Lead Opinion
OPINION OF THE COURT
with whom RENDELL, FISHER, CHAGARES, JORDAN, HARDIMAN, VANASKIE, and SHWARTZ, Circuit Judges, join.
The instant appeal arises out of the warrantless installation of a Global Positioning System device (a “GPS” or “GPS device”) and subsequent surveillance by agents working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) of a van while investigating multiple pharmacy burglaries. The warrantless surveillance led to evidence of the involvement of brothers Harry, Michael, and Mark Katzin (collectively, “Appellees”) in the burglaries. Slightly more than a year after the GPS installation and surveillance, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Jones, which held that the installation of a GPS device by government agents upon the exterior of a vehicle and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements is a Fourth Amendment “search.” — U.S. -,
I. BACKGROUND
In 2009 and 2010, the FBI and local police officers were investigating a series of pharmacy burglaries occurring in the greater Philadelphia area, including Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. The modus operandi was consistent: the
Eventually, Harry Katzin emerged as a suspect. A local electrician, he had recently been arrested for attempting to burglarize a Rite Aid pharmacy, and he and his brothers had criminal histories involving arrests for burglary and theft. Increasingly, investigators received reports of Harry Katzin’s involvement in suspicious activities in the vicinity of Rite Aid pharmacies.
Two days later, at approximately 10:45 p.m. on December 15, 2010, the GPS device indicated that Harry Katzin’s van had left Philadelphia and proceeded on public thoroughfares to the immediate vicinity of a Rite Aid in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. According to the GPS device, the van drove around the area before stopping and remaining stationary for over two hours. The agents contacted local police but instructed them to maintain a wide perimeter to avoid alerting the suspects. Consequently, the GPS provided the only evidence of the van’s proximity to the Rite Aid. The van left its position at nearly 3:00 a.m. and state troopers followed. Meanwhile, local police confirmed that someone had burglarized the Rite Aid and relayed this information to the troopers, who pulled over the van. Troopers found Harry Katzin at the wheel with Michael and Mark as passengers. From outside the van, troopers observed items consistent with the burglary of a Rite Aid.
Appellees were indicted and each moved to suppress the evidence recovered from the van. They argued that the warrant-less installation and monitoring of the GPS device violated their Fourth Amendment rights pursuant to Jones. The Government argued, inter alia, that even if Jones
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted Appellees’ suppression motions. United States v. Katzin, No. 11-226,
A panel of this Court unanimously affirmed the District Court’s conclusions that the agents’ conduct required a warrant and that all three brothers had standing. United States v. Katzin,
II. DISCUSSION
The Fourth Amendment mandates 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, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
U.S. Const. amend. IV. Accordingly, the Fourth Amendment only prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures. Skinner v. Ry. Labor Executives’ Ass’n,
Consequently, we need not determine whether the agents’ conduct was an unreasonable search because, even assuming so, we conclude that the good faith exception applies, and that suppression is unwarranted.
A. The Exclusionary Rule and the Good Faith Exception
Whether to suppress evidence under the exclusionary rule is a separate question from whether the Government has violated an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights. Hudson v. Michigan,
Application of the exclusionary rule is instead limited to those “unusual cases” in which it may achieve its objective: to appreciably deter governmental violations of the Fourth Amendment. Leon,
However, while “[r]eal deterrent value” is necessary for the exclusionary rule to apply, there are other considerations and it alone is not sufficient. Davis,
The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule was developed to effectuate this balance and has been applied “across a range of cases.”
1. Davis v. United States
In Davis, the Supreme Court applied the good faith exception in the context of law enforcement officers’ reliance on judicial decisions.
In Belton, the Supreme Court announced a seemingly broad and permissive standard regarding searches incident to arrest.
