Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01981/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01981-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Dwan Rashid Taylor
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-1981

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

DWAN RASHID TAYLOR,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:12-CR-00042-001 — Jane E. Magnus-Stinson, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED DECEMBER 17, 2014 — DECIDED JANUARY 14, 2015

____________________

Before WILLIAMS, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. Dwan Taylor appeals the denial of his 

motion to suppress drugs and guns that the police found in 

his storage locker pursuant to a search warrant. Indianapolis 

police learned the location of the storage locker by monitoring a Global Positioning System (“GPS”) unit that they 

attached to his car without a warrant in 2011. That was 

before the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS device 

to a car for purposes of gathering information was a search 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
2 No. 14-1981

under the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Jones, 

132 S. Ct. 945 (2012). Because the officers used the 

GPS monitor in objectively reasonable reliance on binding 

appellate precedent in effect at the time, the suppression 

motion was properly denied.

I. Background

In June 2011 Detective Sergeant Garth Schwomeyer of the 

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department received a tip 

that Taylor possessed cocaine and firearms. Schwomeyer 

checked Taylor’s criminal history and learned that he had 

been convicted in 1997 for possessing cocaine. Schwomeyer 

then conducted surveillance at an address in Indianapolis 

that was linked to Taylor and observed what he believed to 

be a drug deal. He did not recognize the people involved, 

but when he ran the license plates of their cars, he discovered that two cars were registered to men who also had been 

convicted of possessing or trafficking cocaine. 

Schwomeyer continued to investigate Taylor over the 

next three months. A confidential informant reported that 

Taylor was trafficking kilogram quantities of cocaine, and a 

fellow officer told Schwomeyer that Taylor associated with 

cocaine traffickers. In addition, Taylor’s phone records 

reflected that his most frequent contact had been convicted 

in 2006 of dealing cocaine.

Based on Schwomeyer’s investigation, a deputy prosecutor for Marion County submitted a petition to the Marion 

County Superior Court in September 2011 requesting judicial approval to attach a GPS unit to Taylor’s car for a period 

of 60 days. The petition stated that the GPS device would be 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
No. 14-1981 3

attached to the exterior of the car (“inside of a fender”) with 

“a magnet and/or straps,” that it would be installed and later 

removed “while the vehicle was either in a public place or 

upon private property where members of the general public 

would have access to [the] vehicle,” and that the device 

“would be powered either by an internal battery or by 

connecting [it] to the battery of the vehicle.” In support of 

the petition, the deputy prosecutor submitted an affidavit 

from Schwomeyer describing his investigation and also an 

affidavit from Officer Chris Cavanaugh, who explained the 

operation of the GPS unit. Officer Cavanaugh attested that 

the GPS device could collect location data at a specific 

interval (for example, every four seconds) and that officers 

could later retrieve that data through the Internet “by having 

the GPS tracking unit transmit its stored data.”

A Marion County Superior Court judge granted the petition on these terms, and a GPS unit was attached to Taylor’s 

car. About two weeks later, police learned from the GPS data 

that Taylor had traveled to a storage facility in Indianapolis. 

Schwomeyer spoke to both the manager and the owner of 

the storage facility and learned that Taylor rented a storage 

locker there. He went to the facility with a drug-detection 

dog, and the dog alerted just outside of Taylor’s locker. 

Schwomeyer then applied for a warrant to search the 

storage unit. In an affidavit submitted to the Marion County 

Superior Court, Schwomeyer described the investigation and

stated that he had learned the location of Taylor’s storage 

locker through “surveillance.” He did not mention that the 

surveillance involved GPS tracking of Taylor’s car.

A different Marion County judge reviewed the warrant 

application and authorized a search of Taylor’s storage 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
4 No. 14-1981

locker. The police searched the locker and found 

752.61 grams of cocaine, four firearms, and digital scales. 

Taylor was charged in federal court with one count of possessing with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of a 

mixture or substance containing cocaine, 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B)(ii), and four counts of possessing a 

firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g).

