United States v. Jones (2012)

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This article is about the 2012 case. For other cases, see United States v. Jones (disambiguation).

United States v. Antoine Jones
GPS device to a vehicle by the police, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant
.
Court membership
Chief Justice
John Roberts
Associate Justices
Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy
Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
MajorityScalia, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Sotomayor
ConcurrenceSotomayor
ConcurrenceAlito (in judgment), joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. IV

United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.[1]

In 2004, Antoine Jones was suspected by police in the

personal effects". This trespass, in an attempt to obtain information, constituted a search per se.[1]

Background

Police investigation and criminal trial

Antoine Jones owned a

District of Columbia; Lawrence Maynard managed the club. In 2004, a joint Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Metropolitan Police Department task force began investigating Jones and Maynard for narcotics violations.[2] During the course of the investigation, police installed a Global Positioning System (GPS) device on Jones's wife's Jeep Grand Cherokee.[3] They had received a valid warrant from a judge, but that warrant only covered the District of Columbia and only for a limited time period.[4] The GPS device tracked the vehicle's movements 24 hours a day for four weeks, and in the states surrounding the District of Columbia.[5] This exceeded both the time limit and the geographic reach of the original warrant.[4] The FBI arrested Jones under conspiracy to distribute narcotics charges in late 2005, based on data about the locations to which the vehicle was tracked, and he filed a motion to exclude
the GPS data from the evidence collected against him.

Jones was tried in criminal court in late 2006, and a federal jury deadlocked on the conspiracy charge and acquitted him of multiple other counts. The government retried Jones, and in early 2008 the jury returned a guilty verdict on one count of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine and 50 or more grams of cocaine base.[6] He was sentenced to life in prison.[7]

Appeal

Jones argued that his criminal conviction should be overturned because the use of the GPS tracker violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable

reasonable expectation of privacy.[9][10] The D.C. Circuit then denied prosecutors' petition for rehearing en banc.[11]

The Circuit Court's decision was the subject of significant legal debate.[12][13] In 2007, Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit had reached the opposite conclusion on whether GPS tracking by police was a search under the Fourth Amendment.[14]

Federal prosecutors appealed the Circuit Court decision. In June 2011, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve two questions. The first question was "Whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on respondent's vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment." The second question was "Whether the government violated respondent's Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent."[15]

Oral argument

Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben[16] began his argument on behalf of federal prosecutors by noting that information that is visible to anyone in the public, such as a driver's movements on public roads, is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.[17] Dreeben cited United States v. Knotts (1983) as an example in which police were allowed to use a device known as a "beeper" that enabled tracking a car from a short distance away.[17] Chief Justice John Roberts distinguished the present case from Knotts, saying that using a beeper still took "a lot of work" whereas a GPS device allows the police to "sit back in the station ... and push a button whenever they want to find out where the car is."[18]

Justice Antonin Scalia then directed the discussion to whether installing the device was an unreasonable search. Scalia argued that "when that device is installed against the will of the owner of the car on the car, that is unquestionably a trespass and thereby rendering the owner of the car not secure in his effects... against an unreasonable search and seizure."[19] Dreeben argued that it may have been a trespass by police, but in the 1984 precedent United States v. Karo (a case involving a similar trespass) the Supreme Court ruled that it "made no difference because the purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect privacy interests and meaningful interference [with possessions], not to cover all technical trespasses."[20]

Justice

cell phones. Then — what would the expectation of privacy be then?"[21]

Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that "What motivated the Fourth Amendment historically was the disapproval, the outrage, that our Founding Fathers experienced with general warrants that permitted police indiscriminately to investigate just on the basis of suspicion, not probable cause, and to invade every possession that the individual had in search of a crime." She then asked, "How is this different?"[22]

Opinion of the Court

Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the opinion of the 5-4 majority.

On January 23, 2012, the Supreme Court held 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'" under the Fourth Amendment.[23][24][25] Some journalists and commentators interpreted this ruling as a requirement that all GPS data surveillance requires a search warrant,[26] but this ruling was narrower and applied only to the circumstances of the police investigation of Jones, particularly regarding location data when driving a vehicle.

