United States v. Jones

Date: January 23, 2012

Citation: 565 US ‗‗‗ 2012

Issue: Fourth Amendment

Significance: In a 9–0 unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that secret placement of GPS (global positioning system) devices on a suspect’s automobile and the use of the instrument to track the suspect is considered a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Background

In today’s technological age, there is a plethora of ways that persons and information can be identified and tracked. In some ways, it is more challenging to remain undetected. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures. Search and seizure are allowed only if a judge issues a search warrant (and a warrant is issued only if there is probably cause).

Antoine Jones was suspected of trafficking narcotics in 2004 in the Washington, DC area. Jones owned a nightclub, and FBI and metropolitan police worked together to monitor Jones’s activities using video surveillance at his nightclub and a wiretap of Jones’s cell phone. After gathering information from these sources, the United States government applied for a warrant in 2005 to put a GPS tracking device on an automobile that belonged to Jones’s wife. The government received the warrant, which specified the installation had to occur within ten days of the issuing of the warrant. In addition, the tracking device had to be installed in Washington, DC.

FBI agents attached the GPS tracking device to Jones’s wife’s automobile on the eleventh day and not in Washington, DC, but in Maryland and in a public parking lot. The FBI then used the data from the GPS to track the suspect’s movements every ten seconds for the next twenty-eight days. During that time, a battery on the tracking device was changed.

As a result, the United States government was able to use the data collected from the GPS device to indict Jones in the distribution and possession with the intent to distribute cocaine. Jones filed to suppress the evidence that was collected from the GPS device before his trial started. The district court responded by suppressing the data collected only while the automobile was parked at Jones’s home but not the evidence and data that was collected while the vehicle was in motion on public streets. In 2006, Jones’s trial ended with a hung jury. The following year, a grand jury indicted Jones after being presented with the evidence that the government collected from the GPS device on Jones’s wife’s vehicle. This time, Jones was found guilty and sentenced to prison for life. Jones appealed. The US Court of Appeals reversed Jones’s conviction in United States v. Maynard because the evidence that indicted him was taken from a GPS device installed on his wife’s automobile, which it said was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The court’s decision went against an earlier ruling, United States v. Knotts (1983), which dealt with a radio transmitter being placed on a suspect’s automobile, a much more limited type of surveillance. In this case, the US Supreme Court ruled that a "person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a brief that argued against GPS tracking without a search warrant, citing that GPS technology differs from other types of surveillance technology. The questions to answer in this case were: (1) Was the use of a tracking device on a suspect’s automobile to monitor its movement on public streets a violation of the Fourth Amendment; and (2) Did the US government violate the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device without his consent and without a search warrant. The Court heard oral arguments beginning on November 8, 2011.

Opinion of the Court

In a 9–0 unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s installation of the GPS tracking device on Jones’s wife’s vehicle was a Fourth Amendment search. Therefore, the United States did violate Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights. Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the opinion, with Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomajor concurring. They cited the "common law trespass" as the standard.

Despite the unanimous decision, not all of the justices agreed on the reasoning behind the decision. Justice Sotomayor detailed her concurring opinion:

• People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers, the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their internet service providers, and the books, groceries and medications they purchase to online retailers. . . . But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.

Justice Samuel Alito detailed his concurring opinion with a theory based on reasonable expectation of privacy, which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan:

• [R]elatively short-term monitoring of a person’s movements on public streets accords with expectations of privacy that our society has recognized as reasonable. But the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy. For such offences, society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual car for a very long period.

Impact

The Court’s decision in United States v. Jones had some significant implications. First, it overturned a precedent set in United States v. Knotts, even though in this particular case, the surveillance was limited. Second, in a subsequent case, United States v. Katzin (2013), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a warrant was needed to put a GPS device on an automobile for police tracking purposes.

In addition, it raised concerns over newer and the growing usage of technology that could also track possible or alleged illegal activity, such as drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, which are primarily used for military operations abroad. Is the use of a drone for this purpose considered a Fourth Amendment search? In February 2012, Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act to encourage the acceleration of unmanned aircraft programs in US airspace. This legislation could make the local use of drones more common, with the possibility of infringing on people’s right to privacy.

Bibliography

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Solove, Daniel. "United States v. Jones and the Future of Privacy Law: The Potential Far-Reaching Implications of the GPS Surveillance." Bloomberg BNA: Privacy and Security Report. Bureau of National Affairs, 30 Jan. 2012. Web. 26 Jan. 2016.

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