THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA 

In The Supreme Court 

The State, Respondent, 

v. 

Alfred Adams, Petitioner. 

Appellate Case No. 2012-212779 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS 

Appeal from Charleston County 

J. C. Nicholson, Jr., Circuit Court Judge 

Opinion No. 27445 

Heard May 7, 2014 – Filed September 10, 2014 

REVERSED AND REMANDED 

Appellate Defender Robert M. Pachak, of Columbia, for 

Petitioner. 

Attorney General Alan M. Wilson, Chief Deputy 

Attorney General John W. McIntosh, Senior Assistant 

Deputy Attorney General Salley W. Elliott, and Senior 

Assistant Deputy Attorney General Deborah R.J. Shupe, 

all of Columbia, and Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, of 

Charleston, for Respondent. 
 

JUSTICE KITTREDGE: Believing Petitioner Alfred Adams was a drug dealer, 

officers from the North Charleston South Carolina Police Department (NCPD), 

acting without a warrant, placed a Global Positioning System (GPS)1

 device on a 

vehicle driven by Adams. After monitoring Adams' travel to Atlanta, Georgia, and 

upon his return to South Carolina, law enforcement stationed a drug canine unit on 

the interstate within the NCPD's jurisdiction, with instructions to conduct a traffic 

stop on Adams' vehicle. An officer conducted the requested traffic stop and 

discovered cocaine in Adams' possession, which resulted in Adams' arrest. Adams 

moved to suppress the drugs, arguing that the warrantless installation of the GPS 

device violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court denied Adams' motion, 

finding no constitutional violation. The court of appeals found the warrantless 

installation of the GPS device violated the Fourth Amendment but determined that 

the exclusionary rule did not apply because "Adams's traffic violations were 

intervening criminal acts sufficient to cure the taint arising from unlawfully 

installing the [GPS] device and monitoring the vehicle." State v. Adams, 397 S.C. 

481, 489, 725 S.E.2d 523, 527–28 (Ct. App. 2012). We reverse and remand. 

I. 

In 2008, a confidential informant approached the NCPD and informed officers that 

Adams was selling cocaine and heroin in the North Charleston area. The 

confidential informant informed officers that Adams purchased drugs from Atlanta 

and New York. After an investigation, officers installed a GPS device on the 

undercarriage of Adams' car, which was parked in a public garage in Charleston. 

Officers inexplicably did not obtain a warrant or court authorization for the 

installation of the GPS device. Thereafter, the officers monitored Adams' 

movements by way of the GPS data. Five days after installing the device, the GPS 

data indicated that Adams' vehicle was in Atlanta. 

When Adams' vehicle was returning toward Charleston, investigators contacted 

Sergeant Timothy Blair and instructed him to position himself, along with a drug 

canine, at a rest area on Interstate 26 in North Charleston. Sergeant Blair, who was 

aware that Adams was a suspected drug dealer, was instructed be on the lookout 

for Adams and to conduct a traffic stop. Soon thereafter, Sergeant Blair observed 

Adams' vehicle and pulled onto the interstate behind it. A short time later, Adams 

1

 "Global Positioning System (GPS) data is a technique by which radio signals are 

received . . . from a system of satellites in geosynchronous orbit and interpreted by 

programs to provide highly accurate location data." In re Smartphone Geolocation 

Data Application, 977 F. Supp. 2d 129, 137 (E.D.N.Y. 2013). 
 

committed an improper lane change. Sergeant Blair did not, however, initiate a 

traffic stop. Instead, Sergeant Blair continued to follow Adams, observed another 

traffic violation, and waited for Adams to drive near Charleston Southern 

University before turning on his blue lights and directing Adams to pull over. 

This was no ordinary traffic stop. Sergeant Blair immediately called for backup 

and drew his weapon as he approached the vehicle. The backup officer, Officer 

James Greenawalt, arrived one or two minutes later. Sergeant Blair directed 

Greenawalt to remove Adams from the vehicle and run a license check. 

Meanwhile, Sergeant Blair used the dog to conduct a perimeter sniff of Adams' 

vehicle. The dog alerted to the driver's door of Adams' vehicle. 

At this point, Sergeant Blair instructed Greenawalt to pat Adams down for 

weapons. In doing so, Greenawalt felt a "jagged, round object" near Adams' groin 

that he believed to be narcotics. Greenawalt retrieved the item, which was 141.62 

grams of cocaine. 

Adams was charged with trafficking cocaine and possession with the intent to 

distribute cocaine within proximity of a school. 

II. 

