[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as 

State v. Johnson, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-5021.] 

NOTICE

This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in 

an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested 

to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 

65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or 

other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be 

made before the opinion is published. 

SLIP OPINION NO. 2014-OHIO-5021 

THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLEE, v. JOHNSON, APPELLANT. 

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 

may be cited as State v. Johnson, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-5021.] 

Criminal law—Fourth Amendment—Searches—Good-faith exception to the 

exclusionary rules—GPS tracking device—Binding appellate precedent—

Good-faith, objectively reasonable belief that placing GPS tracking device 

on a vehicle, based on binding appellate precedent, would not have an 

appreciable effect on deterring violations of the Fourth Amendment. 

(No. 2013-1973—Submitted September 24, 2014—Decided November 13, 2014.) 

APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Butler County, 

No. 2012-11-235, 2013-Ohio-4865. 

_______________ 

O’DONNELL, J. 

{¶ 1} Sudinia Johnson appeals from a judgment of the Twelfth District 

Court of Appeals which affirmed his conviction for trafficking in cocaine and 

held that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule permitted the 

admission of evidence obtained from a global-positioning-system (“GPS”) 
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2 

tracking device that Detective Mike Hackney had placed on Johnson’s vehicle 

without obtaining a search warrant. 

{¶ 2} The United States Supreme Court crafted the exclusionary rule to 

deter violations of the rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United 

States Constitution, but it has recognized that the costs to society outweigh any 

deterrent benefit of excluding evidence obtained in a search that appeared to 

police to be constitutional. Thus, in Davis v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 131 

S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011), the court declined to apply the exclusionary 

rule to a search conducted in objectively reasonable, good-faith reliance on 

binding appellate precedent that was later overruled. This exception to the 

exclusionary rule—the good-faith reliance on precedent—is at issue here. 

{¶ 3} In October 2008, when Detective Hackney attached a GPS tracking 

device to Johnson’s van, two cases from the United States Supreme Court—

United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983), and 

United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984)—

supported Hackney’s objectively reasonable belief that attaching a tracking device 

to a vehicle did not violate any reasonable expectation of privacy that Johnson 

had, either in the undercarriage of his van or in his whereabouts while driving on 

public streets and highways. In addition, Hackney relied in good faith on advice 

received from an assistant prosecuting attorney, from fellow members of law 

enforcement, and in training seminars that this practice did not implicate Fourth 

Amendment protections. 

{¶ 4} In United States v. Jones, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 

911 (2012), decided four years after Hackney put the GPS tracking device on 

Johnson’s van, the court held that the attachment of such a device to an 

individual’s vehicle is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. 

Notwithstanding Jones, which clarifies the law going forward, because Knotts and 

Karo served as binding appellate precedent to justify placing GPS tracking 
January Term, 2014 

3

devices on suspects’ vehicles without obtaining a search warrant, the good-faith 

exception to the exclusionary rule applies, and therefore, exclusion of the 

evidence obtained by police in this case is not warranted. 

{¶ 5} Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the appellate court. 

Facts and Procedural History 

{¶ 6} In October 2008, Detective Hackney of the Butler County Sheriff's 

Department received information from an informant that Johnson had recently 

sold multiple kilos of cocaine, that he would soon travel to Chicago to obtain 

seven more kilos, and that he would transport the cocaine in a van. Hackney had 

received similar information from two other informants in the six months prior to 

this, and he knew that Johnson owned a white Chevy van. 

{¶ 7} Relying on his understanding that a search warrant was not needed, 

Hackney did not obtain a warrant before he attached a GPS tracking device to 

Johnson’s van. Rather, on the evening of October 23, 2008, he and two other 

officers went to Johnson’s neighborhood in Hamilton, Ohio, and while the other 

officers seized Johnson’s trash, Hackney located Johnson’s van, which was 

parked on the street, and attached a battery-powered GPS tracking device to its 

undercarriage. The device was “probably no bigger than a pager” and was sealed 

in a magnetic case, and it did not need to be hard wired to the van’s electrical 

systems. It permitted Hackney to remotely track and record the van’s movements 

in real time using a secure website. 