Before Gant, the Eleventh Circuit had been one of many federal appeals courts to read Belton as establishing a permissive rule. See United States v. Gonzalez,
Crucial to Davis’ holding that suppression was not warranted was the “acknowledged absence of police culpability.” Id. The officers’ conduct was innocent because they “followed the Eleventh Circuit’s Gonzalez precedent to the letter” and conducted themselves “in strict compliance with then-binding Circuit law.” Id. Because “well-trained officers will and should use” a law enforcement tactic that “binding appellate precedent specifically authorizes,” evidence suppression would only serve to deter what had been reasonable police work. Id..at 2429. As this outcome was inimical to the exclusionary rule’s purpose, namely deterrence, the Supreme Court applied the good faith exception to the officers’ conduct, rendering suppression inappropriate. Id. (“About all that exclusion would deter in this case is conscientious police work.”).
B. The District Court’s Reliance on Davis
In the case at bar, the District Court refused to “stray[ ] from the limitations set forth in Davis and expand[ ] the good faith
C. The agents acted in good faith under both Davis v. United States and the general good faith exception.
We disagree with the District Court in two respects. First, we conclude that the exclusionary rule should not apply because, at the time of the agents’ conduct in this case, the Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Knotts,
1. Knotts and Karo were binding appellate precedent upon which the agents could reasonably have relied under Davis.
As an initial matter, it is self-evident that Supreme Court decisions are binding precedent in every circuit. See, e.g., United States v. Aguiar,
For a law enforcement officer’s conduct to fall under the ambit of Davis, a court must answer in the affirmative that he or she has “conduet[ed] a search [or seizure] in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent.” Id. If that is the case, this “absence of police culpability dooms” motions to suppress evidence gathered pursuant to an allegedly illegal search or seizure. Id. The concept of “objectively reasonable reliance” for good faith purposes has been in practice since long before Davis was decided and requires answering “whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that [a] search was illegal.... [under] all of the circumstances.... ” Leon,
As a threshold matter, we note that our inquiry is twofold. The agents magnetically attached a battery-operated GPS onto the undercarriage of Harry Katzin’s van and tracked its movements for two days. Jones analyzed this kind of conduct as a singular act.
It was objectively reasonable for the agents to rely upon Karo in concluding that the warrantless installation of the GPS device was legal. In Karo, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) learned that James Karo and others had ordered, for use in cocaine smuggling, fifty gallons of ether from a government informant.
The Supreme Court affirmed the war-rantless installation of the beeper, holding that it infringed no Fourth Amendment rights. Id. at 713,
The magnetic attachment of an unmonitored GPS unit onto the exterior of Harry Katzin’s vehicle, like the mere transfer of a can containing an unmonitored beeper, did not convey any information. It would have been objectively reasonable for a law enforcement officer to conclude, prior to Jones and in reliance on Karo, that such conduct was not a search because it infringed no privacy interest. The same result applies to the “trespass” of the GPS device (also an “unknown and unwanted foreign object”) upon Harry Katzin’s vehicle. It would have been objectively reasonable for a law enforcement officer to conclude that Karo’s sweeping rejection of the trespass theory applied not only the DEA agents’ elaborate ruse therein, but also to the unremarkable strategy of magnetically attaching a battery-operated GPS unit onto the exterior of a vehicle. In sum, although the facts of this case differ from Karo’s, the Supreme Court’s rationale was broad enough to embrace the agents’ conduct, and their rebanee on this binding appellate precedent was objectively reasonable under Davis.
It was also objectively reasonable for the agents to rely upon Knotts and Karo in concluding that the warrantless monitoring of the GPS device was legal. In Knotts, like Karo, law enforcement arranged for a suspect to voluntarily take into his vehicle a container that, unbeknownst to him, contained a beeper.
