Opinion ID: 2790613
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: GPS Tracking Device

Text: Mr. Hohn filed a pretrial motion to suppress evidence the government obtained through the use of a Global Positioning System (GPS) device attached to his truck. At an evidentiary hearing on the motion, a sheriff’s deputy explained his belief that although a warrant was required to hard-wire a GPS device to a vehicle,2 no warrant was required to install a “slap-on,” battery-powered GPS device which could be attached magnetically to the vehicle. Acting on this understanding, law enforcement officers attached a battery-powered GPS device to Mr. Hohn’s truck beginning on July 24, 2011. They did not obtain a search warrant for the device. Over the course of the investigation, the batteries in the device repeatedly failed and it was necessary to replace them on several occasions. Because the battery replacement had to be accomplished surreptitiously and required knowledge of the truck’s whereabouts, GPS tracking was often unavailable for extended periods of time while the tracking device was unpowered. In all, officers were able to track the whereabouts of Mr. Hohn’s truck for an estimated total of 62 days between July 24 and November 9, 2011. 2 Hard-wiring involves connecting the GPS device to a vehicle’s battery to supply it with power. -3- On November 10, 2011, using information they had received from the battery-operated GPS device and from other sources, the officers obtained a warrant to install hard-wired GPS devices to the truck and to another of Mr. Hohn’s vehicles. But the officers did not have an opportunity to attach a hard-wired device to the truck. They finally removed the battery-powered GPS tracking device on December 23, 2011, when they searched the truck pursuant to a warrant. Mr. Hohn sought to suppress the GPS information obtained from the warrantless use of the GPS tracking device, as well as all information the government subsequently obtained in reliance on the GPS data. The district court concluded that the placement of the device qualified as a warrantless search, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), which was issued after the GPS tracking occurred in this case. See id. at 949 (holding that “the Government’s 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.’” (footnote omitted)). But it further determined that even if the search was unreasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes, the exclusionary rule did not require suppression of the evidence because the officers involved had acted in good faith. It therefore denied the motion to suppress. The exclusionary rule is “a deterrent sanction that bars the prosecution from introducing evidence obtained by way of a Fourth Amendment violation.” Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2419, 2423 (2011). Under the so-called good-faith -4- exception to the exclusionary rule, “searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the . . . rule.” Id. at 2423-24. “Whether the ‘good faith exception’ . . . should be applied is a question of law, subject to de novo review by this Court.” United States v. Burgess, 576 F.3d 1078, 1095 (10th Cir. 2009). We will assume, for purposes of argument, that warrantless use of the battery-powered GPS device was an unreasonable search for Fourth Amendment purposes.3 We must next consider whether the good-faith exception applies. Mr. Hohn contends that the exception does not apply because at the time the officers employed the battery-powered GPS device there was no binding appellate precedent in this circuit from which they could reasonably have concluded their conduct was lawful. We disagree. For purposes of the good-faith exception, “it is self-evident that Supreme Court decisions are binding precedent in every circuit.” United States v. Katzin, 769 F.3d 163, 173 (3d Cir. 2014) (en banc), cert. denied, 2015 WL 732186 (U.S. Feb. 23, 2015) (No. 14-7818). At the time the officers employed the 3 Amici urge us to decide whether the officers’ warrantless use of the GPS tracking device was unreasonable, a question left open in Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 954 (declining to determine whether search occasioned by use of GPS device was reasonable). We find it unnecessary to do so. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 924-25 (1984) (noting that courts have discretion to determine in what order they decide issues involving the good-faith exception). -5- battery-powered GPS device, they could reasonably have relied upon at least two prior Supreme Court decisions to provide authority for their actions. In United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 277 (1983), officers investigating the defendant’s role in manufacturing methamphetamine placed a “beeper” (a form of transmitter that provided radio signals that could be tracked) in a five-gallon drum of chloroform purchased by one of his co-defendants. Officers then followed a car into which the chloroform had been placed, using both virtual surveillance and the beeper’s signals. The officers followed the car until it reached the defendant’s cabin where, after obtaining a warrant to search the premises, they discovered a meth lab. The Supreme Court upheld the warrantless monitoring of the beeper, which led the officers to the cabin. The Court noted that the “surveillance