{¶ 8} The van stayed near Hamilton for five days, but on October 28, 

2008, Hackney logged onto the website and located the van in a parking lot at a 

shopping center in Calumet City, Illinois. He then arranged for Rudy Medellin, a 

retired Immigration and Customs officer living in the Chicago area, to go to the 

shopping center and verify that Johnson’s van was there. 

{¶ 9} Medellin located the van, used the license plate to confirm it 

belonged to Johnson, and followed it to a nearby residence in Chicago. Medellin 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

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watched Johnson walk out of the residence carrying a package and enter the van. 

Medellin then saw the garage door open and another man, later identified as Otis 

Kelly, drive out in a passenger car bearing Ohio license plates. Medellin followed 

both vehicles as they traveled toward Ohio, and Hackney monitored the van’s 

movements using the GPS device. 

{¶ 10} The car and van separated before crossing into Ohio. Hackney 

directed officers to stop the vehicles “if they were able to find probable cause to 

make a stop.” Deputy Daren Rhoads saw Johnson improperly cross lanes to make 

a turn and pulled the van over. After officers removed Johnson from the vehicle 

at gunpoint, he consented to a search of the van, but no drugs were found. Other 

officers stopped Kelly for following too closely behind another vehicle. A search 

of Kelly’s car revealed a concealed compartment in the trunk; officers used a key 

from Johnson’s key ring to open it and found seven kilograms of cocaine. 

{¶ 11} A grand jury indicted Johnson for one count of trafficking in 

cocaine and one count of possession of cocaine, each with a major-drug-offender 

specification, as well as one count of having a weapon while under a disability. 

He moved to suppress the evidence against him, asserting that the warrantless 

placement and monitoring of the GPS tracking device on his van violated his 

Fourth Amendment rights. 

{¶ 12} At the suppression hearing, Hackney testified that he had attended 

training seminars on police use of GPS tracking devices and had consulted with 

assistant prosecutor Dave Kash, fellow officers and supervisors, and other lawenforcement agencies about the legality of using GPS devices. He stated that “it 

was kind of common knowledge among other drug units or talking to other drug 

units that as long as the GPS is not hard wired, as long as it is placed on—in a 

public area, removed in a public area, it is basically a tool or an extension of 

surveillance.” 
January Term, 2014 

5

{¶ 13} The trial court denied the motion to suppress. Johnson pleaded no 

contest to trafficking in cocaine and possession of cocaine with major-drugoffender specifications, and at a bench trial, the court acquitted him of having a 

weapon while under a disability. The court merged the convictions as allied 

offenses and imposed an aggregate 15-year sentence. 

{¶ 14} The Twelfth District Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of his 

motion to suppress, holding that the placement of a GPS tracking device on a 

vehicle is not a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. 190 Ohio App.3d 

750, 2010-Ohio-5808, 944 N.E.2d 270 (12th Dist.), ¶ 47. 

{¶ 15} We accepted Johnson’s discretionary appeal. 128 Ohio St.3d 1425, 

2011-Ohio-1049, 943 N.E.2d 572. In line with the United States Supreme Court’s 

decision in Jones, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911, which held that 

attaching a GPS tracking device to an individual’s vehicle is a search within the 

meaning of the Fourth Amendment, we vacated the court of appeals’ judgment 

and remanded the matter to the trial court for application of Jones. 131 Ohio 

St.3d 301, 2012-Ohio-975, 964 N.E.2d 426. 

{¶ 16} On remand, the trial court found that placing the GPS tracking 

device on Johnson’s van violated the Fourth Amendment. However, it declined to 

suppress the evidence against Johnson based on the good-faith exception to the 

exclusionary rule, concluding that “the deterrence benefit [of] exclusion in this 

case of non-culpable, non-flagrant police conduct does not outweigh the heavy 

costs of exclusion to society and the judicial system. * * * The Court finds that 

the officers acted in good faith * * * and the evidence will be admitted at trial.” 

{¶ 17} Johnson again pleaded no contest to trafficking in cocaine and 

possession of cocaine with major-drug-offender specifications, and the court 

merged his convictions as allied offenses and sentenced him to ten years in prison. 

