although the district court in Vermont found that McLaurin was “unlikely to reoffend again,” it sentenced him to 15 months in jail followed by 5 years of supervised release.
As one of the conditions of supervised release, a probation officer recommended that McLaurin undergo plethysmograph examinations by attaching the device to his penis, and the court agreed.
In some situations, test subjects are required to masturbate so that the machine can be “properly” calibrated. The subject is then required to view pornographic images or videos while the device monitors blood flow to the penis and measures the size of an erection that the subject has.
“The size of the erection is, we are told, of interest to government officials because it ostensibly correlates with the extent to which the subject continues to be aroused by the pornographic images,” the panel wrote.
McLaurin objected to this requirement as unnecessary, invasive, and appealed.