Prior to trial, Adams moved to suppress the seized evidence, contending that the 

installation and monitoring of the GPS device violated the Fourth Amendment and 

section 17-30-140 of the South Carolina Code (2014), which requires officers to 

obtain a court order prior to installing a mobile tracking device. 

In response, the State first contended that there was no constitutional violation, 

relying on United States v. Knotts for the proposition that "[a] person travelling in 

an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in 

his movements from one place to another." 460 U.S. 276, 281 (1983). Second, the 

State admitted that the officers did not obtain court authorization pursuant to 

section 17-30-140. In fact, the officers did not even know about the statute's 

existence. The State nevertheless claimed that, even if the officers violated the 

statute, suppression was not warranted absent a constitutional violation. 

The trial court found that officers violated section 17-30-140 by not obtaining a 

court order prior to installing the GPS device. Clearly disturbed by the State's 

failure to comply with section 17-30-140, the trial court remarked: "Start following 

the statute or at some point in time, [the evidence is] going to be suppressed." 
 

 

Ultimately, however, the trial court found no constitutional violation and 

concluded that the statutory violation alone did not warrant suppression of the drug 

evidence. 

The case proceeded to a bench trial. The trial court found Adams guilty of 

trafficking cocaine and sentenced him to twenty-five years in prison and a $50,000 

fine.2 

Adams appealed to the court of appeals, during the pendency of which, the United 

States Supreme Court issued United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012). In 

Jones, the Supreme Court held that "the Government's [warrantless] installation of 

a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the 

vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search.'" 132 S. Ct. at 949. While the Supreme 

Court's holding of a Fourth Amendment violation was unanimous, the majority's 

rationale was based on a theory of trespass, characterizing the government's 

conduct as the physical occupation of private property for the purpose of obtaining 

incriminating evidence. Id. 

Relying on Jones, the court of appeals found that the failure to obtain a warrant 

violated the Fourth Amendment. Adams, 397 S.C. at 488–89, 725 S.E.2d at 527. 

However, the court of appeals held that the exclusionary rule did not apply because 

"Adams's traffic violations were intervening criminal acts sufficient to cure the 

taint arising from unlawfully installing the device and monitoring the vehicle." Id. 

at 489, 725 S.E.2d at 527. 

We issued a writ of certiorari to review the court of appeals' decision. The State 

has not challenged the court of appeals' holding that officers violated the Fourth 

Amendment. Thus, the only question before this Court is whether suppression 

may be avoided by the intervening criminal acts doctrine, or some other alternative 

sustaining ground. 

2

 The trial court directed a verdict of acquittal for Adams on the proximity charge, 

for the proximity charge was the result of the officer's decision to conduct the 

traffic stop near Charleston Southern University. As the trial court observed, "all 

[Adams] was doing was following the direction of the police officer who stopped 

him [with] a blue light and he just happened to be across the street from Charleston 

Southern University." After directing a verdict for Adams, the trial court agreed to 

the State's request to nolle pros the proximity charge. 
 

 

III. 

"In criminal cases, this Court only reviews errors of law." State v. Gamble, 405 

S.C. 409, 415, 747 S.E.2d 784, 787 (2013) (citing State v. Jacobs, 393 S.C. 584, 

586, 713 S.E.2d 621, 622 (2011)). "On appeals from a motion to suppress based 

on Fourth Amendment grounds, this Court applies a deferential standard of review 

and will reverse if there is clear error." State v. Tindall, 388 S.C. 518, 521, 698 

S.E.2d 203, 205 (2010) (citing State v. Khingratsaiphon, 352 S.C. 62, 70, 572 

S.E.2d 456, 459 (2002)). However, this Court reviews questions of law de novo. 

State v. Whitner, 399 S.C. 547, 552, 732 S.E.2d 861, 863 (2012) (citations 

omitted). 

A. 

Adams contends that the court of appeals erred in finding that his traffic violations 

were intervening criminal acts that dissipated the taint from the unlawful search 

and concluding the facts did not warrant suppression. We agree. 

The exclusionary rule "is a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth 

Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect, rather than a personal 

constitutional right of the party aggrieved." United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 

338, 348 (1974). The remedy of exclusion "compel[s] respect for the 

constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available way—by removing the 

incentive to disregard it." Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 217 (1960) 

(citation omitted). However, "[t]he fact that a Fourth Amendment violation 

occurred . . . does not necessarily mean that the exclusionary rule applies." 

Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 140 (2009) (citing Illinois v. Gates, 462 

U.S. 213, 223 (1983)). To that end, courts have recognized several exceptions to 

the exclusionary rule,3

 two of which are implicated in this case—the 

attenuation/intervening act doctrine and the good-faith reliance exception. We turn 

first to the court of appeals' holding that suppression was not warranted because 

Adams' traffic violations were intervening criminal acts. 

3 See, e.g., United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 919 (1984) (good-faith reliance); 

Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 443 (1984) (inevitable discovery); United States v. 

Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 471 (1980) (independent source doctrine); Wong Sun v. 

United States, 371 U.S. 471, 486–91 (1963) (attenuation). 
"Generally, evidence derived from an illegal search or arrest is deemed fruit of the 

poisonous tree and is inadmissible." United States v. Najjar, 300 F.3d 466, 477 

(4th Cir. 2002) (citing Wong Sung v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484–85 (1963)). 

"However, not all evidence conceivably derived from an illegal search need be 

suppressed if it is somehow attenuated enough from the violation to dissipate the 

taint." Id. "To determine whether the derivative evidence has been purged of the 

taint of the unlawful search, we [may] consider several factors, including: (1) the 

amount of time between the illegal action and the acquisition of the evidence; (2) 

the presence of intervening circumstances; and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the 

official misconduct." United States v. Gaines, 668 F.3d 170, 173 (4th Cir. 2012) 

(citing Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 603–04 (1975)). 

The court of appeals relied on State v. Nelson, 336 S.C. 186, 519 S.E.2d 786 

(1999), to support its finding of attenuation. We find Nelson inapplicable to this 

case. In Nelson, a police officer was driving behind the defendant and flashed his 

high beam lights to get the defendant's attention. 336 S.C. at 189, 519 S.E.2d at 

787. The defendant responded by driving through a stop sign. Id. The officer 

followed and conducted a traffic stop. Id. After approaching the vehicle, the 

officer smelled alcohol, and the defendant refused to participate in field sobriety 

tests. Id. On appeal, this Court held that "even assuming [the officer's] initial 

attempt to stop Defendant would have violated the Fourth Amendment, [the 

officer] was nonetheless justified in making the stop after Defendant committed the 

subsequent traffic infractions." Id. at 193, 519 S.E.2d at 789. This Court's 

rationale was that "'[t]here is a strong policy reason for holding that a new and 

distinct crime, even if triggered by an illegal stop, is a sufficient intervening event 

to provide independent grounds for arrest.'" Id. at 194, 519 S.E.2d at 790 (quoting 

United States v. Sprinkle, 106 F.3d 613, 619 (4th Cir. 1997)). 

Here, however, Adams' traffic violations provide an insufficient attenuation from 

the taint of the illegal search. The traffic stop was entirely predicated on the 

information obtained from the GPS device and law enforcement's desire to search 

Adams and his vehicle for drugs. The patrol officer was instructed to find a basis 

to stop Adams' vehicle so that a search for drugs could be conducted. Even the 

trial court, without the benefit of Jones, repeatedly referred to the stop of Adams' 

vehicle as "a trap," noting that officers "would have never got[ten] behind [Adams] 

to get the traffic violation if [officers] hadn't had the tracking device." The court of 

appeals characterized the traffic violations as "intervening criminal acts sufficient 

to cure the taint arising from unlawfully installing the device[,]" a view which we 

respectfully reject. Adams, 397 S.C. at 489, 725 S.E.2d at 527–28. 
 

 

We cannot endorse the court of appeals' reasoning, which would unwittingly 

provide a blueprint for circumventing the protections of the Fourth Amendment. 

Indeed, were we to sanction the intervening acts rule under these circumstances, 

law enforcement would be free to install a GPS device on a suspect's vehicle 

without a warrant, track the suspect with impunity, and cure all ills from the 

underlying Fourth Amendment violation by waiting for a fortuitous traffic offense. 

See Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 423 (1997) (Kennedy, J. dissenting) 

("[United States Supreme Court precedent] allow[s] the police to stop vehicles in 

almost countless circumstances." (citing Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 

(1996)); Elizabeth E. Joh, Discretionless Policing: Technology and the Fourth 

Amendment, 95 Cal. L. Rev. 199, 210 n.61 (2007) ("Many traffic officers say that 

by following any vehicle for 1 or 2 minutes, they can observe a basis on which to 

stop it.") (citation and quotation omitted)). Such an affront to the Fourth 

Amendment would render Jones meaningless and would not serve the exclusionary 

rule's stated purpose of deterring unlawful police conduct. See State v. Brown, 401 

S.C. 82, 92, 736 S.E.2d 263, 268 (2012) ("[T]he exclusionary rule's sole purpose is 

to deter future Fourth Amendment violations . . . ."). 