{¶ 18} The court of appeals affirmed, applying the good-faith exception in 

“a case-by-case approach examining the culpability and conduct of law 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

6 

enforcement.” 12th Dist. Butler No. 2012-11-235, 2013-Ohio-4865, 1 N.E.3d 

491, ¶ 23. The court explained that “[a]s of October 23, 2008, no court had ruled 

that the warrantless installation and monitoring of GPS devices on vehicles that 

remained on public roadways was a violation of the Fourth Amendment,” federal 

circuit courts had upheld the practice, and according to Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 

S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55, Johnson lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in 

his movements on public roads. Id. at ¶ 26. Thus, based on “the legal landscape,” 

id. at ¶ 30, and Hackney’s good-faith attempts to determine the legality of 

attaching a GPS tracking device to a vehicle, the appellate court concluded that 

law enforcement had not exhibited any culpability in violating Johnson’s Fourth 

Amendment rights, and the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule therefore 

precluded suppression of the drug evidence, id. at ¶ 31. 

{¶ 19} On appeal to this court, Johnson maintains that the United States 

Supreme Court has not applied the good-faith exception to a police officer’s 

reliance on a single conversation with a prosecutor and the prevailing 

understanding of law enforcement. He argues that no binding appellate precedent 

permitted the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices on vehicles in Ohio, and he 

notes that cases from the Second, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh District Courts of 

Appeals have held that the good-faith exception does not apply in the absence of 

binding precedent from the appellate district, this court, the Sixth Circuit, or the 

United States Supreme Court. He emphasizes that the good-faith exception to the 

exclusionary rule has only been applied when a third party made a mistake that 

invalidates the search, not, as here, when the officer conducting the search errs, 

and that there is no evidence that Hackney was even aware of any caselaw 

supporting his decision to install the GPS tracking device on the van. Johnson 

argues that the police cannot rely in good faith on nonbinding case authority or a 

prevailing understanding of the law when the question remains open in the 

officer’s jurisdiction. He also suggests that the Twelfth District has created a new 
January Term, 2014 

7

exception to the exclusionary rule, shifting to him the burden to prove the bad 

faith of police in order to suppress evidence obtained in violation of the 

Constitution. 

{¶ 20} The state responds that the exclusionary rule is intended only to 

deter deliberate, reckless, and grossly or systematically negligent police conduct, 

but at the time of the search, no court had held that the Fourth Amendment 

required a warrant before a GPS tracking device could be placed on a vehicle. 

Rather, courts had construed Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 

55, which was then binding precedent, to permit the practice. According to the 

state, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies, because Hackney, 

based on consultations with a prosecutor and other police officers, had an 

objectively reasonable good-faith belief that no warrant was needed, and a 

reasonable officer could not have foreseen that the Supreme Court would rely on 

a technical trespass to determine that a search had occurred. And the state asserts 

that the search was reasonable, claiming no warrant was required to attach the 

GPS tracking device, because the automobile exception to the warrant 

requirement permitted a search of the van on a showing of probable cause. 

{¶ 21} Accordingly, this case concerns whether the good-faith exception 

to the exclusionary rule applies in this case to preclude suppression of evidence 

obtained through the use of a GPS tracking device without first obtaining a 

warrant. 

Law and Analysis 

{¶ 22} The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states: 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 

houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and 

seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but 

upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

8 

particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons 

or things to be seized. 

{¶ 23} The Supreme Court initially construed the Fourth Amendment to 

protect against searches and seizures of the person and trespasses against private 

property. It explained in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 

L.Ed. 746 (1886), that the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures 

protected a person’s “indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty, and 

private property,” id. at 630, and it relied on the principle rooted in English 

common law that “ ‘every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a 

trespass,’ ” id. at 627, quoting Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 

(K.B.1765). 

