United States v. Jones
United States Supreme Court
132 S.Ct. 945 (2012)
The FBI suspected nightclub owner Antoine Jones (defendant) of drug trafficking and obtained a warrant to install a GPS device on his vehicle, but the warrant required installation within ten days and while the car was in Washington, D.C. Agents instead installed the device on the eleventh day while the car was parked in Maryland. Over the next 28 days, the device tracked Jones's movements, generating over 2,000 pages of location data used to indict him on drug charges. The district court suppressed only data collected while the car was in Jones's home garage; he was convicted and sentenced to life. The court of appeals reversed, finding the warrantless GPS use unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether the warrantless placement of a GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of an individual's vehicle to track the person's movements on public streets constitutes an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment.