deraneyesq — 7 years ago
June 22nd, 2018 – An Update on Cell Phone Location Usage by Police
On June 22nd, 2018, The Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5 to 4 Decision, held that Law Enforcement are required to obtain a Warrant to gather Cell Phone Location Data as evidence against a Criminal Defendant. The decision holds Searches for Cell Phone Location Data as a Fourth Amendment Search. The case, Carpenter v. United States, had arguments before SCOTUS on November 29th, 2017 with attorneys from the ACLU based on a 2011 Robbery in Detroit in which Police utilized almost 13K different locations from Carpenter over almost half a year.
This decision, though unrelated, comes after the fervor over the Podcast “Serial,” which chronicled the case of Adnan Syed convicted of murdering his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee. In his case, the State utilized this evidence to forward their narrative of his actions. In March 2018, a new trial was provided for Syed amidst allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel, among other issues.
Historically, the usage of this type of evidence has been severely unreliable but, nonetheless, relied up by Prosecutors to show the location of a Criminal Defendant. The crux of its unreliability is based on that fact that: (1) The cell phone may use different towers based on strength of service, (2) The cell phone may use different towers based on abundance of usage by others on the same tower, and (3) The cell phone doesn’t always pick the closest cell phone tower to send cellular signals.
The decision is a victory for privacy rights to an extent, but it’s not expected to be a tidal wave of change as competent defense experts have been readily available to testify against the reliability of this type of evidence for years, including in the Syed matter discussed above.
To read more about Carpenter v. United States, click here.