{¶ 24} In Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 

944 (1928), the court continued the focus on the law of trespass when it 

considered whether an early form of electronic surveillance—a wiretap—was a 

search or seizure for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when police has not 

trespassed on or against private property. It explained, “The amendment itself 

shows that the search is to be of material things—the person, the house, his 

papers, or his effects,” id. at 464, not listening to someone’s voice, and it 

concluded that there is no Fourth Amendment violation “unless there has been an 

official search and seizure of his person or such a seizure of his papers or his 

tangible material effects or an actual physical invasion of his house ‘or curtilage’ 

for the purpose of making a seizure,” id. at 466. Using wiretaps attached to 

telephone wires on public streets therefore was not a search, because “[t]here was 

no entry of the houses or offices of the defendants.” Id. at 464. 

{¶ 25} And applying the trespass doctrine in Goldman v. United States, 

316 U.S. 129, 62 S.Ct. 993, 86 L.Ed. 1322 (1942), the court upheld the police use 

of a detectaphone to eavesdrop on conversations through the wall of an adjoining 
January Term, 2014 

9

office without trespassing on private property. Thus, as the court later explained 

in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001), 

“well into the 20th century, [the court’s] Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was 

tied to common-law trespass.” 

{¶ 26} But over the next 25 years, the court’s cases “increasingly 

discarded fictional and procedural barriers rested on property concepts” and came 

to “recognize[] that the principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the 

protection of privacy rather than property.” Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 

304, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967). 

{¶ 27} The court revisited the legality of wiretaps in Katz v. United States, 

389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), a case involving the 

government’s use of an electronic listening and recording device attached to the 

outside of a public telephone booth. The court declared that “the underpinnings 

of Olmstead and Goldman have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that 

the ‘trespass’ doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling,” 

id. at 353, “[f]or the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” id. at 351. 

It therefore held that “[t]he Government’s activities in electronically listening to 

and recording the petitioner’s words violated the privacy upon which he 

justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a ‘search 

and seizure’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 353. 

{¶ 28} The court later came to apply the analysis of Justice Harlan’s 

concurrence in Katz, which explained that a Fourth Amendment violation occurs 

when the government invades a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. 

California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 211, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986), 

quoting Katz at 360 (Harlan, J., concurring) (“The touchstone of Fourth 

Amendment analysis is whether a person has a ‘constitutionally protected 

reasonable expectation of privacy’ ”). 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

10 

Knotts and Karo 

{¶ 29} The Supreme Court applied these standards to the government’s 

use of electronic tracking devices in United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 

S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983). In that case, officers suspected Tristan 

Armstrong of purchasing chloroform from the Hawkins Chemical Company in 

Minneapolis, Minnesota, to manufacture illegal drugs, and with the company’s 

consent, the officers arranged for an electronic beeper to be placed in the next 

container of chloroform that Armstrong purchased. Using visual surveillance and 

following radio signals emitted from the beeper, officers followed Armstrong to 

the home of Darryl Petschen, who then drove the container across the Wisconsin 

state line and eluded the pursuing agents. However, officers used the signals from 

the beeper to trace the container to a secluded cabin occupied by Leroy Knotts, 

and they obtained a search warrant, which disclosed a clandestine drug laboratory 

in the cabin. The trial court denied Knotts’s motion to suppress, but the Eighth 

Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that officers had violated Knotts’s 

reasonable expectation of privacy. 

{¶ 30} The Supreme Court rejected this analysis, explaining: 

A person travelling in an automobile on public 

thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his 

movements from one place to another. When Petschen travelled 

over the public streets he voluntarily conveyed to anyone who 

wanted to look the fact that he was travelling over particular roads 

in a particular direction, the fact of whatever stops he made, and 

the fact of his final destination when he exited from public roads 

onto private property. 
January Term, 2014 

11

Id. at 281-282. Although the court recognized that Knotts had a reasonable 

expectation of privacy in his cabin, “no such expectation of privacy extended to 

the visual observation of Petschen’s automobile arriving on his premises after 

leaving a public highway, nor to movements of objects such as the drum of 

chloroform outside the cabin in the ‘open fields.’ ” Id. at 282. The court noted: 

Visual surveillance from public places along Petschen’s 

route or adjoining Knotts’ premises would have sufficed to reveal 

all of these facts to the police. The fact that the officers in this case 

relied not only on visual surveillance, but on the use of the beeper 

to signal the presence of Petschen’s automobile to the police 

receiver, does not alter the situation. Nothing in the Fourth 

Amendment prohibited the police from augmenting the sensory 

faculties bestowed upon them at birth with such enhancement as 

science and technology afforded them in this case. 