With respect to surveillance, the agents here engaged in nearly identical conduct to that authorized in Knotts. Appellees “voluntarily conveyed” their travels over public roads and the information gathered by the GPS device was indistinguishable from that which physical surveillance would have revealed. See id. at 281-82,
We acknowledge, of course, that these cases are not factually identical to the agents’ conduct. The agents monitored Harry Katzin’s van for two days by GPS, not beeper. They clandestinely installed a battery-operated GPS by magnetically attaching it onto the undercarriage of his van rather than clandestinely tricking him into unwittingly taking the GPS device into his vehicle. Otherwise their conduct echoed that in Knotts and Karo. No two cases will be factually identical. While the underlying facts of the cases are obviously relevant to determining whether reliance is objectively reasonable, the question is not answered simply by mechanically comparing the facts of cases and tallying their similarities and differences. Rather, Davis’ inquiry involves a holistic examination of whether a reasonable officer would believe in good faith that binding appellate precedent authorized certain conduct, which is a scenario-specific way of asking the broader question of whether the officer “act[ed] with an objectively ‘reasonable good-faith belief that [his] conduct [was] lawful.” Davis,
Undoubtedly, certain language in Davis invites a narrow reading, but we are not persuaded this interpretation is true to Davis’ holding. For instance, Davis found exclusion inappropriate where “binding appellate precedent specifically authorized] a particular police practice.” Id. at 2429. We construe, arguendo, this language narrowly to mean that the relied-upon case must affirmatively authorize the precise conduct at issue in the case under consideration. Stated as a syllogism, if binding appellate precedent specifically authorizes the precise conduct under consideration, then it will likely be binding appellate precedent upon which police can reasonably rely under Davis. However, this does not make the reverse syllogism true, namely, that if a case is binding appellate precedent under Davis, then it must specifically authorize the precise conduct under consideration. . Davis’ holding is broader: “[e]vidence obtained during a search conducted in reasonable reliance on binding precedent is not subject to the exclusionary rule.” Id. While reliance is likely reasonable when the precise conduct under consideration has been affirmatively authorized by binding appellate precedent, it may be no less reasonable when the conduct under consideration clearly falls well within rationale espoused in binding appellate precedent, which authorizes nearly identical conduct.
Accordingly, what is far more important to our conclusion is that, despite these few dissimilarities, the agents’ nearly identical conduct fits squarely within the rationale of these decisions. We, therefore, believe
2. Suppression is inappropriate because the agents acted under an objectively reasonable good faith belief that their conduct was lawful.
a. The alleged inapplicability of Davis does not control the issue.
Alternatively, even if we were to accept Appellees’ argument that factual dissimilarities disqualify Knotts and Karo from being “binding appellate precedent” which could reasonably be relied on under Davis, our inquiry would not end there. In advancing their contrary position, the District Court and Appellees improperly elevate Davis’ holding above the general good faith analysis from whence it came. Davis is but one application of the good faith exception that applies when police “conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent.” Davis,
Davis supports this conclusion. In reaching its holding, Davis reiterates the analytical steps for evaluating suppression challenges.
Davis did not begin, nor end, with binding appellate precedent. Rather, binding appellate precedent informed — and ultimately determined — the Supreme Court’s greater inquiry: whether the officers’ conduct was deliberate and culpable enough that application of the exclusionary rule would “yield meaningfu[l] deterrence,” and “be worth the price paid by the justice system.” Id. at 2428 (alteration in original) (quoting Herring,
The District Court acknowledged the argument that the “general good faith exception language” could permit an “individualized determination” of whether the agents’ conduct was objectively reasonable. Katzin,
b. The Legal Landscape
In applying the good faith exception analysis to the agents’ conduct, we initially address the precise conduct at issue and the legal landscape at the time the agents acted. The agents magnetically attached a battery-operated GPS onto the undercarriage of Harry Katzin’s van and tracked its movements for two days. As noted above, we analyze the reasonableness of the agents’ conduct as would a pre-Jones court, namely, by separately considering installation and surveillance. E.g., Karo,
Application of the good faith exception turns on whether the agents, at the time they acted, would have or should have known their installation of the GPS and their subsequent monitoring of Harry Katzin’s vehicle were unconstitutional. See Krull,
i. Knotts and Karo
Until Katz v. United States,
In Knotts and Karo, the Supreme Court applied this rationale to electronic surveillance of vehicles. We incorporate our earlier discussion of these cases, pausing only to reiterate Knotts’ conclusion that “[a] person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another,”
Also relevant to the installation question are the Supreme Court’s conclusions that persons do not enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in the exterior of their vehicles. New York v. Class,
Thus, at bottom, before Jones, Knotts and Karo established that no Fourth Amendment search occurred where officers used beeper-based electronics to monitor an automobile’s movements on public roads because a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to that information. Additionally, the rationale they espoused informed the federal appeals courts’ subsequent treatment of direct installation of a GPS device onto the exterior of a vehicle.