Taylor moved to suppress the storage-locker evidence as 

the fruit of an unlawful search. He maintained that the 

warrantless tracking of his car via GPS violated the Fourth 

Amendment. He relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in 

Jones, which held that the installation of a GPS device on a 

car is a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. 132 S. Ct.

at 949. Taylor also argued that the search warrant was invalid because Schwomeyer had omitted from the affidavit any 

reference to GPS tracking. (Taylor raised other arguments, 

but he has abandoned them on appeal.)

Because Jones was issued three months after the police 

tracked Taylor’s car via GPS, the government opposed the

suppression motion based on the good-faith exception 

established in Davis v. United States, which held that the 

exclusionary rule does not apply “when the police conduct a 

search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent.” 131 S. Ct. 2419, 2434 (2011). Davis’s 

good-faith exception applied, the government argued,

because the police had reasonably relied on this court’s 

pre-Jones decisions upholding warrantless GPS tracking. See

United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994 (7th Cir. 2007); United 

States v. Cuevas-Perez, 640 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2011). The government also noted that the police officers had consulted

with a deputy prosecutor and reasonably relied on judicial 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
No. 14-1981 5

approval before installing and monitoring the GPS device. 

Finally, the government maintained that the search warrant 

for Taylor’s storage locker was valid because Schwomeyer 

had not omitted any material fact in his warrant affidavit.

Taylor countered that reliance on Garcia and Cuevas-Perez

was not reasonable because the use of the GPS unit in this 

case was more intrusive than in those cases. Unlike Garcia

and Cuevas-Perez, law enforcement here had “asked for and 

received permission to enter onto private property, to use the 

vehicle’s battery power, and to monitor Taylor’s vehicle for 

60 days.”

The district court agreed with Taylor that Davis’s 

good-faith exception did not apply but nonetheless denied 

Taylor’s motion to suppress on the ground that law enforcement had reasonably relied on judicial authorization 

when using the GPS. The court explained that Garcia and 

Cuevas-Perez were distinguishable because the GPS devices 

used in those cases did not draw power from the car’s 

battery, were not installed while the car was parked on 

private property, and did not track the car’s movement for 

60 days. Thus, the court observed, “law enforcement could 

not have objectively relied on Garcia and Cuevas-Perez when 

the cases do not explicitly, or for that matter implicitly, 

authorize the specific actions taken here.” But suppression 

was unwarranted, the court held, because the officers had 

obtained judicial authorization to use the GPS device and 

their reliance on that authorization was objectively reasonable. The judge also explained that applying the exclusionary 

rule was not appropriate because the rule is meant to deter 

culpable conduct by law enforcement and there was no 

culpable conduct in this case. Finally, the judge rejected 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
6 No. 14-1981

Taylor’s argument that the warrant was defective because 

Schwomeyer’s affidavit had omitted material facts. 

While Taylor’s case was still pending in the district court, 

we issued United States v. Brown, 744 F.3d 474 (7th Cir.), cert. 

denied, 135 S. Ct. 378 (2014), which applied Davis’s good-faith 

exception to the use of a GPS device to track a car in 2006,

before Garcia or Cuevas-Perez were decided. The GPS device 

in Brown was installed with the consent of the car’s owner,

but it was used to track a driver who had not consented. Id.

at 476. Our decision in Brown confirmed that Garcia and 

Cuevas-Perez were binding appellate precedent in this circuit 

establishing “that installation of a GPS device, and the use of 

the location data it produces, are not within the scope of the 

[F]ourth [A]mendment.” Id. And even though the GPS 

tracking in Brown predated Garcia and Cuevas-Perez, we 

concluded that there was nonetheless binding appellate 

precedent in 2006 for the purpose of Davis’s good-faith 

exception: to wit, the Supreme Court’s decisions in United 

States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983) (holding that law enforcement’s monitoring of a signal from beeper is not a 

search), and United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984) (holding that installation of beeper is not a search if owner of the 

property on which beeper is installed consents, even if 

beeper is used to track someone who did not consent). 

See Brown, 744 F.3d at 477–78.

Soon after we decided Brown, the district judge issued a 

“Supplemental Entry” that is at the center of this appeal. In 

that docket entry, the judge explained that Brown’s

“characterization of Garcia and Cuevas-Perez” differed from 

her earlier analysis and supported the government’s position 

that Davis’s good-faith exception did apply to the GPS 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
No. 14-1981 7

tracking of Taylor’s car. Thus, the judge concluded, Davis’s 

good-faith exception supplied additional support for denying Taylor’s motion to suppress. 

