Introduction
The American constitution under the Fourth Amendment provides for the protection of personal privacy which considers an intrusion to an individual’s personal life or property as trespass. This privacy right covers private properties such as houses, cars, and other personal belongings as well as the personal life of an individual entailing movement and activities. However, this privacy may sometimes be subjected to violation by law enforcers during criminal investigations, especially if an individual is suspected of engaging in criminal activities. In an era where technology is essential for investigation, police officers may be forced to use technological devices such as GPS to uncover and enhance their criminal investigation, which might trigger legal confusion. The United States V. Jones 565 (2012) case provides a better legal scenario to understand the Fourth Amendment, its jurisprudence relevance, and limits when it can be revoked. The first, subsequent, and appeal rulings in the case are critical in expounding and giving breakthroughs to confusing legal aspects such as reasonable expectation of privacy, trespassing, and their relevance in the Fourth Amendment.
Why it is a Public Policy-Related Matter
The United States V. Jones 565 of 2012 was a case featuring the American government versus Antoine Jones concerning the use of the Global Position System in investigation and whether the data from the investigation could be legitimately used to prosecute an individual. Antoine Jones in his defense was using the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy while the American government cited United States V. Knotts 91983 beeper acceptance to justify the use of GPS. This was a public policy-related matter because it involved the government of the United States against American citizens, and later helped in interpreting the Fourth Amendment Law which is critical for both public security agents and individuals for public matters. The interpretation of the Fourth Amendment in the case provided a guideline for similar case scenarios, detailing the privileges of the citizen and regulations for the prosecution department and public security agents.
Background of the Case
In 2004, a businessman Antoine Jones a resident of Colombia, who owned a nightclub in his home district of Colombia and was put under the management of Lawrence Maynard was suspected of dealing in drug trafficking by the police of the District of Columbia following a tipoff. To uncover the truth, the sleuths secured a warrant from the district’s court to mount a GPS device on the suspect’s car to monitor his movement and activities. While the court granted a warrant permitting the use of the device, it provided a geographical limit and timeline for the use of the device (Hamman and Smith, 2019). The GPS was to be used for a period of 10 days from the time of the warrant and strictly when the car in question was within the geographical boundary of the District of Columbia. By technical omission, the investigators mounted the GPS device on Jones’ wife’s car the Jeep Grand Cherokee, on the 11th day contrary to the warrant’s guideline and monitored the car’s movement for the next four weeks, 24 hours each day, exceeding the timeline.
While the investigators breached the warrant’s initial regulation, they discovered some elements of evidence and interdicted Antoine Jones under the conspiracy of dealing in narcotics and charged him later in 2005, using the evidence from the data from the movement of the tracked vehicle. In his defense, Jones filed a petition from the court to bar the sleuths from using the information from the GPS data and for the court to declare the data irrelevant. However, the investigators proceeded to prosecute Jones in the criminal court using the evidence from the GPS data in 2006. On his petition, the court acquitted him of other charges but retained the narcotic charges, accepting the data from the GPS tracked away from home but declining the GPS data collected when the car was within the home environment. The government would retry Jones at the beginning of 20008, where the jury charged him guilty of conspiring to possess and distribute a probable greater amount of cocaine exceeding five kilograms and more than 50 grams of cocaine base.
Appeal and Legal Arguments
Dissatisfied with the ruling, Antoine Jones appealed his case in 2010 to the United States Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit to relook at his case. In his appeal, Jones asked the Appeal court to overturn the decision of the precedent ruling, arguing the use of GPS violated his privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Satisfied by Jones’ Fourth Amendment argument, the United States Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the ruling, citing the use of GPS equated to a search and thus violated Jones’s reasonable expectation of privacy and proceeded to bar the prosecution team from asking for a rehearing (Tokson, 2020). While this was a legal success for Jones, the ruling stirred a nationwide legal debate on when and at what level should the reasonable expectation of privacy begin and cease to count.
In the appeal case, the prosecution team opposed the reasonable expectation of privacy argument, citing the car’s movement was not personal privacy but rather public information that is accessible to anyone watching the vehicle’s movement on the public roads. Through Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, the federal prosecutors opposed the Fourth Amendment argument of reasonable expectation of privacy by the appeal, citing the GPS tracking of the car’s movement was more of a public exercise and thus did not encroach into the defendant’s privacy, likening it to the movement of vehicles on the public road which is within reach of any individual watching the read (McJuklin et al., 2018). In his further defense of the police use of GPS to track the car’s movement, Michael Dreeben revisited the United States V. Knotts (1983) case where the court allowed the police to install and use beepers to track cars from short distances.
While making a determination, Chief Justice John Roberts distinguished provided a distinction between the two case scenarios, arguing that the use of Beepers in the previous case of Knotts was different from the GPS in Jones’ case. In his argument, Justice John Roberts stated that the previous use of beepers did not provide all the information since the investigators were still forced to go to the field and collect the desired data. However, the use of GPS provided all the required data in the investigator’s comfort zone, and the sleuths only used the buttons to monitor and gather the information they needed.