Because each of the three attenuation factors weighs against admission of the 

seized evidence, we hold that Adams' traffic violations were not intervening 

criminal acts sufficient to dissipate the taint from the underlying Fourth 

Amendment violation.4 

B. 

By way of additional sustaining ground, the State invites us to find that the 

exclusionary rule should not apply because the officers relied in objective good 

4 Accord United States v. Lee, 862 F. Supp. 2d 560, 564–67 (E.D. Ky. 2012) 

(applying the exclusionary rule when officers installed a GPS device without a 

warrant, waited for the defendant to return from a drug pickup, and pulled the 

defendant over for not wearing a seatbelt, based on a finding that the illegal 

installation of the GPS device did not sever the causal connection between the 

illegal search and the stop); State v. Jackson, 435 S.W.3d 819, 827 (Tex. App. 

2014) (finding that exclusion was appropriate even though officers observed the 

defendant commit a speeding violation); Hamlett v. State, 753 S.E.2d 118, 128 

(Ga. App. 2013) (excluding evidence seized after a GPS device was installed on 

defendant's vehicle without a warrant and officers pulled the defendant over for 

having a broken brake light). 
 

faith on binding precedent that authorized the placement of a GPS device without a 

warrant. The presence of our state statute requiring a warrant and the absence of 

any pre-Jones binding precedent in this federal circuit authorizing the placement of 

a GPS device without a warrant compel us to reject the proposed additional 

sustaining ground. 

In Davis v. United States, the United States Supreme Court stated that the 

exclusionary rule does not apply in cases where "the police act with an objectively 

'reasonable good-faith belief' that their conduct is lawful." 131 S. Ct. 2419, 2427 

(2011) (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909 (1984)). The Davis court 

explained, "[r]esponsible law-enforcement officers will take care to learn 'what is 

required of them' under Fourth Amendment precedent and will conform their 

conduct to these rules." Id. at 2429 (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 

599 (2006)). "But by the same token, when binding appellate precedent 

specifically authorizes a particular police practice, well-trained officers will and 

should use that tool to fulfill their crime-detection and public-safety 

responsibilities." Id. (first emphasis added). This is so because "[a]n officer who 

conducts a search in reliance on binding appellate precedent does no more than 

'ac[t] as a reasonable officer would and should act' under the circumstances." Id. 

(quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 920). 

The State contends that two United States Supreme Court cases—United States v. 

Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983) and United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984)— 

constitute binding precedent that specifically authorized officers to install a 

tracking device on Adams' car without a warrant. We disagree. 

In Knotts, law enforcement, with the owner's consent, concealed a beeper5

 in a 

container of chloroform that was eventually loaded onto a target vehicle. 460 U.S. 

at 278. Law enforcement then monitored the beeper and maintained surveillance 

on the target vehicle, ultimately arresting Knotts several days after he took 

possession of the container. Id. at 279. The Supreme Court found no Fourth 

Amendment violation, upholding the warrantless use of the beeper because "[a] 

5

 "A beeper is a radio transmitter, usually battery operated, which emits periodic 

signals that can be picked up by a radio receiver." Knotts, 460 U.S. at 277. 

Conversely, a GPS device uses "signals from multiple satellites" to relay location 

data (often accurate to within 50 to 100 feet) to a computer. Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 

948. This distinction is noteworthy because beepers serve as aids to law 

enforcement already conducting physical surveillance, while a GPS enables 

officers to take a passive role and simply monitor location data from a computer. 
 

person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable 

expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another." Id. at 281. 

One year later, in Karo, the Supreme Court "addressed the question left open by 

Knotts, whether the installation of a beeper in a container amounted to a search or 

seizure." Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 952 (citing Karo, 468 U.S. at 713). In Karo, law 

enforcement officers installed a beeper inside a container of chemicals prior to the 

container being transferred to the buyer. Karo, 468 U.S. at 707. "As in Knotts, at 

the time the beeper was installed the container belonged to a third party, and it did 

not come into possession of the defendant until later." Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 952 

(citing Karo, 468 U.S. at 708). The Court held that, because the beeper was 

installed with the consent of the owner of the container, no search or seizure 

occurred because "[t]he mere transfer to Karo of a can containing an unmonitored 

beeper infringed no privacy interest." Karo, 468 U.S. at 712. 