ii. Out-of-Circuit Decisions
After Knotts and Karo, what resulted was a nearly uniform consensus across the federal courts of appeals that addressed the issue that the installation and subsequent use of a GPS or GPS-like device was not a search, or, at most, was a search but did not require a warrant. See, e.g., United States v. Marquez,
The lone dissenting voice was United States v. Maynard,
Thus, at the time the agents acted, in addition to the “beeper” authority of Knotts and Karo, three circuit courts expressly approved their use of a GPS or GPS-like device, and the lone dissenting voice involved surveillance of a far longer duration.
Hi. AUSA Consultation
Finally, the agents consulted with, and received approval from, an AUSA on their proposed conduct. It was DOJ policy at the time that a warrant was not required to install a battery-powered GPS on a vehicle parked on a public street and to surveil it on public roads. We have previously considered reliance on government attorneys in our good faith calculus and concluded that, based upon it in combination with other factors, “[a] reasonable officer would ... have confidence in [a search’s] validity.”
Jones fundamentally altered this legal landscape by reviving—after a forty-five year hibernation— the Supreme Court’s prior trespass theory.
With this legal landscape in mind, we turn now to our application of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
c. Applying the Good Faith Exception
To reiterate, the exclusionary rule is a prudential doctrine designed solely to deter future Fourth Amendment violations. Davis,
We conclude that when the agents acted, they did so upon an objectively reasonable good faith belief in the legality of their conduct, and that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule therefore applies. The constellation of circumstances that appeared to authorize their conduct included well settled principles of Fourth Amendment law as articulated by the Supreme Court, a near-unanimity of circuit courts applying these principles to the same conduct, and the advice of an AUSA pursuant to a DOJ-wide policy. Given this panoply of authority, we cannot say that a “reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal,” id., nor that the agents acted with “deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for [Appel-lees’] Fourth Amendment rights,” Davis,
i. Knotts and Karo
Knotts and Karo are seminal cases on the intersection of electronic surveillance of vehicles and the Fourth Amendment. Before Jones, their conclusion that the Fourth Amendment was not implicated by the installation and use of a beeper to surveil vehicles on public thoroughfares, and the rationale that supported it, was hornbook law. See, e.g., Aguiar,
The agents also benefitted from Supreme Court precedent addressing trespass in the context of electronic surveillance of vehicles on public roads. Although Karo did not address direct installation, its renunciation of the trespass theory was broad enough for agents reasonably to conclude that the installation was “only marginally relevant” to Appellees’ Fourth Amendment rights and alone was “neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation.”
ii. Oui^of-Circuit Decisions
The agents’ conduct also conformed to practices authorized by a “uniform treatment” of “continuous judicial approval” of warrantless GPS installation and use across the federal courts. See Peltier,
By considering these non-binding decisions in our good faith analysis, we do no more than did the Supreme Court in Peltier. There, the Court considered the “constitutional norm” established by the courts of appeals when determining whether an officer “had knowledge, or [could] properly be charged with knowledge, that [a] search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 542,
in. AUSA Consultation
Finally, the agents’ consultation with the AUSA also supports our conclusion that a reasonable agent would have believed in good faith that the installation and surveillance of Harry Katzin’s vehicle was legal. Of course, the AUSA approved their conduct. But more importantly, the AUSA’s advice was given pursuant to a DOJ-wide policy — presumably based upon the legal landscape we describe above — that the agents’ conduct did not require a warrant. Prosecutors are, of course, not “neutral judicial officers.” Leon,
In light of the aforementioned legal landscape, when the agents installed the GPS device onto the undercarriage of Harry Katzin’s vehicle, and then used that device to monitor his vehicle’s movements on public thoroughfares for two days, we believe those agents exhibited “an objectively ‘reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct [was] lawful.” Davis,
Appellees argue that excluding the evidence against them would achieve appreciable deterrence because it would prevent investigators and prosecutors from “engaging in overly aggressive reading's of non-binding authority” and deter law enforcement from “ *act[ing] in a constitutionally reckless fashion’ by taking constitutional inquiries into their own hands.” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 5 (quoting Katzin,
No doubt, sometimes officers’ reliance on non-binding authorities will fall short of an “objectively reasonable” good faith belief in the legality of their conduct. Suppression may then be appropriate to deter such reliance. It is equally elementary that close cases will be difficult.
