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Feb 22
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Warrantless Search with GPS Device

By Warrantless Search

New Case from the 5th Circuit (Federal):  United States v. Andres, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 143 (5th Cir. Tex. Jan. 3, 2013)

Synopsis:  In December 2009, federal agents conducting an investigation into a large drug trafficking operation installed a GPS device underneath a pick-up truck, with a trailer attached to it, while it was parked on a public street after it had been loaded with twenty kilos of cocaine. Federal agents monitored the truck’s movements as it drove toward Chicago.

The agents contacted the Illinois State Police, gave them information about the truck, and told them they would like to have the drugs discovered during a traffic stop so they would not have to disclose the existence of a federal investigation. After being provided GPS information on the truck, a police officer saw it on an interstate highway and began to follow it.

The officer conducted a traffic stop on the truck for improper lane usage and improper lighting after he saw the trailer was swaying back and forth within its lane and its taillights were flickering.  After the officer wrote a warning ticket, he asked Appellant to get out of the truck so he could talk to him about the taillight problem.

After inspecting the electrical connection between the truck and trailer, the officer handed Appellant his clipboard so he could sign the ticket.  While Appellant was signing the ticket, the officer asked him where he was coming from.  Appellant told the officer he was coming from Joliet, but the officer knew this could not be possible based on the surveillance the officers had been conducting.  The officer also noticed that Appellant had begun to fidget and move his feet and arms around very nervously.  When the officer asked Appellant if he had any drugs in the truck, he said, “No” and then consented to a search with a drug dog.  The drug dog alerted and the officers found twenty kilos of cocaine hidden in the truck.

Appellant argued the drug evidence should have been suppressed because the initial traffic stop was a pretext and not based on any actual traffic offense.  Even if the traffic stop was valid, Appellant claimed the officer’s continued questioning and dog search were not reasonably related to the original reasons for the stop.

First, the court held the officer was justified in stopping Appellant based on the traffic violations he saw.  Second, the court held the officer’s continued seizure of Appellant after the reason for the initial traffic stop ended was supported by reasonable suspicion.  It was reasonable for the officer, who had stopped Appellant for a safety violation concerning his trailer, to ask him to get out of his truck to look at the trailer and discuss the problem.  In addition, the officer’s question, asking Appellant where he was coming from, occurred before the officer had finished dealing with the traffic offenses and did not extend the scope or duration of the stop. Appellant’s untruthful answer created reasonable suspicion that justified his continued detention, which ultimately led to the officer receiving consent to search the truck.

Appellant also argued the warrantless placement and use of the GPS device to monitor the movements of his truck violated the Fourth Amendment in light of the United States Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Jones, decided in 2012. The Fifth Circuit Court declined to rule on whether warrantless GPS searches are per se unreasonable.  Even assuming a Fourth Amendment violation had occurred, the court held the evidence should not be suppressed in this case because in December 2009, it was objectively reasonable for agents in the Fifth Circuit to believe that warrantless GPS tracking was allowed under circuit precedent.

Jan 23
Love1
GPS Tracking Device Texas

Supreme Court Strikes Down GPS Tracking Device | US v. Jones (2012)

By Search & Seizure

United States Supreme Court Holds that Attachment of GPS Tracking Device is a Search Under the 4th Amendment

GPS Tracking Device TexasMuch like the landmark (and terribly confusing) opinion in Crawford v. Washington several years ago, the Supreme Court once again issued an opinion that appears likely to raise more questions going forward than answers.  The issue presented in United States v. Jones was whether the attachment of a Global Positioning-System GPS tracking device to an individual’s vehicle, and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets, constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the FourthAmendment.  The Court held:

