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.US v. Jones, 565 US 400 (2012).
In 2004, Antoine Jones was suspected by police in the District of Columbia of drug trafficking. Investigators asked for and received a warrant to attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of Jones's car but then exceeded the warrant's scope in both geography and length of time. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that this was a search under the Fourth Amendment, although they were split 5–4 as to the fundamental reasons behind that conclusion. The majority held that by physically installing the GPS device on Jones's car, the police had committed a trespass against his "personal effects." This trespass, in an attempt to obtain information, constituted a search per se.
Background
Police investigation and criminal trial Antoine Jones owned a nightclub in the 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. During the course of the investigation, police installed a Global Positioning System (GPS) device on Jones's wife's Jeep Grand Cherokee. 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.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.") The GPS device tracked the vehicle's movements 24 hours a day for four weeks, and in the states surrounding the District of Columbia.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...") This exceeded both the time limit and the geographic reach of the original warrant. The FBI arrested Jones in late 2005 and charged him with conspiracy to distribute narcotics, 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. Prosecutors retried Jones for charges that had not been considered in the first trial, 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 fifty or more grams of cocaine base.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.") He was sentenced to life in prison.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."
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 search and seizure.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.") In 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with Jones and overturned his conviction, holding that the police action was a search because it violated Jones's reasonable expectation of privacy.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.")Recent Case: D.C. Circuit Deems Warrantless Use of GPS Device an Unreasonable Search, 124 Harv. L. Rev. 827 (2011). The D.C. Circuit then denied prosecutors' petition for rehearing en banc.The Supreme Court, 2011 Term — Leading Cases , 126 Harv. L. Rev. 226 (2012).
The Circuit Court's decision was the subject of significant legal debate on GPS tracking by police, which was unsettled in the law at that time. In United States v. Garcia (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.Recent Case: Seventh Circuit Holds That GPS Tracking is Not a Search, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 2230 (2007).
Federal prosecutors appealed the D.C. Circuit decision in favor of Jones. 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."United States v. Jones, Docket, Certiorari granted (June 27, 2011).
Oral argument Deputy Solicitor General Michael DreebenUnited States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 1. 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.United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 3. 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. 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."United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 4.
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."United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 7. 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."United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 8.
Justice Samuel Alito stated that people's use of technology is changing what the expectation of privacy is for the courts. "You know, I don't know what society expects and I think it's changing. Technology is changing people's expectations of privacy. Suppose we look forward 10 years, and maybe 10 years from now 90 percent of the population will be using social networking sites and they will have on average 500 friends and they will have allowed their friends to monitor their location 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, through the use of their cell phones. Then — what would the expectation of privacy be then?"United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 44.
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?"United States v. Jones (Oral Argument Transcript) p. 20.
Opinion of the court
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.Jones, 565 U.S. at 404. Some journalists and commentators interpreted this ruling as a requirement that all GPS data surveillance requires a search warrant, 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.
Majority opinion
Justice Antonin Scalia authored the majority opinion. He cited a line of cases dating as far back as 1886 to argue that a physical intrusion, or trespass, into a constitutionally-protected area—in an attempt to find something or to obtain information—was the basis, historically, for determining whether a "search" had occurred under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.Jones, 565 U.S. at 405. Scalia conceded that in the years following Katz v. United States (1967)—in which electronic eavesdropping on a public telephone booth was held to be a search—the vast majority of search and seizure case law had shifted away from that approach founded on property rights, and towards an approach based on a person's expectation of privacy.Jones, 565 U.S. at 405-06. However, he cited a number of post-Katz cases including Alderman v. United StatesAlderman v. United States, . "[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 . . . ." and Soldal v. Cook CountySoldal v. Cook County, . "[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." to argue that the trespass analysis had not been abandoned by the court.Jones, 565 U.S. at 407-08. In response to criticisms within Alito's concurrence, Scalia emphasized that the Fourth Amendment must provide, at a minimum, the same 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.Jones, 565 U.S. at 411-12.
In the present case, the court concluded that government's installation of a GPS device onto the defendant's car (his "personal effects" per Fourth Amendment terminology) was a trespass that was purposed to obtain information, so it was a search under the Fourth Amendment. 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.