Because such a bright-line rule would supplant the required balancing act, we would have to be confident that in every conceivable future case, the substantial costs of suppression would be outweighed by the value of deterring police from relying on a “constitutional norm” simply because it had yet to be expressly established by precedential opinion in the Third Circuit. We have no such confidence and Appellees do little to assuage our concerns. Appellees’ good faith calculus conspicuously fails to confront the “cost” side of the equation, which they dismiss as “minimal.” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 8.) However, the Supreme Court has routinely stated the opposite; the cost of suppression is “substantial,” Leon,
The boundaries of the good faith exception are a sufficient deterrent to the conduct Appellees find objectionable. Law enforcement personnel will either tread cautiously or risk suppression.
In any event, just because law enforcement officers may one day unreasonably
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the order of the District Court suppressing the evidence discovered in Harry Katzin’s van and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Notes
.For example, in October 2010 Pennsylvania police found Harry Katzin crouching behind bushes near a Rite A id. They did not arrest him but the following day discovered the Rite Aid’s phone lines had been cut. A month later, police searched Harry Katzin’s van after discovering him and two other individuals (including his brother Michael) sitting inside it near a Rite A id. Police found tools, work gloves, and ski masks in the van but did not arrest the men. Again, police later discovered the Rite Aid's phone lines were cut. Finally, that same month, surveillance camera footage from a burglarized New Jersey Rite Aid showed a van similar to Harry Katzin’s parked in its vicinity.
. A "slap-on” GPS device magnetically attaches to a vehicle’s exterior and is battery powered, requiring no electrical connection to the vehicle. It uses a network of satellites to calculate its location and transmits the data to a central server. An officer need not physically track nor be near the automobile. The GPS that the agents used had a battery life of one week (although the agents could have changed the batteries, if necessary).
. The state trooper saw merchandise, pill bottles, Rite Aid storage bins, tools, a duffel bag, and a surveillance system with severed wires.
. The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231. We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3731 and 28 U.S.C. § 1291. In reviewing a motion to suppress, "we review a district court’s factual findings for clear error, and we exercise de novo review over its application of the law to those factual findings.” United States v. Pavulak, 700 F.3d 651, 660 (3d Cir.2012).
. This approach is consistent with that taken by our sister circuits when addressing the installation and use of GPS or GPS-like devices that occurred prior to Jones. See, e.g., United States v. Brown,
. We use the term "standing” as shorthand for determining whether a litigant's Fourth Amendment rights are implicated. See United States v. Mosley,
. See Davis,
. The District Court relied on "policy issues” it believed militated against "[ejxtending Davis " and applying the good faith exception. Katzin,
. The District Court noted that the Supreme Court’s good faith decisions generally involved reliance on some "unequivocally binding” authority, which does not include nonbinding case law. Katzin,
. Moreover, we note that Justice Sotomayor understood Davis explicitly to leave open the question “whether the exclusionary rule applies when the law governing the constitutionality of a particular search is unsettled.” Davis,
. Appellees’ warning not to "fabricate” a new good faith ground exemplifies this misreading of Davis. (Appellee En Banc Br. at 4.) The Davis Court did not "fabricate” binding appellate precedent as a ground for applying the good faith exception. The facts involved binding appellate precedent, but the ground for applying the good faith exception was — as it has been since Leon—that the deterrence rationale was unsatisfied. Davis,
. Michael was also Eleventh Circuit law. See Bonner v. City of Prichard,
. At oral argument before the original panel, counsel for Appellee Mark Katzin conceded that we may properly consider the AUSA consultation in the totality of circumstances informing our good faith analysis. Transcript of Oral Argument at 52, United States v. Katzin,
. Although Peltier was applying the “old ret-roactivity regime" of Linkletter v. Walker,
. Garcia,
. Marquez,
. Pineda-Moreno,
. The D.C. Circuit in Maynard broke from this consensus and held that prolonged GPS surveillance of the defendant’s vehicle "24 hours a day for four weeks" was a Fourth Amendment search.