Id. 

{¶ 31} The next year, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Karo, 

468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984). In that case, Drug 

Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) agents learned that James Karo, Richard 

Horton, and William Harley had purchased 50 gallons of ether from a government 

informant in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The informant suspected that the ether 

would be used to extract cocaine from clothing imported into the United States, 

and he permitted government agents to install a tracking beeper in one of the 

containers before Karo picked it up. Using the beeper, agents traced the container 

to various dwellings, to a specific locker in a commercial storage facility, and 

then to a self-storage facility. From there, agents observed Gene Rhoads retrieve 

the containers, and using visual surveillance and the beeper, they followed his 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

12 

truck to a house in Taos, New Mexico. Officers watched this building and used 

the beeper to confirm that the container remained inside, but when they observed 

the windows open on a cold, windy day, they believed that the ether was being 

used. The agents then obtained a warrant, and a search disclosed cocaine and 

laboratory equipment inside. 

{¶ 32} The government indicted Karo, Horton, Harley, Rhodes, Michael 

Steele, and Evan Roth, but the trial court suppressed the drug evidence on the 

grounds that the initial warrant to install the beeper was invalid. The Ninth 

Circuit Court of Appeals held that a violation of the Fourth Amendment occurred 

when the can with the beeper was transferred to Karo, not when the beeper was 

placed in the can. 

{¶ 33} On review, the Supreme Court held that the installation of the 

beeper had not violated any Fourth Amendment interest of the suspects: 

The can into which the beeper was placed belonged at the time to 

the DEA, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that 

respondents then had any legitimate expectation of privacy in it. 

The ether and the original 10 cans, on the other hand, belonged to, 

and were in the possession of, [the informant], who had given his 

consent to any invasion of those items that occurred. 

Id. at 711. The court emphasized that no search had occurred, because the 

transfer of the container of ether conveyed no information that the suspect 

intended to keep private. Nor had a seizure occurred: 

Although the can may have contained an unknown and unwanted 

foreign object, it cannot be said that anyone’s possessory interest 

was interfered with in a meaningful way. At most, there was a 
January Term, 2014 

13

technical trespass on the space occupied by the beeper. The 

existence of a physical trespass is only marginally relevant to the 

question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated, 

however, for an actual trespass is neither necessary nor sufficient 

to establish a constitutional violation. 

Id. at 712-713. 

{¶ 34} The constitutional violation occurred, the court explained, because 

DEA agents had monitored the beeper while it was in places not open to visual 

surveillance, “reveal[ing] a critical fact about the interior of the premises that the 

Government is extremely interested in knowing and that it could not have 

otherwise obtained without a warrant. * * * [T]he monitoring indicated that the 

beeper was inside the house, a fact that could not have been visually verified.” Id. 

at 715. It concluded, “Indiscriminate monitoring of property that has been 

withdrawn from public view would present far too serious a threat to privacy 

interests in the home to escape entirely some sort of Fourth Amendment 

oversight. * * * In sum, we discern no reason for deviating from the general rule 

that a search of a house should be conducted pursuant to a warrant.” Id. at 716-

718. 

Warrantless Use of GPS Tracking Devices 

{¶ 35} Although GPS tracking devices rely on different technology than 

electronic beepers, courts nonetheless applied the principles articulated in Knotts

and Karo in determining whether the use of such a device implicated the 

protections of the Fourth Amendment. 

{¶ 36} In United States v. McIver, 186 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir.1999), 

overruled in part by United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 688 F.3d 1087, 1091 (9th 

Cir.2012), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument that evidence 

obtained following use of a GPS device to track McIver’s vehicle should be 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

14 

suppressed because police committed a trespass in attaching the unit, and it held 

that McIver had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the undercarriage of his 

vehicle. Similarly, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. 

