The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Antoine Jones’ conviction for distribution of cocaine and cocaine base due to Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking of Jones’ vehicle without a search warrant.

Jones’ conviction was based, in part, on the use of a GPS tracking device which was attached to his vehicle for four weeks. The Court found that the failure to have a valid search warrant ¹for the use of the GPS device, violated Jones’ legitimate expectation of privacy, and therefore the Fourth Amendment.

In order to find that GPS devices require a search warrant the Court had to distinguish the use of GPS devices from the use of beepers in the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Knotts. In Knotts the Supreme Court ruled that “[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” In Knotts a manufacturer of chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine alerted the police of suspicious sales. The manufacturer then at the urging of the police planted a beeper in a five-gallon container of chemicals purchased by Tristan Armstrong. The police monitored the progress of the car carrying the beeper, to Knott’s Wisconsin cabin. The Supreme Court found that since Armstrong’s vehicle could have been followed on the public streets by a police car the use of a beeper to assist the police did not violate the driver’s legitimate expectation of privacy.

The Circuit Court distinguished the use of GPS on Jones vehicle from the use of the beeper on Armstrong’s vehicle by the fact that the use of the GPS lasted around the clock for four weeks while the beeper was only monitored during a short ride from Minneapolis to the cabin in Wisconsin. But just as the police could have followed Armstrong’s vehicle on the public streets they could have followed Jone’s vehicle. The Circuit Court pointed out that it would be much more difficult to follow a vehicle for four weeks and that during a prolonged period one learns significant private details about a person’s life that one does not learn during a short trip. Also the Supreme Court in Knotts specifically did not decide what would happen in technological advances allow long term trailing of a vehicle.

However, I find it difficult to accept the supposition that a short term trailing of a vehicle is not a violation of a legitimate expectation of privacy and a longer term trailing is a violation. With the increased use of GPS the issue may well appear before the Supreme Court. The Circuits have split. The Ninth and Seventh Circuits, relying on Knotts, have found the use of GPS to not be a search. The Supreme Court has several options. It can find Knotts to be decisive or at least persuasive and therefore find that the use of GPS is not a “search” and therefore a search warrant is not necessary. It can accept the D. C. Circuit’s distinction based upon the length of the search or it can reverse Knotts.

A unique option would be to find the search illegal under state law and rule that illegally obtained evidence should be excluded. The placing of the GPS device on the vehicle was clearly a trespass and trailing the vehicle for four weeks is stalking. But the Supreme Court has never excluded evidence based upon a violation of state law.