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发帖数: 1034 | 1 October 1, 2014 12:01 PM
Mark Sullivan
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled today that evidence
derived from the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device by police can be
used in court.
The decision has drawn fire from the American Civil Liberties Union, as it
seems to condone a practice that violates Fourth Amendment rights.
In the court’s 8-5 ruling in U.S. v. Katzin, it applies an extremely broad
interpretation of a so-called “good-faith exception” to the Fourth
Amendment’s exclusionary rule. The court, in effect, said that because
police have relied for years on beeper tracking technology for indictments,
it should also be able to rely on GPS tracking devices, even when they are
installed without a warrant.
Police used a GPS tracker on Harry Katzin’s car prior to a Supreme Court
decision in January 2012. The high court held in that case that attaching a
GPS device to car and tracking its movements constituted a “search” under
the Fourth Amendment, but left open the question of whether or not it’s the
kind of search that requires a warrant and probable cause.
Even thought the court allowed the use of the GPS evidence in this case, the
majority opinion said, “[W]e caution that, after Jones, law enforcement
should carefully consider that a warrant may be required when engaging in
such installation and surveillance.”
“Law enforcement violated [the defendants’] Fourth Amendment rights,”
reads the dissenting opinion, saying that the evidence should be suppressed.
“When the police use powerful electronic surveillance equipment like GPS
trackers, they should not be able to avoid the requirements of the Fourth
Amendment by hiding behind outdated cases addressing obsolete technology,”
said ACLU Staff Attorney Nathan Freed Wessler. “The court did a disservice
to our system of constitutional rights by letting police make an end run
around the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.” |
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