It can be said that all nine justices unanimously considered the police's actions in Jones to be unconstitutional. Importantly, however, they were split 5-4 on the reasoning for that conclusion. Furthermore, the justices were of three different opinions with respect to the breadth of the judgment.[27]

Majority opinion

Justice

expectation of privacy.[29] However, he cited a number of post-Katz cases including Alderman v. United States[30] and Soldal v. Cook County[31] to argue that the trespass analysis had not been abandoned by the Court.[32] In response to criticisms within Alito's concurrence, Scalia emphasized that the Fourth Amendment must provide, at a minimum, the level of protection as it did when it was adopted. Furthermore, a trespassory test need not exclude a test of the expectation of privacy, which may be appropriate to consider in situations where there was no governmental trespass.[33]

In the present case, the Court concluded that government's installation of a

personal effects" per Fourth Amendment terminology) was a trespass that was purposed to obtain information, so it was a search under the Fourth Amendment.[1] Having reached the conclusion that this was a search under the Fourth Amendment, the Court declined to examine whether any exception exists that would render the search "reasonable," because the government had failed to advance that theory in the lower courts.[34][35]

Also left unanswered was the broader question surrounding the privacy implications of a warrantless use of GPS data without a physical intrusion – as might occur, for example, with the electronic collection of GPS data from

vehicle tracking and navigation services.[27] The Court left these matters to be decided in some future case, saying, "It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question."[36]

Concurring opinions

Justice Sotomayor

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the sole voice against warrantless GPS surveillance, whether long- or short-term, both on the basis of property and privacy rights.

Justice

expectation of privacy reasoning with respect to long-term surveillance (see below),[39] but she went a step further by also disputing the constitutionality of warrantless short-term GPS surveillance. Even during short-term monitoring, she reasoned, GPS surveillance can precisely record an individual's every movement, and hence can reveal completely private destinations, like "trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on".[39]
Sotomayor added:

People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers, the URLS that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers, and the books, groceries and medications they purchase to online retailers. [...] I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.[40]

Sotomayor distinguished the present case from Knotts, reminding that Knotts suggested that a different principle might apply to situations in which every a person's movement was completely monitored for 24 hours.[38]

Justice Alito

Justice Samuel Alito and three others concurred, but only on the basis of privacy rights, and only against long-term GPS surveillance.

In his

common law property-based analysis of a "search" under the Fourth Amendment did not apply to such electronic situations as the one that occurred in this case.[42] He further argued that following the doctrinal changes in Katz, a technical trespass leading to the gathering of evidence was "neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation".[43][44]
In his concurring opinion Alito outlined that long-term surveillance can reveal everything about a person:

Prolonged surveillance reveals types of information not revealed by short-term surveillance, such as what a person does repeatedly, what he does not do, and what he does ensemble. These types of information can each reveal more about a person than does any individual trip viewed in isolation. [...] A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups – and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.[45]

Other opinions

Following the privacy-based approach most commonly used post-Katz, the other four justices were instead of the opinion that the continuous monitoring of every single movement of an individual's car for 28 days violated a

reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus constituted a search. Alito explained that before GPS and similar electronic technology, month-long surveillance of an individual's every move would have been exceptionally demanding and costly, requiring a tremendous amount of resources and people. As a result, society's expectations were, and still are, that such complete and long-term surveillance would not be undertaken, and that an individual would not think it could occur to him or her.[46]

With regard to continuous monitoring for a short period, the other Justices relied on the Knotts precedent and declined to find a violation of the expectation of privacy.[46] In Knotts, a short-distance signal beeper in the defendant's car was tracked during a single trip for less than a day. The Knotts court held that a person traveling on public roads has no expectation of privacy in his movements, because the vehicle's starting point, direction, stops, or final destination could be seen by anyone else on the road.[47]