Chief Justice John Roberts’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment of privacy and distinguishing it from the Knotts’ case ignited a discussion on whether the installation of a tracking device translated to a search. Basing their arguments on the Fourth Amendment principle protecting the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” (Tokson, 2020). The proponents led by Justice Antonin Scalia proposed that “when a 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 unreasonable search and seizure” (Tokson, 2020). While admitting the installation of GPS on Jones’ car translated to a trespass according to the Fourth Amendment’s privacy right, Dreeben further referred to the 1984 precedent United States V. Karo which involved a similar case of trespass where 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 cover all trespasses” (Tokson, 2020). Meaning not all cases of tracking translate to trespass.
Justice Samuel Alito in his argument noted the variation in the individual use of technology and hence the change in the court’s expectation of privacy. Basing his argument on social networking and the use of social media, Samuel argued that the use of social media sites may change the perception and concept of expectation of privacy since they allow for the interaction and connection of people, allowing the interacting individuals to access and monitor the activities and location of their colleagues daily. Using Facebook as an example, the site allows friends to access and monitor the activities and locations of one another. For instance, an individual with 500 or more friends is monitored and accessed by those friends on a daily basis, and the information on location and activities is provided to the colleagues, hence complicating the question of expectation of privacy.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor in supporting the decision to overturn the ruling and declaring the police action of installing GPS on the defendant’s car unlawful, revisited the historical background of the Fourth Amendment. In her argument, she referred to the post-colonial period where the investigators secured and misused search warrants on improbable causes. During this time, the police investigations were triggered by mere suspicions and malice and used search warrants to tie individuals to crimes and liken the case to 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 individual had in search a crime.” (Tokson, 2020). As in the case of post-colonial officers who used search warrants to investigate based on suspicion, the investigators in Jones’s case were motivated by suspicion and indiscriminately mounted the GPS device on the car to tie and implicate the defendant to the suspected crimes. The Fourth Amendment therefore protects individuals from such injustices and bar the officers from doing the same.
The debate continued to ensue on two questions. First, whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on the respondent’s vehicle to monitor its movement on public roads violated the Fourth Amendment.
Secondly, whether the government violated the respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent. From the majority opinion led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the act of installing the GPS on the Jones’ car violated the Fourth Amendment on two accounts.
First, the monitoring of the car’s movement violated his privacy and that of his effects as provided by the Fourth Amendment which provides the protection to the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. The car in question was one of the respondent’s effects and the tracking by the GPS device translated to a search, thus violating his privacy. Secondly, the mounting of the GPS device on the car was done contrary to the court’s regulation. As opposed to installing the GPS device in a period of ten days and within the locality of the District of Columbia, the investigators exceeded the court’s timeline and geographical limit (Freiwald and Smith, 2018). Therefore, the installation of the GPS device on the respondent’s car was done unlawfully. In addition to the unlawfulness of the installation of the device, another question arises on the motivation for tracking and carrying out the investigation. As in the case of the pre-colonial period, the investigation was motivated by mere suspicion and not by probable cause and thus mounted the tracking device in the act of invading every individual possession of Jones in search of the suspected crime of drug trafficking.
Impact of the Fourth Amendment
Before the Jones case versus the United States, the Fourth Amendment Law was not popularly used, probably because many individuals did not understand its applicability. The protection of the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures had not been comprehensively interpreted by a court of law. Despite granting citizens the right to privacy and protection of their properties, the public did not fully enjoy this privilege. However, following the case of Jones versus the United States Government in which he won his appeal case basing his argument on the Fourth Amendment right to privacy, the public had a sigh of relief from the warrantless use of tracking devices and encroachment to their personal life (Hamman and Smith, 2019). With the Fourth Amendment, citizens are protected from improbable causes of investigation and unlawful encroachment to their private lives and properties, either through tracking devices such as GPS among others, or from warrantless seizure, especially those motivated by mere suspicions.
The Fourth Amendment brought about freedom from harassment and warrantless seizures of property which might be motivated by personal vendettas and negative perceptions. While the use of tracking a device is permissible by law, the warrant to use a tracking device must be authorized by a court of law and done under regulations (Hu, 2018). As in the case of Jones vs the government, careless use of tracking devices to monitor and gather evidence is unlawful and cannot be used in the prosecution of a suspect.
Conclusion
The case of the United States versus Antoine Jones helped in providing a landmark interpretation of the Fourth Amendment Law and filling the legal puzzles in the legal field. It provided comprehensive explanations of the various confusing legal contexts such as the expectation of privacy and trespass and when these legal concepts are applicable. By successfully appealing his case and winning using the Fourth Amendment, the court of appeal demonstrated the citizen’s privileges with respect to privacy and protection.
References
Freiwald, S., & Smith, S. W. (2018). The carpenter chronicle. Harvard Law Review, 132(1), 205-235. Web.
Hamann, K., & Smith, R. (2019). Facial recognition technology. Criminal Justice, 34(1), 9-13. Web.
Hu, M. (2018). Cybersurveillance intrusions and an evolving Katz privacy test. Am. Crim. L. Rev., 55, 127. Web.
McJunkin, B. A., & Prescott, J. J. (2018). Fourth Amendment constraints on the technological monitoring of convicted sex offenders. New Criminal Law Review, 21(3), 379-425. Web.
Tokson, M. (2020). The next wave of Fourth Amendment challenges after carpenter. Washburn LJ, 59, 1. Web.