The Government’s attachment of the GPS tracking device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 3–12.
     (a) The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Here, the Government’s physical intrusion on an “effect” for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a “search.” This type of encroachment on an area enumerated in the Amendment would have been considered a search within the meaning of the Amendment at the time it was adopted. Pp. 3–4.
     (b) This conclusion is consistent with this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, which until the latter half of the 20th century was tied to common-law trespass. Later cases, which have deviated from that exclusively property-based approach, have applied the analysis of Justice Harlan’s concurrence in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, which said that the Fourth Amendment protects a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy,” id., at 360. Here, the Court need not address the Government’s contention that Jones had no “reasonable expectation of privacy,” because Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, the Court must “assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 34. Katz did not repudiate the understanding that the Fourth Amendment embodies a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas it enumerates. The Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, but not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test. See Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 176; Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U. S. 56, 64. United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276, and United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705—post-Katz cases rejecting Fourth Amendment challenges to “beepers,” electronic tracking devices representing another form of electronic monitoring—do not foreclose the conclusion that a search occurred here. New York v. Class, 475 U. S. 106, and Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170, also do not support the Government’s position. Pp. 4–12.
     (c) The Government’s alternative argument—that if the attachment and use of the device was a search, it was a reasonable one—is forfeited because it was not raised below. P. 12. 615 F. 3d 544, affirmed.

See the full opinion in United States v. Jones.  Okay, so it’s a search (and in this case, an unlawful one), but where are the limits?  What instructions should be given to police officers and investigators?  Here’s what Lyle Denniston over at ScotusBlog had to say:

Amid a disagreement about what a privacy invasion meant in 1791, but with a strong embrace of privacy in the electronic age, the Supreme Court on Monday suggested that police probably should get a warrant before they physically attach an electronic monitor — like a GPS tracking device — to a car or truck, while leaving some doubt about how long such a device may be used, and about what kinds of suspected crimes allow its use. In effect, the Court seemed to have launched years of new lawsuits to sort it all out. The choice Monday was between a minimalist approach, one in the middle, and an expansive view of Fourth Amendment privacy. Each had support among the Justices, but counting the votes was a bit tricky.

Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the court.  He was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and Sotomayer.  Justice Sotomayor, however, penned her own concurring opinion, as did Justice Alito (joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan).

To be honest, I haven’t had the time yet to fully digest the opinion, so I’ll save any more comments for another time.  However, I will say that I am initially disappointed by the name of the case.  Fourth Amendment cases are supposed to have cool and interesting names (e.g. Katz, Ciraolo, Kyllo), not Jones.  C’Mon.  When you cite U.S. v. Jones, people are going to thing you’re making the case up.  Oh well.  At a very minimum, this case should give all the hardworking criminal defense lawyers ample ammunition for motions to suppress.

Aug 17
Love0

The Evils of Technology | GPS Search

By Warrantless Search

I love technology – from tablet computers to smartphones to flat-screen televisions.  If it’s shiny and new and guaranteed to make me the envy of my friends and family, I’ll buy it (to the dismay of my wife).  One of the recent (in the last 5 years) technological advancements that has made its way into just about every home in America is GPS.  Whether it be a Garmin running watch, a TomTom navigational device, or a GPS location broadcaster on your cell phone, most people use some sort of GPS device every day.  Aside from the fact that we’ve lost the capability to drive somewhere without turn-by-turn directions, GPS is great.

Jose Juan Hernandez, however, might not agree that GPS is so great.  In a recent 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Case (United States v. Hernandez), Hernandez challenged the GPS search that the DEA had surreptitiously (and without a warrant) performed on his brother’s truck to track its movements.  Hernandez was arrested while driving his brother’s truck to California on a drug run.  The police seized 20 pounds of meth from the truck.  At trial, Hernandez moved to suppress the drugs, arguing that the discovery was the result of an unlawful search (as a result of the GPS tracking).  The trial court denied the request.

The 5th Circuit held that Hernandez had standing to challenge the use of the GPS search device placed on his brother’s vehicle by FBI agents because he drove the vehicle with consent, but he lacked standing to challenge its placement because the vehicle was not registered to him.  The Court also held that the DEA agents’ use of the surreptitious GPS search device to track Hernandez was not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, explaining that it was more akin to the old beepers that police used to place on vehicles in the 80’s and 90’s.  Accordingly, the Court upheld the trial court’s denial of the motion to suppress. The Court did not decide whether a GPS search device that continuously and precisely monitors location would constitute a search.