Impact and subsequent developments

Walter E. Dellinger III, the former U.S. Solicitor General and the attorney who represented Jones, said the decision was "a signal event in Fourth Amendment history."[3] He also said the decision made it more risky for law enforcement to use a GPS tracking device without a warrant.[48] FBI director Robert Mueller testified in 2013 that the Jones decision had limited the Bureau's surveillance capabilities.[49]

Criminal defense attorneys and civil libertarians such as Virginia Sloan of the

amicus brief arguing that warrantless GPS tracking violates reasonable expectations of privacy, praised Sotomayor's concurrence for raising concerns that existing Fourth Amendment precedents do not reflect the realities of modern technology.[50]

The Supreme Court

mistrial was declared with the jury evenly split.[56] The Government planned for a fourth trial[57][58] but in May 2013 Jones accepted a plea bargain of 15 years with credit for time served.[59][60]

In October 2013, the

exigent circumstances) were applicable.[62][63]

References

  1. ^ a b c US v. Jones, 565 US 400 (2012).
  2. D.C. Cir.
    2010) ("Jones owned and Maynard managed the "Levels" nightclub in the District of Columbia. In 2004 an FBI Metropolitan Police Department Safe Streets Task Force began investigating the two for narcotics violations.").
  3. ^ a b Bravin, Jess, "Justices Rein In Police on GPS Trackers", The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2012. Retrieved 2012-01-24.
  4. ^ a b Maynard, 615 F.3d at 566 ("The police had obtained a warrant to install the GPS device in D.C. only, but it had expired before they installed it — which they did in Maryland.")
  5. ^ Maynard, 615 F.3d at 555 ("...tracking [Jones's] movements 24 hours a day for four weeks (sic) with a GPS device [the police] had installed on his Jeep...")
  6. ^ Maynard, 615 F.3d at 549 ("the Government filed another superseding indictment charging Jones, Maynard, and a few co-defendants with a single count of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine and 50 or more grams of cocaine base. A joint trial of Jones and Maynard began in November 2007 and ended in January 2008, when the jury found them both guilty.")
  7. ^ United States v. Jones, Petition for a Writ of Certiorari p. 2, "respondent was convicted of conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 or more grams of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. 841 and 846. The district court sentenced respondent to life imprisonment."
  8. ^ Maynard, 615 F.3d at 555 ("Jones argues his conviction should be overturned because the police violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches by tracking his movements 24 hours a day for four weeks with a GPS device they had installed on his Jeep without a valid warrant.")
  9. ^ Maynard, 615 F.3d at 555 ("As explained below, we hold Knotts does not govern this case and the police action was a search because it defeated Jones's reasonable expectation of privacy.")
  10. ^ Recent Case: D.C. Circuit Deems Warrantless Use of GPS Device an Unreasonable Search, 124 Harv. L. Rev. 827 (2011).
  11. ^ The Supreme Court, 2011 Term — Leading Cases Archived March 9, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 226 (2012).
  12. ^ Justin P. Webb, Cybercrime Review (November 29, 2012). "Highlighted Paper: Orin Kerr, The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment".
  13. ^ Justin P. Webb (December 1, 2011). "Carving Out Notions of Privacy: The Impact of GPS Tracking and Why Maynard is a Move in the Right Direction". Marquette Law Review. 95 (2): 751.
  14. ^ Recent Case: Seventh Circuit Holds That GPS Tracking is Not a Search, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 2230 (2007).
  15. ^ United States v. Jones, Docket, Certiorari granted (June 27, 2011).
  16. ^ United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 1.
  17. ^ a b United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 3.
  18. ^ United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 4.
  19. ^ United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 7.
  20. ^ United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 8.
  21. ^ United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 44.
  22. ^ United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 20.
  23. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 404.
  24. ^ Romm, Tony (July 23, 2012). "Supreme Court: GPS location tracking qualifies as search". POLITICO.com. Retrieved July 14, 2012.
  25. ^ Liptak, Adam (January 23, 2013). "Justices Say GPS Tracker Violated Privacy Rights". The New York Times. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
  26. ^ Bill Mears (January 23, 2012). "Justices rule against police, say GPS surveillance requires search warrant". CNN.