Taylor pleaded guilty to the drug-trafficking crime, see

§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B)(ii), but preserved his right to appeal the 

district court’s order denying his motion to suppress. The 

government dismissed the remaining charges, and the judge 

sentenced Taylor to 150 months in prison. 

II. Analysis

Taylor contends that the district court erred by relying on 

Brown to conclude that Davis’s good-faith exception applied 

to the GPS tracking of his car. He argues that Brown was not

meant to state a “blanket rule,” but rested instead on the 

narrow ground that the police had obtained the owner’s 

consent before attaching the GPS device to the car. 

We disagree. The district court correctly concluded that 

Brown supports the application of Davis’s good-faith exception here. Brown makes clear that Garcia and Cuevas-Perez are 

pre-Jones binding circuit precedent holding that “installation 

of a GPS device, and the use of the location data it produces, 

are not within the scope of the [F]ourth [A]mendment.”

Brown, 744 F.3d at 476. Brown also establishes that Davis’s 

good-faith exception more generally applies to pre-Jones use 

of GPS devices to track a suspect’s car based on earlier 

Supreme Court precedent.

1

 1 Every other circuit to consider the question has applied Davis’s 

good-faith exception to pre-Jones GPS tracking by law enforcement. 

Some courts have relied on circuit-level binding appellate precedent to 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
8 No. 14-1981

It’s true that the GPS tracking at issue in Brown occurred 

before this court’s decisions in Garcia or Cuevas-Perez, but we 

made clear that the result in Brown would have been the 

same (indeed, “straightforward”) if the tracking had occurred post-Garcia, as it did in this case. See id. at 477. The 

fact that law enforcement in Brown had obtained the consent 

of one of the car’s owners before attaching the GPS device 

does not change the outcome here; the officers who used the 

GPS to track Taylor’s car could have reasonably relied on 

Garcia for the proposition that consent was not necessary. As 

Brown explained, Garcia held “that installation of the GPS 

locator does not come within the [F]ourth [A]mendment 

because it does not interfere with the vehicle’s use in transportation.” Id.

Taylor argues that Davis’s good-faith exception does not 

apply because law enforcement exceeded the holdings in 

Garcia and Cuevas-Perez by requesting judicial authorization 

to (1) track his car for up to 60 days; (2) attach the GPS unit 

to his car when parked on private property; and (3) use the 

car’s battery to power the GPS unit. Before addressing these 

arguments, we note that the record is scant regarding how

 

do so. See United States v. Fisher, 745 F.3d 200 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 

135 S. Ct. 676 (2014); United States v. Smith, 741 F.3d 1211 (11th Cir. 2013), 

cert. denied, 2014 WL 2558149; United States v. Sparks, 711 F.3d 58 (1st 

Cir.), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 204 (2013); United States v. Andres, 703 F.3d 

828 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 2814 (2013). Circuits without local 

precedent have relied on the Supreme Court’s pre-Jones decisions. 

See United States v. Katzin, 769 F.3d 163 (3d Cir. 2014) (en banc); United 

States v. Stephens, 764 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 2014); United States v. Aguiar, 

737 F.3d 251 (2d Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 400 (2014).

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
No. 14-1981 9

the police actually installed the GPS device and where

Taylor’s car was parked when they did so. Taylor and the 

government agreed that an evidentiary hearing on the

suppression motion was unnecessary. This deficiency in the 

record makes it a bit difficult to assess Taylor’s argument:

“The reasonableness of an official invasion of the citizen’s 

privacy must be appraised on the basis of the facts as they 

existed at the time that invasion occurred.” United States v. 

Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 115 (1984); see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 

21–22 (1968); United States v. Brown, 64 F.3d 1083, 1086 (7th 

Cir. 1995); United States v. Hamilton, 591 F.3d 1017, 1022 (8th 

Cir. 2010); United States v. Alexander, 540 F.3d 494, 501 (6th 

Cir. 2008).