Garcia, 474 F.3d 994 (7th Cir.2007), cited Knotts and Karo in support of its 

conclusion that attaching a GPS device to a vehicle did not constitute a search or a 

seizure. State courts also determined that the warrantless use of a GPS device to 

track a suspect did not violate Fourth Amendment protections. See, e.g., Stone v. 

State, 178 Md.App. 428, 448, 941 A.2d 1238 (2008); People v. Weaver, 52 

A.D.3d 138, 141-142, 860 N.Y.S.2d 223 (2008), reversed on state law grounds,

12 N.Y.3d 433, 882 N.Y.S.2d 357, 909 N.E.2d 1195 (2009); State v. Jackson, 111 

Wash.App. 660, 688, 46 P.3d 257 (2002), aff’d, 150 Wash.2d 251, 76 P.3d 217 

(2003); People v. Zichwic, 94 Cal.App.4th 944, 956, 114 Cal.Rptr.2d 733 (2001). 

{¶ 37} And even after Hackney attached the GPS tracking device to 

Johnson’s van in October 2008, courts continued to hold that the Fourth 

Amendment did not require police to obtain a warrant before using a GPS device 

to track a suspect’s vehicle. See, e.g., United States v. Hernandez, 647 F.3d 216, 

220 (5th Cir.2011); United States v. Marquez, 605 F.3d 604, 610 (8th Cir.2010); 

United States v. Smith, 387 Fed.Appx. 918, 921 (11th Cir.2010). 

{¶ 38} Only the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in 

United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544, 555 (D.C.Cir.2010)—entered almost two 

years after the use of the GPS device in this case—broke this consensus and 

concluded that police must obtain a warrant before using a GPS device to track a 

suspect’s “movements 24 hours a day for 28 days as he moved among scores of 

places, thereby discovering the totality and pattern of his movements from place 

to place to place.” Id. at 558. And even there, the court distinguished Knotts

based only on the extensive duration of surveillance in that case. 

{¶ 39} The Supreme Court agreed to review the decision in Maynard in 

Jones, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911, but rather than apply the 
January Term, 2014 

15

Katz standard and consider whether the government violated the accused’s 

reasonable expectation of privacy, the court returned to the earlier Fourth 

Amendment jurisprudence that was tied to common-law trespass, noting that “for 

most of our history the Fourth Amendment was understood to embody a particular 

concern for government trespass upon the areas (‘persons, houses, papers, and 

effects’) it enumerates. Katz did not repudiate that understanding.” Id. at 950. 

The court therefore concluded, “The Government physically occupied private 

property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a 

physical intrusion would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of 

the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.” Id. at 949. Thus, when police 

attach a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s vehicle, it is a search implicating the 

protections of the Fourth Amendment. 

The Exclusionary Rule and the Good-Faith Exception 

{¶ 40} In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 394, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 

L.Ed. 652 (1914), the Supreme Court announced the exclusionary rule, barring 

the use of evidence secured by an unconstitutional search and seizure, and it 

extended the exclusionary rule to the states in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 

81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). But exclusion of evidence for a violation 

of the Fourth Amendment “is ‘not a personal constitutional right,’ nor is it 

designed to ‘redress the injury’ occasioned by an unconstitutional search.” Davis, 

__U.S.__, 131 S.Ct. at 2426, 180 L.Ed.2d 285, quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 

465, 486, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976). Rather, as the court explained 

in Davis, the exclusionary rule’s “sole purpose * * * is to deter future violations 

of the Fourth Amendment,” id. at 2426, and “[w]here suppression fails to yield 

‘appreciable deterrence,’ exclusion is ‘clearly * * * unwarranted’ ” (ellipsis sic), 

id. at 2427, quoting United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 454, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 

L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976). 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

16 

{¶ 41} In Davis, the court considered whether to apply the exclusionary 

rule when the police conduct a search in compliance with binding precedent that 

is later overruled. Police arrested Stella Owens for driving while intoxicated and 

Willie Davis, a passenger, for giving a false name, and officers relied on the 

Eleventh Circuit’s interpretation of New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 

2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), to search the passenger compartment of Owen’s 

vehicle. The officers found a firearm in Davis’s coat pocket, which resulted in his 

conviction on a federal firearms charge. During the pendency of Davis’s appeal, 

the Supreme Court decided Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 

L.Ed.2d 485 (2009), which limited Belton and adopted a new rule under which the 

search of an automobile incident to an arrest is constitutional only if genuine 

safety or evidentiary concerns justify the search. Applying Gant, the Eleventh 

Circuit determined that the search of the vehicle violated Davis’s Fourth 

Amendment rights, but it declined to apply the exclusionary rule and upheld his 

conviction. 