. This Court has also previously noted — albeit in limited ways — supportive out-of-circuit decisions in its good faith analyses. See, Pavulak,
. Our sister circuits' complementary conclusions support this result. See Brown,
. We are unpersuaded by Appellees’ warning that our holding will require a “complicated judgment about whether non-binding case law is sufficiently ‘settled’ and persuasive.’ ” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 6.) The Fourth Amendment routinely requires courts to make difficult determinations of reasonableness. See, e.g., Scott v. Harris,
. As the Supreme Court noted in Leon, "the possibility that illegally obtained evidence may be admitted in borderline cases is unlikely to encourage police instructors to pay less attention to fourth amendment limitations .... [nor] encourage officers to pay less attention to what they are taught, as the requirement that the officer act in 'good faith' is inconsistent with closing one's mind to the possibility of illegality.”
. Appellees also argue that, under our holding, courts will “defer to 'adjuncts of the law enforcement team’ on the difficult question of whether a particular legal issue is the subject of 'settled' and 'persuasive' law.” (Appellee En Banc Br. at 7.) The good faith analysis is not deferential. That courts may be required to consider whether reliance on nonbinding authority is objectively reasonable does not change the governing inquiry.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting, joined by McKEE, Chief Judge, and AMBRO, FUENTES, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.
Once touted as a way to ensure that the rights of citizens are protected from overzealous law enforcement, today the exclusionary rule’s very existence, long eroding, is in serious doubt. Since the inception of the exclusionary rule, critics have disputed its validity. In words often quoted, [then Judge] Cardozo questioned whether “[t] he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” People v. Defore,
Law enforcement violated Katzin’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Law enforcement contends that they acted reasonably by consulting with their co-investigators at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. However, what is missing here is neutral authorization of any sort for the conduct undertaken by the police. Consultation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office is not a panacea for the constitutional issues raised here. Katz v. United States,
In its primary holding, the majority turns the rationale of Davis on its head and concludes that two disparate Supreme Court precedents — that the Government concedes do not constitute binding appellate precedent — now fit the bill.
I. Expansion of the Good Faith Exception
The majority’s alternative holding, that good faith should apply even if it does not fit the Davis paradigm, is troubling. The essence of the majority’s holding is that any time a course of conduct by the police, particularly regarding technological advancements, has not been tested or breaks new ground, law enforcement will be enti-
I do not dispute the majority’s contention that “Davis is but one application of the good faith exception that applies when police ‘conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent.’ ” Majority Op. at 177 (quoting Davis,
Historically, the Supreme Court has held the good faith exception covers situations where law enforcement personnel have acted in objectively reasonable reliance on some seemingly iihmutable authority or information that justifies their course of action., See, e.g., United States v. Leon,
It is clear from the line of good faith cases that the exception is limited to cases involving either: (a) nondeterrable, isolated mistakes, or (b) cases in which police officers rely upon a neutral third-party’s
The majority argues that the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter wrongful conduct of law enforcement, and that here there is no wrongful conduct. As the Supreme Court has explained, “police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system.” Herring,
Here, law enforcement personnel made a deliberate decision to forego securing a warrant before attaching a GPS device directly to a target vehicle in the absence of binding Fourth Amendment precedent authorizing such a practice. Indeed, the police embarked on a long-term surveillance project using technology that allowed them to monitor a target vehicle’s movements using only a laptop, all before either this Circuit or the Supreme Court had spoken on the constitutional propriety of such an endeavor. In an area without any guidance from the Supreme Court or from our Circuit, law enforcement and the prosecutors looked to our sister circuits to find the universe of case law that supported the most beneficial position to them. For purposes of our analysis, we may not assume that Knotts and Karo were binding appellate precedent simply because that is what law enforcement, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, concluded at the time of their decision to place the GPS on Katzin’s van. Thus, law enforcement made a deliberate decision implicating constitutional principles on the basis of a 3-1 circuit split, absent any specific authorization for their conduct. What if the split had been 2-2 or 1-3? Is there a basis from which one can imagine that law enforcement’s decision would have been different?
