Image credit to San Antonio Criminal Lawyers Blog
Do police authorities need a warrant in order to track someone’s whereabouts?
The Supreme Court believes they do. And now, after being incarcerated for nearly 7 years, Antoine Jones is a free man, despite his original sentence to life in prison.
On Monday, in a case titled United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Antoione Jones. Jones was convicted of conspiring to distribute cocaine after police officers attached a GPS device to Jones’ parked car in a public parking lot. The locations Jones visited during law enforcement officials four weeks of tracking were used as evidence against Jones that led to his conviction. The GPS on Jones’ car directed police to a suburban neighborhood in Maryland. There, they went to a location that was frequently visited by Jones during the four weeks of tracking. Along with nearly $900,000 in cash, They found 100 kilograms of illegal drugs. This is pretty overwhelming evidence and along with wiretapping and surveillance tapes, authorities had more than enough evidence against Jones for this to be considered an open and shut case.
However, the question that needed to be answered is: are law enforcement agents violating our Fourth Amendment right to unreasonable search and seizure by essentially following us around without a warrant?
Let’s hear from some of the Supreme Court Justices.
Interestingly enough, the judges came to an unanimous decision, but for different reasons. There were two different views. Four of the judges believed that the authorities trespassed on private property (Jones’ jeep) and that authorities had interfered and disregarded Jones’ “reasonable expectation of privacy”. The majority of the judges argued that the act of placing the GPS device on Jones’ car was analogous to searching a home without a warrant.
Justice Samuel Alito, leader of the minority group, says that, “the use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.”
While I understand the idea that the information that the police obtained was only due to the lengthy time they spent on tracking Jones, I must say that they should not have done it at all.
Justice Antonin Scalia, whose opinion represented majority of the judges, said that, “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.”
I admire the fact that he took the case and aligned it with the actual wording of the fourth amendment. Of course, laws are constantly interpreted in many different ways. But I believe that when there is a car that belongs to someone, that person has to right to expect privacy unless legally told otherwise.
- Brittany Fields, Blog Writer