{¶ 42} The Supreme Court affirmed, noting that exclusion “exacts a heavy 

toll on both the judicial system and society at large”: it “requires courts to ignore 

reliable, trustworthy evidence bearing on guilt or innocence” and often 

“suppress[es] the truth and set[s] the criminal loose in the community without 

punishment.” Davis at 2427. However, the court recognized that “[w]hen the 

police exhibit ‘deliberate,’ ‘reckless,’ or ‘grossly negligent’ disregard for Fourth 

Amendment rights, the deterrent value of exclusion is strong and tends to 

outweigh the resulting costs.” Id., quoting Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 

135, 144, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009). But the deterrent value of 

exclusion does not outweigh its costs “when the police act with an objectively 

‘reasonable good-faith belief’ that their conduct is lawful.” Id., quoting United 

States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). The 

court therefore applied the good-faith exception and held that “searches conducted 
January Term, 2014 

17

in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject 

to the exclusionary rule.” Id. at 2423-2424. 

Application 

{¶ 43} In the aftermath of Jones, police officers can no longer harbor a 

good-faith belief that attaching a GPS tracking device to a vehicle is not a search 

for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Nonetheless, at the time Detective 

Hackney attached the GPS device to Johnson’s van, he acted with an objectively 

reasonable good-faith belief that his actions comported with the Fourth 

Amendment. 

{¶ 44} The evidence shows that Hackney had a good-faith belief that he 

did not need to obtain a warrant before placing the GPS device on Johnson’s 

vehicle, because he relied on advice he had received from an assistant prosecuting 

attorney and fellow members of law enforcement and on information he had 

received during training seminars. See United States v. Katzin, 769 F.3d 163, 

181, 2014 WL 4851779 (3d Cir.2014) (en banc) (noting that agents had consulted 

with an Assistant United States Attorney and followed “[Department of Justice] 

policy at the time that a warrant was not required to install a battery-powered GPS 

on a vehicle parked on a public street and to surveil it on public roads”). There is 

no indication that Hackney ever had reason to question the lawfulness of his 

actions. 

{¶ 45} Further, the belief that his actions were lawful was objectively 

reasonable. At the time he attached the GPS tracking device to Johnson’s van, 

binding appellate precedent from the United States Supreme Court in Knotts, 460 

U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55, and Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 

3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530, had suggested that Johnson lacked a reasonable 

expectation of privacy in either the undercarriage of his van or in his movements 

on public roads and highways that were visible to members of the public, and 

Karo had stated that “an actual trespass is neither necessary nor sufficient to 
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18 

establish a constitutional violation.” Id. at 713. In addition, decisions from the 

Seventh and Ninth Circuits had relied on Knotts and Karo to hold that police 

could attach a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s vehicle without a warrant. 

Thus, as the Sixth Circuit recently explained, “pre-Jones cases, authorizing the 

use of tracking devices like beepers, provided binding authority for the 

warrantless use of GPS trackers. As such, officers relying on these earlier cases 

were still within the scope of the good-faith safe harbor, even though the 

technology described by the cases was not exactly the same.” United States v. 

Fisher, 745 F.3d 200, 205 (6th Cir.2014). And that analysis is applicable here. 

{¶ 46} Other cases decided after Jones have also recognized that it was 

objectively reasonable for police officers to conclude that installing a GPS 

tracking device did not implicate any Fourth Amendment right. See, e.g., Katzin, 

769 F.3d at 182 (explaining that Knotts and Karo provided “hornbook law” on 

electronic surveillance of vehicles, and agents thus had no reason to believe that 

installing and monitoring a GPS tracking device was illegal); United States v. 