conducted by means of the beeper in this case amounted principally to the following of an automobile on public streets and highways,” and that “[a] 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. Observing that “[n]othing in the Fourth Amendment prohibited the police from augmenting the sensory faculties bestowed upon them at birth” with the technological enhancement provided by the beeper, id. at 282, the Court concluded that “there was neither a ‘search’ nor a ‘seizure’ within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment,” id. at 285. -6- In United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 708 (1984), a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent learned through an informant that the defendants had ordered 50 gallons of ether. With the informant’s consent, DEA agents substituted their own can containing a beeper for one of the cans of ether used to fill the order. Using the beeper and other surveillance methods, the agents tracked the ether shipment for over four months as the defendants moved it to several locations and ultimately to a private residence, where cocaine and laboratory equipment were found and seized. The Supreme Court held that neither the placement of the beeper into the can, nor the can’s transfer to the defendants, constituted a search or seizure. The Court reasoned that “[a]lthough the can may have contained an unknown and unwanted foreign object,” its placement in the container amounted at most to a “technical trespass” to the defendants’ possessory interest, that was “only marginally relevant to the question of whether the Fourth Amendment [had] been violated.” Id. at 712-13. The officers in this case could reasonably have relied on the Court’s holdings in Knotts and Karo to conclude that their warrantless placement of the slap-on, battery-powered GPS device, and their use of the device to monitor the movements of Mr. Hohn’s truck on public streets and highways, did not violate the Fourth Amendment.4 Thus, the district court properly applied the good-faith exception to 4 Amici argue that we should reject Knotts and Karo as grounds for reasonable reliance, for two reasons. First, they argue these cases deal with “decades-old (continued) -7- their conduct. We also note that several of our sister circuits have held the good-faith exception applicable under similar circumstances. See, e.g., United States v. Holt, 777 F.3d 1234, 1258-59 (11th Cir. 2015); United States v. Taylor, 776 F.3d 513, 517-19 (7th Cir. 2015) (per curiam); Katzin, 769 F.3d at 173-77 (en banc); United States v. Stephens, 764 F.3d 327, 336-39 (4th Cir. 2014); United States v. Fisher, 745 F.3d 200, 203-06 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 676 (2014); United States v. technology” and could not reasonably have been extended to GPS tracking, “a technology not yet in existence when they were decided.” Amici Br. at 20-21. But the GPS devices involved in this case served essentially the same function as the beepers used in Knotts and Karo: both permitted officers to determine the location and movements of a vehicle traveling on public roads by use of information transmitted from an electronic device associated with the vehicle. It would not have been unreasonable for officers to extend the broad rationale of the earlier cases to the more sophisticated GPS technology which, like a beeper, “augment[ed] the sensory faculties bestowed upon them at birth.” Knotts, 460 U.S. at 282; see also Katzin, 769 F.3d at 176 (“[T]he technological distinctions between the beepers of yesteryear and the GPS device used herein are irrelevant.”). Amici also note that the Jones court did not find it necessary to overrule Knotts and Karo, which shows that those cases can be distinguished from the facts here and thus should not have been relied upon as binding precedent in this case. Unlike the GPS device involved here and in Jones, they argue, the beepers involved in Knotts and Karo “were not installed pursuant to a physical trespass, were not used for long-duration tracking, and provided only limited, imprecise information.” Id. at 22. The question is whether such potential distinctions precluded the officers’ reasonable reliance, pre-Jones, on Knotts and Karo. We conclude that they did not. First, in Karo, the Supreme Court had stated broadly that “a physical trespass is only marginally relevant to the question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated.” Karo, 468 U.S. at 712-13. Second, the device in Karo was used for over four months, not an appreciably shorter time than the GPS device used in this case. See id. at 708-10. Finally, the alleged greater availability or reliability of GPS data did not provide a reasonable basis for distinguishing Knotts and Karo, particularly where the battery-powered GPS device used in this case frequently failed and the government found it necessary to rely on other methods of tracking Mr. Hohn’s whereabouts such as pole cameras and visual surveillance. -8- Aguiar, 737 F.3d 251, 261-62 (2d Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 400 (2014); United States v. Sparks, 711 F.3d 58, 62-68 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 204 (2013); United States v. Andres, 703 F.3d 828, 834-35 (5th Cir. 2013); United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 688 F.3d 1087, 1090-91 (9th Cir. 2012).