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Court rules warrantless GPS info not admissible in home invasion case

JESSICA SHAMBAUGH
Special to the Legal News

Published: April 23, 2014

Information gathered from a GPS unit placed on a suspect’s car without a warrant cannot be used at trial, according to a recent ruling from the 10th District Court of Appeals.

The three-judge appellate panel affirmed a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas ruling that information received from a GPS unit placed on Montie Sullivan’s car could not be used against him during his trial for charges connected to a series of home invasions.

In early 2010, Richard Minerd of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office began investigating a series of home invasion robberies that took place between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, 2010.

All of the robberies took place in the eastern portion of Franklin County, involved two African-American males who were armed and had bandanas covering their faces, included violent home entry and victims who were shepherded into a bathroom while the homes were ransacked.

Witnesses from two of the incidents also reported seeing a white car fleeing the scene.

During his investigation, Minerd learned that someone had called the American Automobile Association to request service for a 1993 white Honda Civic.

When AAA responded, however, it found a green Toyota Camry believed to have been stolen during one of the home invasions.

AAA reported that the member card used by the caller had been stolen during another recent home invasion and that the call was placed from Sullivan’s cell phone.

Further research revealed that the white Honda Civic was registered to Sullivan and Sullivan had been identified as using a credit card stolen in one of the robberies.

In response, Minerd began conducting visual surveillance of the white Honda Civic.

The car’s mobility, however, combined with the sheriff’s office’s limited resources greatly hindered that surveillance.

Minerd spoke to members of the narcotics unit and they informed him that “a search warrant was not necessary before attaching a magnetized GPS device to a suspect’s vehicle because that type of device did not require hardwiring to the vehicle,” according to case summary.

Accordingly, Minerd attached a GPS device to Sullivan’s car without obtaining a warrant.

Shortly thereafter, the device showed the car driving in the area of the home invasions.

It ultimately stopped in Fairfield County and Minerd called that county’s sheriff’s department and reported the situation.

Before officers arrived on the scene the car left.

A few minutes later, however, the Fairfield County Sheriff’s office received a call from the area reporting a robbery by two African-American males who shot his dog and fled in a white car.

Minerd dispatched officers to an address associated with Sullivan and the first officer to arrive reported two African-American males run out a back door.

After obtaining search warrants, the officers found items taken from the Fairfield County home in the Civic and property from the previous robberies in the home.

Sullivan and David White were then arrested and taken into custody.

They were charged with several counts related to seven home invasions including aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, attempted aggravated burglary, improperly discharging a firearm at or into a habitation, burglary and theft.

In response, Sullivan filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the GPS monitoring of his vehicle violated his Fourth Amendment right and that any information obtained from that device must be suppressed.

The trial court denied that motion, finding that “because the GPS device had been attached to defendant’s vehicle while on public property and monitored public travel, and because defendant never attempted to shield the vehicle from the public, defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy and thus could not assert the protection of the Fourth Amendment.”

Following a ruling in a similar case from the United States Supreme Court, however, the trial court held another hearing on the matter and ordered that any evidence obtained from the GPS unit should be suppressed from the time of its attachment until the state obtained the subsequent warrant.

The decision prompted the state’s appeal to the 10th District.

Upon review, the appellate panel found that the U.S. Supreme Court decided a similar matter in 2012 in United States v. Jones.

The majority opinion in that case found that “the attachment of a GPS device to a suspect’s private property for the purpose of monitoring that suspect’s movements to obtain information is a trespass, which constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.”

In response, the state argued that the GPS device was “minimally intrusive and rarely yields truly private information.”

It contended that Minerd had reasonable suspicion supporting his installation of the device and the findings should therefore be admissible.

“While there are limitations on the data the GPS monitoring provided, as it showed only where the tracked vehicle was located, not who was driving it or what its occupants were doing, the GPS technology permitted Corporal Minerd to track the vehicle’s whereabouts 24 hours a day, several days a week, no matter who was driving the vehicle or where it was driven,” retired Judge Thomas Bryant wrote for the court.

“Accordingly, the GPS monitoring had the significant potential to yield protected information, such as the location of the tracked vehicle at places which would normally be protected from physical police surveillance.”

Finding that the state was unable to justify the warrantless GPS search, the appellate panel found that “reasonable suspicion” was not relevant.

The state next argued that the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment should apply.

The district judges held that the automobile exception allows warrantless searches of a vehicle that may conceal evidence of a crime.

“The rational underlying the automobile exception does not justify the warrantless installation of a GPS device under the facts presented here,” Judge Bryant stated, noting that there was no evidence that police believed the vehicle contained contraband or other evidence and that a GPS device does not deal in existing evidence but is instead used to uncover future evidence.

“However worthy that purpose may be, it does not excuse failure to fulfill the warrant requirement.”

Finding that the lower court’s ruling was consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Jones, the judges overruled the state’s assignments of error and affirmed the common pleas judgment.

Judges Julia Dorrian and Amy O’Grady concurred.

The case is cited State v. Sullivan, 2014-Ohio-1443.

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