  27. ^ a b Goldstein, Tom (January 30, 2012). "Why Jones is still less of a pro-privacy decision than most thought". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved September 21, 2012.
  28. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 405.
  29. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 405-06.
  30. ^ Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 180 (1969). "[W]e [do not] believe that Katz, by holding that the Fourth Amendment protects persons and their private conversations, was intended to withdraw any of the protection which the Amendment extends to the home . . . ."
  31. ^ Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 64 (1992). "[Katz established that] property rights are not the sole measure of Fourth Amendment violations. . . . [it did not] snuf[f] out the previously recognized protection for property."
  32. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 407-08.
  33. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 411-12.
  34. ^ Kravets, David (January 23, 2012). "Supreme Court Court Rejects Willy-Nilly GPS Tracking". Wired.com. Retrieved July 14, 2012.
  35. ^ Kerr, Orin (January 23, 2012). "What Jones Does Not Hold". The Volokh Conspiracy. Retrieved July 14, 2012.
  36. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 412.
  37. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 413 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
  38. ^ a b Jones, 565 U.S. at 414 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
  39. ^ a b Jones, 565 U.S. at 415 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
  40. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 417 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
  41. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 430 (Alito, J., concurring).
  42. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 419-20 (Alito, J., concurring).
  43. ^ Jones, 565 U.S. at 423 (Alito, J., concurring, quoting United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 713 (1984)).
  44. ^ Justice Scalia countered this quote from Karo (that "[trespass is] neither necessary nor sufficient...") by calling it "irrelevant" – Karo contemplated a seizure, not a search, and trespass has no bearing on the constitutionality of a seizure. Jones, 565 U.S. at 408, n.5.
  45. ^ Maynard, 615 F.3d at 562; U.S. v. Jones, 565 U.S. __, (2012), Alito, J., concurring.
  46. ^ a b United States v Jones (Opinion) Alito's concurrence, p. 13.
  47. ^ United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 282 (1983).
  48. ^ a b Biskupic, Joan (January 24, 2012). "Supreme Court rules warrant needed for GPS tracking". USA Today. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  49. ^ Johnson, Carrie (March 21, 2012). "FBI Still Struggling With Supreme Court's GPS Ruling". NPR. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
  50. ^ "US v. Jones". Electronic Frontier Foundation. July 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
  51. ^ Jeffrey Brown, Cybercrime Review (April 1, 2012). "Jones II: This time, the government seeks to use cell site location information".
  52. Legal Times
    Blog.
  53. ^ The Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Carpenter vs. United States held that Police must obtain a search warrant prior to obtaining cellular location information.
  54. ^ Zapotosky, Matt (January 25, 2013). "Accused drug dealer, representing himself, hears prosecutors open their case". The Washington Post.
  55. ^ Marimow, Ann (January 16, 2013). "Suspected D.C. drug kingpin offered plea deal". The Washington Post.
  56. ^ Frommer, Frederic (March 4, 2013). "Mistrial declared in 3rd trial of drug conspiracy". U.S. News & World Report. Associated Press.
  57. ^ Marimow, Ann (March 5, 2013). "Judge declares mistrial in area drug case". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 4, 2013.
  58. Legal Times
    Blog. March 4, 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2013.
  59. ^ "Antoine Jones pleads guilty, accepts 15 years sentence". WJLA-TV. May 1, 2013. Archived from the original on May 7, 2013. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  60. ^ Anderson, Nick (May 1, 2013). "Former DC Nightclub owner Antoine Jones sentenced on drug charge". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 30, 2013. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  61. ^ United States v. Katzin, 12-2548 (3d Cir. 2013)., quoting United States v Jones (Opinion) Majority p. 5.
  62. ^ Zetter, Kim (October 22, 2013). "Court Rules Probable-Cause Warrant Required for GPS Trackers". Wired.com. Retrieved November 26, 2013.
  63. ^ Kemp, David S. (November 4, 2013). "The Warrant Requirement for GPS Tracking Devices". Verdict. Justia. Retrieved November 26, 2013.

Further reading

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