True, the police did not act in a total vacuum, but their chosen course of action when presented with such a novel constitutional predicament is nonetheless worrisome. In lieu of a binding proclamation from either this Circuit or the Supreme Court — and instead of seeking approval from a neutral magistrate — law enforcement personnel looked to other (non-binding or distinguishable) authorities like our sister circuits’ decisions. Essentially, they extrapolated their own constitutional rule, in consultation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and applied it to this case. This
I do not believe that this intra-executive consultation absolves police personnel’s behavior. Now, the assumption by law enforcement that their own self-derived rule sanctioned their conduct becomes true, thanks to the majority’s analysis. Such decision-making is wrongful conduct that can and should be deterred — for that is the primary purpose of the exclusionary rule! The police practice at issue here effectively disregarded the possibility that we could find a GPS search constitutes a Fourth Amendment violation requiring a warrant.
Where we have not yet ruled on the constitutionality of a police tactic, law enforcement personnel have two choices: (a) assume that their conduct violates the Fourth Amendment and that we will require them to obtain a warrant, or (b) gamble, at the risk of having evidence excluded, that we will find no Fourth Amendment violation in a particular situation. This is in line with the Supreme Court’s suggestion that law enforcement officials should be incentivized to “err on the side of constitutional behavior.” United States v. Johnson,
I would not hold, of course, that the police can never make assumptions about our future Fourth Amendment rulings. If their analysis is correct and we ultimately affirm the constitutionality of a search, then the police are rewarded with full use of any evidence derived from the search. If their analysis is wrong, however, and the search is ultimately held to be unconstitutional, then the police cannot avoid the cost of suppression by relying on the good faith exception. Of course, the police can avoid this entire issue by requesting a warrant in the first instance, a task unburdened by time nor trouble.
Law enforcement personnel can rightly rely on a number of sources for Fourth Amendment guidance — including relevant
The legal landscape in this case predominantly consisted of the out-of-circuit GPS cases, the Supreme Court’s beeper decisions, and the overarching privacy expectation framework for Fourth Amendment analysis adopted in Katz and deemed to be the sole rubric for analysis until United States v. Jones, — U.S. -,
My intention would not be to bind the hands of law enforcement. I merely believe that the investigatory process established by the Constitution is the proper one: that police officers get a warrant prior to conducting a search. This is also consistent with Karo, where the Court expressly rejected the Government’s argument that requiring a warrant prior to beeper tracking would be too laborious and would substantially impede investigations. See Karo,
Thus, I conclude that in the absence of binding appellate precedent from the Supreme Court or this Court, law enforcement must — as it has been required to do since the founding of this country — comply with the .warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. This is clear and easy to follow. This rule gives police officers not only sufficient discretion, but also sufficient guidance to achieve their objectives.
II. Why Knotts and Karo Do Not Constitute Binding Appellate Precedent
The majority elects to make an alternative holding: that Knotts and Karo are
Knotts and Karo stand for two propositions, only one of which the majority has elected to acknowledge. First, in Knotts the Supreme Court held that “[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares [generally] has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” Knotts,
The Supreme Court portended the exact case we have before us now. The Court astutely foretold that improvements in technology that would permit twenty-four hour surveillance (i.e., GPS) might indeed present “different constitutional principles.” Id. And now that this case is before us, the majority ignores this second, critical takeaway from Knotts and misrepresents that it constitutes binding appellate precedent for purposes of permitting a Uams-based good faith exception ruling.
