Source: https://www.tdcaa.com/journal/so-tell-us-already-do-we-have-to-get-a-warrant-or-not/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 04:37:19+00:00

Document:
So tell us already! Do we have to get a warrant or not?
A recent case from the United States Supreme Court, United States v. Jones,1 has created quite a stir over just exactly what the case might mean.2 At issue was the constitutionality of police action in installing and monitoring global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices in criminal investigations. All the justices agreed that the police action in Jones constituted a “search,” but they did not all agree on what conduct constituted the “search” and for what reason.3 The case produced three opinions, two majorities, and an additional test for determining if a search has occurred. But no one on the court addressed what was, for some, the most pressing question: whether installing or monitoring a GPS device requires probable cause and a warrant.
Post-Katz cases adopted the analysis of the concurrence in Katz, which found a search occurred because the police action violated a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”14 Until Jones, nearly everyone understood that Katz replaced the old common-law trespass test with the newer reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test.
Jones is sure to be credited for this newly articulated black letter law. Also, after Jones, there are sure to be more debates over whether certain police conduct constitutes a “trespass” at common law. In applying the test to the facts in Jones, Scalia and the four other justices who joined him (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and Sotomayor) found that the officers’ installation and use of the GPS tracking device was a common-law trespass onto one of the protected areas enumerated in the Fourth Amendment (an “effect”) to obtain information.24 Consequently, a search occurred. Scalia’s opinion did not address whether it was also a search under the Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy analysis.25 And the opinion did not address the larger question of whether installation and monitoring of a GPS tracking device required probable cause and a warrant.
So is a warrant required?
None of the opinions in Jones addresses whether a warrant was required. The two majority holdings—that long-term monitoring or installation followed by monitoring constitutes a search—answer only whether the Fourth Amendment is implicated. Warrants are generally required for a search not to be an “unreasonable search,” but there are notable exceptions.34 The United States argued that there should be an exception in Jones, but the Supreme Court refused to consider the argument because the government had not argued it in the court of appeals.35 And the law prohibits parties from laying behind the log and waiting until a lower court has already ruled on an issue before advancing a new argument. So that issue was left for a future case.
But sometimes, GPS is needed to gather the probable cause required for a warrant. In such cases, our best argument39 that a warrant is not required arises when officers do not have to install a tracking device and can merely monitor an already existing device or obtain data from GPS-enabled smartphones or vehicles with On-Star on a short-term basis. Although no opinion expressly waives the requirement of a warrant for short-term monitoring, the alignment of the justices in Jones suggests that the current court would likely vote that way. Alito and the three justices who joined him decided that, under Katz, short-term monitoring of a GPS device does not constitute a search. When the trespass is taken out of the equation, Scalia’s majority holds that Katz controls. Only one of the justices from Scalia’s majority (other than Justice Sotomayor) would need convincing that short-term monitoring was not a search under Katz (or that an exception to the warrant requirement should apply). Then Alito’s four-judge concurrence would constitute a majority.
1 United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259, 132 S. Ct. 945, 2012 WL 17117 (U.S. 2012).
3 Id., 2012 WL 171117, at *3 & at *11 (Alito, J., concurring).
5 The majority acknowledged in a footnote that the car was registered to Jones’s wife but that he was “the exclusive driver.” The State never argued that this distinction made a difference, and indeed the court did not consider the Fourth Amendment significance of Jones’s status as an owner, either.
6 United States v. Jones, at *2-3.
8 Id. at *3; Id. at *11 (Alito, J., concurring).
10 Id. at *3, 5, 8.
11 Id. at *4; Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31 (2001).
12 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
13 Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967).
14 Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979).
15 Jones, 2012 WL 171117, at *3.
17 U.S. Const. amend IV.
18 Jones, 2012 WL 171117, at *4-6.
20 Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 183 (1984).
21 Id at *6 & n.8.
26 Id. at *11 (Alito, J, concurring).
27 Id. at *15 (Alito, J, concurring).
28 Id. at *17 (Alito, J, concurring).
31 Id. at *8 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
33 Id. at *9 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
34 See, e.g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 153 (1925) (establishing automobile exception).
35 Jones, 2012 WL 171117, at *8.
36 Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 338 (2009).
37 See, e.g., California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 569, 579-80 (1991).
38 Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 18.21, §14.
39 For more educated guesses on how the current justices would rule on the questions left open by Jones, see Tom Goldstein, “Why Jones is still less of a pro-privacy decision than most thought,” (Conclusion slightly revised Jan. 31), SCOTUSblog (Jan. 30, 2012, 10:53 AM), www.scotusblog.com/ 2012/01/why-jones-is-still-less-of-a-pro-privacy-decision-than-most-thought.
40 Jones, 2012 WL 171117, at *17 (Alito, J., concurring).

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