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132 S.Ct. 945 Supreme Court of the United States UNITED STATES, Petitioner v. Antoine JONES. No. 10–1259. | Argued Nov. 8, 2011. | Decided Jan. 23, 2012. Opinion Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court. We decide whether the attachment of a Global– Positioning–System (GPS) tracking device to an individual’s vehicle, and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets, constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. I In 2004 respondent Antoine Jones, owner and operator of a nightclub in the District of Columbia, came under suspicion of trafficking in narcotics and was made the target of an investigation by a joint FBI and Metropolitan Police Department task force. Officers employed various investigative techniques, including visual surveillance of the nightclub, installation of a camera focused on the front door of the club, and a pen register and wiretap covering Jones’s cellular phone. Based in part on information gathered from these sources, in 2005 the Government applied to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a warrant authorizing the use of an electronic tracking device on the Jeep Grand Cherokee registered to Jones’s wife. A warrant issued, authorizing installation of the device in the District of Columbia and within 10 days. On the 11th day, and not in the District of Columbia but in Maryland,1 agents installed a GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of the Jeep while it was parked in a public parking lot. Over the next 28 days, the Government used the device to track the vehicle’s movements, and once had to replace the device’s battery when the vehicle was parked in a different public lot in Maryland. By 118 means of signals from multiple satellites, the device established the vehicle’s location within 50 to 100 feet, and communicated that location by cellular phone to a Government computer. It relayed more than 2,000 pages of data over the 4–week period. The Government ultimately obtained a multiple-count indictment charging Jones and several alleged coconspirators with, as relevant here, conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 grams or more of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846. Before trial, Jones filed a motion to suppress evidence obtained through the GPS device. The District Court granted the motion only in part, suppressing the data obtained while the vehicle was parked in the garage adjoining Jones’s residence. 451 F.Supp.2d 71, 88 (2006). It held the remaining data admissible, because “ ‘[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.’ ” Ibid. (quoting United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 281, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983)). Jones’s trial in October 2006 produced a hung jury on the conspiracy count. In March 2007, a grand jury returned another indictment, charging Jones and others with the same conspiracy. The Government introduced at trial the same GPS-derived locational data admitted in the first trial, which connected Jones to the alleged conspirators’ stash house that contained $850,000 in cash, 97 kilograms of *949 cocaine, and 1 kilogram of cocaine base. The jury returned a guilty verdict, and the District Court sentenced Jones to life imprisonment. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the conviction because of admission of the evidence obtained by warrantless use of the GPS device which, it said, violated the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (2010). The D.C. Circuit denied the Government’s petition for rehearing en banc, with four judges dissenting. 625 F.3d 766 (2010). We granted certiorari, 564 U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 3064, 180 L.Ed.2d 885 (2011). II A [1] [2] The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part
that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” It is beyond dispute that a vehicle is an “effect” as that term is used in the Amendment. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 12, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). We hold that the Government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle,2 and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a “search.” It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted. Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765), is a “case we have described as a ‘monument of English freedom’ ‘undoubtedly familiar’ to ‘every American statesman’ at the time the Constitution was adopted, and considered to be ‘the true and ultimate expression of constitutional law’ ” with regard to search and seizure. Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596, 109 S.Ct. 1378, 103 L.Ed.2d 628 (1989) (quoting Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 626, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886)). In that case, Lord Camden expressed in plain terms the significance of property rights in search-and-seizure analysis: “[O]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave; if he does he is a trespasser, though he does no damage at all; if he will tread upon his neighbour’s ground, he must justify it by law.” Entick, supra, at 817. The text of the Fourth Amendment reflects its close connection to property, since otherwise it would have referred simply to “the right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures”; the phrase “in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” would have been superfluous. Consistent with this understanding, our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass, at least until the latter half of the 20th century. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001); Kerr, The *950 Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution, 102 Mich. L.Rev. 801, 816 (2004). Thus, in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928), we held that wiretaps attached to telephone wires on the public streets did not constitute a Fourth Amendment search because “[t]here was no entry of the houses or offices of the 119 defendants,” id., at 464, 48 S.Ct. 564. Our later cases, of course, have deviated from that exclusively property-based approach. In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), we said that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” and found a violation in attachment of an eavesdropping device to a public telephone booth. Our later cases have applied the analysis of Justice Harlan’s concurrence in that case, which said that a violation occurs when government officers violate a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy,” id., at 360, 88 S.Ct. 507. See, e.g., Bond v. United States, 529 U.S. 334, 120 S.Ct. 1462, 146 L.Ed.2d 365 (2000); California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986); Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979). [3] [4] The Government contends that the Harlan standard shows that no search occurred here, since Jones had no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the area of the Jeep accessed by Government agents (its underbody) and in the locations of the Jeep on the public roads, which were visible to all. But we need not address the Government’s contentions, because Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, we must “assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Kyllo, supra, at 34, 121 S.Ct. 2038. As explained, for most of our history the Fourth Amendment was understood to embody a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas (“persons, houses, papers, and effects”) it enumerates.3 Katz did not repudiate that understanding. Less than two years later the Court upheld defendants’ contention that the Government could not introduce against them conversations between other people obtained by warrantless placement of electronic surveillance devices in their homes. The opinion rejected the dissent’s contention that there was no Fourth Amendment violation “unless the conversational privacy of the homeowner himself is invaded.”4 *951 Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 176, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969). “[W]e [do not] believe that Katz, by holding that the Fourth Amendment protects persons and their private conversations, was intended to withdraw any of the protection which the Amendment extends to the home....” Id., at 180, 89 S.Ct. 961. [5] [6] More recently, in Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 113 S.Ct. 538, 121 L.Ed.2d 450 (1992), the Court unanimously rejected the argument that although a “seizure” had occurred “in a ‘technical’ sense” when a trailer home was forcibly removed, id., at 62, 113 S.Ct. 538, no Fourth Amendment violation occurred because law enforcement had not “invade[d] the [individuals’]
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UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUM
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article that appeared in the period
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incarcerated children in the Distri
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Section 3: Writing Exercise Section
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Opinion PERRY, J. 73 So.3d 34 Supre
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activities, or statements that he e
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damaged package and notified federa
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B. “Sniff Test” at a Private Ho
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was standing in front of the door,
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justified on the basis of reasonabl
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The probable cause affidavit listed
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unwavering expectation that there w
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otherwise prompt his dog to alert.