Despite the underdeveloped record, we conclude that the 

district court correctly rejected Taylor’s arguments. We begin 

with his challenge to the length of the GPS monitoring and 

conclude that it is foreclosed by precedent. As noted in 

Brown, our decisions in Garcia and Cuevas-Perez explained 

that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Knotts and Karo “jointly show that tracking a car’s location by GPS is not a search 

no matter how long tracking lasts.” Brown, 744 F.3d at 477

(emphasis added). Moreover, Brown explained that even 

before Garcia and Cuevas-Perez were decided, Knotts established that monitoring a GPS unit attached to a car is “not 

within the [F]ourth [A]mendment’s scope.” Id. at 478. Thus, 

it was reasonable for law enforcement to rely on Knotts—and 

by extension, Garcia and Cuevas-Perez—for the proposition 

that the length of the GPS monitoring is irrelevant under the 

Fourth Amendment. And if it was objectively reasonable for 

law enforcement to conclude that Knotts, which involved 

only brief tracking with a beeper, authorizes long-term GPS 

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
10 No. 14-1981

tracking, then reliance on Garcia and Cuevas-Perez was

likewise objectively reasonable.2

We also reject Taylor’s argument that the GPS unit was 

not installed in good faith because law enforcement sought 

to power the device with the car’s battery. As an initial 

matter, Taylor does not explain how the manner in which the 

device was powered is relevant. Moreover, as the government points out, it appears from the record that the GPS 

device was not actually attached to the car’s battery but 

rather was self-powered. Indeed, the petition for judicial 

authorization states that the device would be placed “inside 

of a fender” and attached with only “a magnet and/or 

straps,” and Schwomeyer attested that the GPS unit was 

installed by being “placed on the underside” of the car and 

removed from the car’s “exterior.” This suggests that the 

device was not powered by the car’s battery. See United States

v. Basinski, 226 F.3d 829, 833 (7th Cir. 2000) (explaining that 

government bears burden of establishing by a 

preponderance of the evidence that warrantless search was 

justified). 

Finally, we are not persuaded by Taylor’s contention that 

the installation of the GPS unit was at odds with binding 

 2 Indeed, circuits that did not have their own GPS precedent prior to 

Jones have uniformly concluded that Knotts is binding appellate precedent for the purpose of Davis’s good-faith exception, even when police 

officers’ GPS monitoring lasted for a longer period of time. See United 

States v. Baez, 744 F.3d 30, 35 (1st Cir. 2014) (one year of GPS monitoring); 

United States v. Oladosu, 744 F.3d 36, 38 (1st Cir.) (47 days of GPS monitoring), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 97 (2014); Aguiar, 737 F.3d at 262 (months of 

GPS monitoring).

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
No. 14-1981 11

appellate precedent because law enforcement requested 

judicial authorization to install the device while the car was 

on private property. First, the record does not indicate 

exactly where the car was parked when the GPS unit was 

installed, and Taylor’s failure to submit evidence on this 

point is reason enough to reject the argument. See United 

States v. Oladosu, 744 F.3d 36, 38–39 (1st Cir. 2014). The 

petition submitted to the Marion County Superior Court and 

the court’s order granting the petition both indicate that the 

GPS device would be attached when the car “was either in a 

public place or upon private property where members of the 

general public would have access to [the] vehicle.”

The government explained at oral argument that the reference to “private property” accessible to “the general 

public” meant only that the GPS unit could be attached 

when the car was in a shopping-mall parking lot or comparable location. This language did not authorize entry into 

Taylor’s garage or his driveway. Taylor’s counsel did not 

dispute that characterization. And at the time of these 

events, Garcia was binding appellate precedent for the 

proposition that attaching a GPS unit to a car parked on a 

public street was not a search. See Garcia, 474 F.3d at 996–97; 

Cuevas-Perez, 640 F.3d at 273–74. The privacy interest in a car 

parked in a shopping-center parking lot or similar public 

location is no greater than the privacy interest in a car 

parked on a public street. 

Because Davis’s good-faith exception applies, we need not 

address the government’s alternative argument that suppression was not appropriate because there was no culpable 

conduct by law enforcement. Nor do we consider the government’s argument—raised for the first time on appeal—

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12
12 No. 14-1981

that the use of the GPS device to track Taylor’s car was 

lawful because it was supported by reasonable suspicion.

AFFIRMED.

Case: 14-1981 Document: 34 Filed: 01/14/2015 Pages: 12