Aguiar, 737 F.3d 251, 262 (2d Cir.2013) (“sufficient Supreme Court precedent 

existed at the time the GPS device was placed for the officers here to reasonably 

conclude a warrant was not necessary”); United States v. Stephens, 764 F.3d 327, 

337 (4th Cir.2014) (“use of the GPS was objectively reasonable because of the 

binding appellate precedent of Knotts”); Kelly v. State, 436 Md. 406, 426, 82 A.3d 

205 (2013) (“before Jones, binding appellate precedent in Maryland, namely 

Knotts, authorized the GPS tracking of a vehicle on public roads”). 

{¶ 47} And it is significant that the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones

unexpectedly departed from the framework established by Katz, 389 U.S. 347, 88 

S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, when it relied on the property-law based approach 

barring government trespasses against personal effects that Katz had rejected. 

Karo suggested that attaching the GPS tracking device to the undercarriage of the 

van would not constitute a search or seizure, because although a “technical 
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19

trespass,” it had not interfered with Johnson’s possessory interest in the van in any 

meaningful way. 468 U.S. at 712, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530. And Knotts

suggested that monitoring the van’s location did not amount to a search, because 

an occupant of a vehicle lacks a reasonable expectation of privacy in his 

whereabouts while driving on public streets and highways. But “Jones

fundamentally altered this legal landscape by reviving—after a forty-five year 

hibernation—the Supreme Court’s prior trespass theory.” Katzin, 769 F.3d at 

181. 

{¶ 48} As the Sixth Circuit noted in Fisher, “[a] reasonable officer would 

not have been able to anticipate this shift in the Supreme Court’s Fourth 

Amendment jurisprudence,” 745 F.3d at 204, fn. 4, and the good-faith exception 

should be applied “where new developments in the law have upended the settled 

rules on which the police relied,” United States v. Sparks, 711 F.3d 58, 68 (1st 

Cir.2013). 

Conclusion 

{¶ 49} Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones, its opinions in 

Knotts and Karo provided binding appellate precedent in this state to support the 

objectively reasonable conclusion that placing a GPS tracking device on a 

suspect’s vehicle did not implicate any protections of the Fourth Amendment. 

Searches conducted in objectively reasonable, good-faith reliance on this binding 

appellate precedent are therefore not subject to the exclusionary rule, even though 

hindsight subsequently reveals that reliance to have been misplaced. 

{¶ 50} Here, Detective Hackney acted with a good-faith, objectively 

reasonable belief that it would not violate Johnson’s Fourth Amendment rights to 

attach a GPS tracking device to the undercarriage of his van, based on the state of 

the law in October 2008. Suppression of the evidence obtained as a result of the 

GPS device would have no appreciable effect in deterring violations of the Fourth 
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Amendment, and therefore the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule 

applies in these circumstances. 

{¶ 51} For these reasons, the judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed. 

Judgment affirmed. 

O’CONNOR, C.J., and KENNEDY, FRENCH, and O’NEILL, JJ., concur. 

PFEIFER and LANZINGER, JJ., concur in judgment only. 

____________________ 

Michael T. Gmoser, Butler County Prosecuting Attorney, and Michael A. 

Oster Jr. and Lina N. Alkamhawi, Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys, for appellee. 

Arenstein & Gallagher, William R. Gallagher, and Elizabeth Conkin, for 

appellant. 

Michael DeWine, Attorney General, and Eric E. Murphy, State Solicitor, 

urging affirmance for Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine. 

Gregg Marx, Fairfield County Prosecuting Attorney; Timothy J. McGinty, 

Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney, and Katherine Mullin, Assistant 

Prosecuting Attorney; and Ron O’Brien, Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney, 

and Steven L. Taylor, Chief Counsel, Appellate Division, urging affirmance for 

amici curiae Prosecuting Attorneys Association, Fairfield County Prosecuting 

Attorney, Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney, and Franklin County 

Prosecuting Attorney. 

Pinales, Stachler, Young, Burrell & Crouse Co., L.P.A., and Candace C. 

Crouse, urging reversal for amicus curiae National Association of Criminal 

Defense Lawyers. 

______________________