United States v. Jones (2012) – PLSC 337-01: The American Legal System

Antoine Jones was suspected of trafficking cocaine. Officers obtained a warrant to place a Global-Positioning-System (GPS) device on a car Jones regularly drove, but failed to meet the warrants criteria. They installed the GPS on the 11th day of their 10-day window, and did so in Maryland, despite the warrant only applying for D.C. The police tracked the car’s movements and discovered that it was driven to a suspected drug stash house in Maryland. Police also learned from warranted interceptions of phone calls that Jones was expecting a cocaine shipment. The police conducted warranted searches of various locations, discovered substantial evidence, and charged Jones with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Despite agreement from both sides that the police’s GPS installation was unwarranted, the trial judge allowed the evidence it obtained. Jones was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The D.C. Court of Appeals reversed Jones’s conviction, stating that the police’s use of the GPS device violated the Search and Seizure Clause of the Fourth Amendment. The United States appealed to the Supreme Court.

The legal question in this case is whether the police’s unwarranted GPS installation violated the Search and Seizure Clause of the Fourth Amendment. Despite a unanimous decision in favor of Jones, the justices still managed to disagree with each other. The opinion of the Court, written by Justice Scalia, contested that the justices need only to interpret the actions of the police as a common-law trespass of an unreasonable search. A concurring opinion written by Justice Alito, however argued that this standard was replaced by another introduced by Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion in Katz v. United States, which states that “a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy” [1].

Justice Scalia was correct in stating that “[T]he Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test” [2]. The primary assessment for reasonable searches should be the specific language of the Fourth Amendment, which makes no mention of privacy. Moreover, if the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test was the only standard, U.S. v. Jones could have (wrongly) ruled in favor of the government. When reading “Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement,” one will learn that the Court “has held that automobiles do not deserve the same degree of protection as people and homes” [3] This is due to a few reasons, but most notably because of the fact that cars are publicly visible and partly transparent, thus giving drivers “a lower expectation of privacy inside a car then they [have] in their homes” [4]. For example, when the uber driver in this trending video says that the police cannot search his car, he is wrong. They certainly can (though the driver is correct in saying he has a right to record the police):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl9bgcBf-6M

The warrantless search of Jones’s car could have likely been upheld under just the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test. Fortunately, Justice Scalia understood that the Court “need not address the Government’s contentions” that Jones had no reasonable expectation of privacy, “because [his] Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation” [5]. The bottom line is that the police incompetently mishandled their originally legitimate warrant to place the GPS on Jones’s car, not that they invaded Jones’s right to privacy.

[1] Katz v. United States (1967), 487.

[2] United States v. Jones (2012), 2.

[3] Epstein and Walker, 482.

[4] Ibid.

[5] United States v. Jones (2012), 2.

Jennifer Vibert says:

March 13, 2017 at 11:29 am

I agree with Chris that the opinion of the court in United States v. Jones is correct that it is unlawful to exceed your limits of the warrant. Although I agree that a person has rights to a reasonable expectation to privacy, it is not explicitly stated in the Fourth Amendment, and therefore should not be substituted in place of the law; It should only added to the law, as Scalia stated. Cars are not held to the same privacy standard because there are certain limits in place to ensure the safety of others. For example, there is a limit on a car’s window tint because vision cannot be completely obstructed from the outside by law enforcement.
I have also seen the viral video of the Uber driver, and I am unsure of who is in the wrong. The police do not really mention why they pulled the Uber driver over, so I’m not sure what they deducted as “probable cause.” If there is not a strong reason for probable cause, it is possible that the police violated the Fourth Amendment, but I would need to know more details.

Travis says:

March 14, 2017 at 3:26 pm

I also agree with Chris’ assessment of the ruling, in that the court ruled correctly in this case and referenced Katz heavily. An interesting point of debate among the opinion of the Court and concurring opinion of Justice Alito, who believes the Court opinion to be somewhat antiquated. Justice Scalia takes the opposing tack, stating that there is no doubt that the actions of the police constituted a “search,” and he furthermore emphasizes the connection of the Fourth Amendment to property. He does not take any stake in the changes over time, and as Jenny stated, Justice Scalia believes that Katz should serve as an addition to the law rather than a substitute.
I too have seen this video circulating the internet, and the articles I have viewed state that the driver was pulled over because he had dropped someone off near a house of suspected drug traffickers. I am unsure whether this constitutes probable cause for searching the vehicle, but it does not appear that they have it immediately. While the driver states that they cannot search the vehicle, a more accurate statement would be that he does consent to a search. Once the K9 units were brought to the scene and reportedly smelled some form of drugs, then the police had probable cause to search the rest of the vehicle. Therefore, in this case the search was not with an explicit warrant, but was nonetheless valid. I also agree with Chris that the driver is within his rights to film the police, as this statement was affirmed by the Wilmington Chief of Police.