A United States court of appeals has struck down a lower court ruling requiring a sex offender to undergo periodic sexual-arousal testing, saying such a practice was ”Orwellian”.
In its decision handed down Tuesday, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said it could not agree with the March 2005 judgment by a Los Angeles district court that required Matthew Weber to undergo so-called penile plethysmograph testing as a condition for his release on probation.
It said the test, which entails placing a pressure-sensitive electronic device around a subject’s penis and monitoring his response to sexually stimulating images, sought not only to examine Weber’s body but also his mind.
”The procedure violates a prisoner’s bodily integrity by affecting his genitals,” the appeals court said in its ruling. ”The procedure violates a prisoner’s mental integrity by intruding images into his brain.”
It added that though the defendant in the case had committed a crime, by doing so he did not cease to be a person.
”There is a line at which the government must stop,” the ruling said. ”Penile plethysmography testing crosses it.”
Weber was convicted and sentenced to 27 months’ imprisonment after an electronics store technician in May 2001 discovered several images of child pornography on the hard drive of a computer Weber had brought in for repairs in the Los Angeles area.
A US District Court on March 4 2005 sentenced Weber to 27 months’ imprisonment and three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography. The court set several conditions for his release on probation, including a requirement that he submit, if asked, to a penile plethysmograph.
The test was developed by Czech psychiatrist Kurt Freund to study sexual deviance and at one time was used by the Czechoslovakian government to identify and ”cure” homosexuals, the appeals court said in its ruling.
It added that nowadays the test has become routine in adult sexual-offender programmes and noted that a survey showed that about a quarter of such programmes use the procedure. — AFP