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(quoting State v. Morsman, 394 So.2
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society recognizes as reasonable. A
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obtained through the search is not
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without implicating the Fourth Amen
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[14] The Government contends, howev
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the President and Attorney General
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nuisance. IV Blackstone, Commentari
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The other ‘eroding’ case cited
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11 Jones v. United States, 362 U.S.
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103 S.Ct. 2317 Supreme Court of the
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accompanying remedy. Here, for exam
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northbound on an interstate frequen
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inapplicable to the decision to iss
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L.Ed. 1879 (1949). Justice BRENNAN
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case. As the Court points out, “I
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forcefully suggest that the exclusi
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S.Ct., at 3073-3074. (WHITE, J., di
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law-enforcement officers have recog
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government enforcement agent.” Id
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advance an important underlying sub
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Page 69 and 70: 3 In Spinelli, police officers obse
Page 71 and 72: The only reference to Hereford’s
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Page 75 and 76: susceptible to the interpretation t
Page 77 and 78: 8 Rugendorf v. United States, 376 U
Page 79 and 80: 104 S.Ct. 1652 Supreme Court of the
Page 81 and 82: will not be betrayed.” United Sta
Page 83 and 84: *126 In sum, the federal agents did
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Page 89 and 90: surrounding the use of the techniqu
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Page 93 and 94: 26 See, e.g., Michigan v. Long, 463
Page 95 and 96: Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 181, 110 S
Page 97 and 98: how relatively warm—Kyllo was hea
Page 99 and 100: concurring). To be sure, the homeow
Page 101 and 102: homeowner would even care if anybod
Page 103 and 104: 4 This view comports with that of a
Page 105 and 106: unless the dog sniff itself infring
Page 107 and 108: probable cause to stop the car for
Page 109 and 110: and, implicitly, the application of
Page 111 and 112: 3 Kyllo was concerned with whether
Page 113 and 114: (500 grams and an unspecified amoun
Page 115 and 116: authority to allow police inside th
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Page 121 and 122: field” did not constitute a Fourt
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Page 125 and 126: y the government upon the privacy o
Page 127 and 128: own difficulties. It involves a deg
Page 129 and 130: search unless it is achieved by suc
Page 131 and 132: 88 Or. L. Rev. 829 Oregon Law Revie
Page 133 and 134: hidden in open locations, such as f
Page 135 and 136: While the Place Court’s failure t
Page 137 and 138: location may be important in evalua
Page 139 and 140: III Framing the Canine Home-Sniff D
Page 141 and 142: seemingly making impermissible what
Page 143 and 144: possessions. Without minimizing the
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Page 149 and 150: focused on the routineness of the a
Page 151 and 152: 6 See People v. Dunn, 564 N.E.2d 10
Page 153 and 154: 27 See Robert C. Bird, An Examinati
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Page 157 and 158: pre-Place decisions issued by the U
Page 159 and 160: 97 See Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.
Page 161 and 162: 121 Id. at 37 n.4 (majority opinion
Page 163 and 164: 147 462 U.S. 696 (1983). 148 See in
Page 165 and 166: 171 Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 2
Page 167 and 168: 199 As Justice Souter explained,
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to school). 219 Cf. Katz & Golembie
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240 See Kyllo v. United States, 533
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263 In 2004, photographs emerged th
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285 Id. at 1362. The story of this
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306 But cf. Fitzgerald v. State, 86
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328 Riley, 488 U.S. at 448 (observi
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1 Search & Seizure § 2.3 (4th ed.)
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establish a right to privacy therei
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were locked and could only be opene
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The Wright rule also should not be
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to investigate. Noting that a metal
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active domestic use. It housed ten
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Ciraolo,191 involving aerial survei
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ackyard of the building was complet
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feet. The viewing from the helicopt
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cases as Ciraolo, Riley and Dow man
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premises were abandoned where all c
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22 Young v. Harrison, 284 F.3d 863
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37.1 McKenney v. Harrison, 635 F.3d
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(1983); State v. Eddy, 519 A.2d 113
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68 Dinkens v. State, 291 So.2d 122
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eceived no answer to knock on front
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870 (1987). In such a case, the fac
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“Second, the agents had a legal r
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131 United States v. Llanes, 398 F.
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167 The reference is to the “open
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however by fact lights were on insi
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properly crossed defendant’s land
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view”); State v. Merrill, 252 Neb
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the area within the ‘curtilage’
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is not to conclude that a search of
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265 Such analysis was challenged by
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