Neither Knotts nor Karo involved, much less expressly or impliedly authorized, a 

physical trespass as occurred in this case. As the Supreme Court observed in 

Jones, "Knotts noted the limited use which the government made of the signals 

from [the] particular beeper, and reserved the question whether different 

constitutional principles may be applicable to dragnet-type law enforcement 

practices of the type that GPS tracking [makes] possible . . . ." Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 

952 n.6 (internal citations and quotations omitted). Moreover, no pre-Jones 

precedent in this federal circuit extended Knotts or Karo to the installation and 

monitoring of a GPS device. We conclude Knotts and Karo did not constitute 

binding precedent that authorized law enforcement's warrantless actions in this 

case. 

Having found no support in federal jurisprudence for the State's use of the GPS in 

this case, we turn now to South Carolina law. 

Prior to Jones, no South Carolina appellate decision addressed the constitutionality 

of the warrantless installation and monitoring of a GPS device. There is, however, 

a state statute that squarely addresses law enforcement's use of electronic tracking 

devices. In 2002, as a part of the South Carolina Homeland Security Act,6

 the 

legislature enacted a statute that provides that "[t]he Attorney General or any 

solicitor may make application to a judge of competent jurisdiction for an order 

authorizing or approving the installation and use of a mobile tracking device by the 

6

 Act No. 339, 2002 S.C. Acts 3619. 
 

 

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division or any law enforcement entity of a 

political subdivision of this State." S.C. Code Ann. § 17-30-140(A). This 

statutory requirement "provide[s] law enforcement . . . with the proper means and 

tools to enable them to protect and defend South Carolina and her citizens while 

preserving individual constitutional rights and liberties." Act No. 339, 2002 S.C. 

Acts 3625. 

At the suppression hearing, the State acknowledged to the trial court that the 

officers involved in the investigation did not know about this statutory requirement 

but sought to justify the failure to obtain a court order pursuant to the statute on the 

basis that the officers "didn't know they had to." We reject this proposition, for it 

is a well-established principle, often advanced by the State in criminal 

prosecutions, "that ignorance of the law is no excuse." State v. Binnarr, 400 S.C. 

156, 160 n.7, 733 S.E.2d 890, 892 n.7 (2012). There would be a "fundamental 

unfairness [in] holding citizens to 'the traditional rule that ignorance of the law is 

no excuse,' while allowing those 'entrusted to enforce' the law to be ignorant of it." 

United States v. Chanthasouxat, 342 F.3d 1271, 1280 (11th Cir. 2003) (internal 

citation omitted) (quoting Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184, 196 (1998)). In 

fact, the officers' lack of knowledge of the existence of section 17-30-140 is 

exacerbated in this case because the statute had been in effect for almost six years 

at the time the NCPD was investigating Adams. 

Because the only binding law in this case was a statute that forbade law 

enforcement officers from installing a GPS device on Adams' car without court 

authorization, there is no support for the State's invocation of the good-faith 

reliance exception as an additional sustaining ground to uphold the conviction.7 

IV. 

The exclusionary rule is a judicially created remedy for a Fourth Amendment 

violation. The primary rationale for the exclusionary rule is to deter police 

7 Accord State v. Mitchell, 323 P.3d 69, 78 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2014) (rejecting 

application of the good-faith exception rule because "no binding Arizona or 

Supreme Court authority explicitly authorized law enforcement to trespass onto 

private property to obtain information"); People v. LeFlore, 996 N.E.2d 678, 691 

(Ill. 2013) (rejecting application of the good-faith exception in a GPS case); State 

v. Allen, 997 N.E.2d 621, 626–27 (Ohio Ct. App. 2013) (rejecting application of 

the good-faith exception in light of the "unsettled nature of the issue surrounding 

Fourth Amendment constraints on GPS attachment and tracking" prior to Jones). 
misconduct. Where there is no misconduct, and thus no deterrent purpose to be 

served, suppression of the evidence is an unduly harsh sanction. Other judicially 

created rules—such as the intervening acts doctrine and the good-faith reliance 

exception—have developed to avoid suppression. As discussed above, we are 

constrained to reject the State's reliance on the intervening acts doctrine and the 

good-faith reliance exception. We do not make our decision lightly. In reversing 

the court of appeals, we are mindful of and respect greatly the burdens faced daily 

by our state's law enforcement officers. We are guided by the rule of law, which 

provides no basis to uphold the denial of Adams' motion to suppress. In law, the 

ends do not justify the means. 

REVERSED AND REMANDED. 

TOAL, C.J., PLEICONES, HEARN, JJ., and Acting Justice James E. Moore, 

concur.