
Arizona law enforcement’s practice of placing and monitoring GPS trackers on vehicles without first obtaining a warrant was ruled unconstitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The decision was made in the Arizona Supreme Court on January 3rd in regards to an incident back in 2010 involving truck drivers Emilio Jean and David Velez-Colon.
According to the Court of Appeals document, in 2010, Jean and Velez-Colon were working as co-drivers, traveling in their truck from Georgia to Arizona, when a DPS officer noticed the rig and felt suspicious of the vehicle. The DPS officer then ran a record check on the semi truck and discovered that the vehicle was stolen. That information, paired with Jean’s previous involvement in a drug smuggling case back in 1999, prompted suspicions that the truck was being used to transport drugs. The officers then installed a GPS tracking device on the stolen tractor trailer without notifying the truck driver or obtaining a warrant.
The officers monitored the GPS tracker for several days, eventually stopping the rig for further inspection as it reentered Arizona from California. During the inspection, police dogs alerted the officers to the presence of drugs, revealing 2,140 pounds of marijuana hidden inside of the tractor trailer. Both Velez-Colon and Jean were then taken into custody.
Velez-Colon eventually accepted a plea deal, agreeing to testify against Jean, who was later convicted of money laundering as well as the transportation of marijuana.
Despite Jean’s conviction, public defender Brad Branksy argued with the Arizona high court this week that the placement of a GPS tracker without a warrant made the stopping of the Jean’s semi truck and the following search, unconstitutional.
After much discussion, a majority of Arizona’s justices agreed with Branksy about the unconstitutionality of the warrantless GPS and subsequent search, deeming that people traveling in their vehicles have a “reasonable expectation of privacy that includes being able to travel where they want without government monitoring,” reported the Arizona Capital Times.
Although the Supreme Court ruling seemed to be in Jean’s favor, a majority of the justices ruled that, because the laws on GPS tracking had been “unsettled until this point, the officers who put the device on the truck without a warrant were acting in good faith and the conviction stands,” leaving Jean guilty of money laundering and the transportation of drugs in the eyes of the law.
From now on, placing a GPS tracker on a vehicle without a warrant in the state of Arizona will be considered unconstitutional. However, the justices say that the ruling should not be considered “a radical departure from existing law but simply a reaffirmation of the protections in the Fourth Amendment against warrantless government surveillance.”