In addition to Knotts’ warning about “dragnet type law enforcement practices,” discussed in more detail below, there are three additional reasons why Knotts and Karo are not binding appellate precedent, contrary to the majority’s insistence: (1) the marked technological differences between beepers and GPS trackers, (2) the placement by police of the beepers inside containers with the consent of the owners in those cases, and (3) the uncertainty in this area of law created by the D.C. Circuit decision, United States v. Maynard,
Technological Differences
Our case concerns a “slap-on” GPS tracker, so called because it magnetically attaches to the exterior of a target vehicle, is battery operated, and thereby requires no electronic connection to the automobile. The tracker uses the Global Positioning System — a network of satellites originally developed by the military — to determine its own location with a high degree of specificity and then sends this data to a central server. This check-and-report process repeats every few minutes (depending on the tracker), thereby generating a highly accurate record of the tracker’s whereabouts throughout its period of operation. The great benefit of such a system — apart from its accuracy — is that anyone with access to the central server can analyze or monitor the location data remotely. These aspects make GPS trackers particularly appealing in law enforcement contexts, where the police can attach a tracker to some vehicle or other asset and then remotely monitor its location and movement.
GPS technology is vastly different from the more primitive tracking devices of yesteryear — “beepers.” Beepers are nothing more than “radio transmitter^], usually battery operated, which emit[ ] periodic signals that can be picked up by a radio receiver.” Knotts,
In a Ninth Circuit denial of a petition for rehearing on the GPS question, Chief Judge Kozinski issued a fiery dissent from the denial, accusing the Pineda-Moreno majority of being “inclined to refuse nothing” to the needs of law enforcement. United States v. Pineda-Moreno,
As noted above, the Knotts Court specifically indicated that, in contrast to the officers’ limited use of the beeper in that case, more expansive monitoring, (e.g., a “twenty-four hour,” “dragnet type law enforcement practice! ]”) could implicate “different constitutional principles.” Knotts,
In fact, in numerous cases, the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals have expressed caution about the extension of their holdings regarding the permissibility of certain law enforcement conduct to situations involving future technology. See, e.g., Kyllo v. United States,
Even before Katz, when the Supreme Court articulated the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, the Supreme Court was balancing the “need for effective law
Consent
Another critical difference between Kñotts and Karo and Katzin is the presence or absence of consent. The majority derisively dismisses this issue as an “elaborate ruse.” Majority Op. at 175. However, the “elaborate ruse” enabled the law enforcement officers to place the beeper into a can of ether, with the can owner’s consent. Karo,
It is true that both of these cases established the principle that no Fourth Amendment search occurs where officers use beeper-based electronics to monitor an automobile’s movement on public roads because a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding that information. However, neither case addressed the direct installation of a tracking device onto or into a vehicle, as is the case here. First, the defendant in Knotts did not challenge the original installation of the beeper, but only the use of the information that it emitted: See id. at 286,
This distinction is important, particularly in light of Jones’s determination that GPS tracking abridges Fourth Amendment rights on the ground that the installation of the GPS constituted a trespass. Jones,
Maynard Muddies the Waters
Finally, there is the Maynard decision, which, if the technological differences and consent distinctions were not enough, sufficiently muddied the waters so that law enforcement officers could not know whether the attachment of a GPS device to the undercarriage of a vehicle would violate the Fourth Amendment. In Maynard, the D.C. Circuit split from three sister circuits to hold that prolonged GPS surveillance constituted a search. Maynard,
At the same time, the court in Maynard rejected the applicability of the automobile exception to the warrant requirement, holding that while the exception “permits the police to search a car without a warrant if they have reason to believe it contains contrabando it] ... does not authorize them to install a tracking device on a car without the approval of a neutral magistrate.” Id. at 567. A year later, the Supreme Court granted certiorari, under the name United States v. Jones, — U.S. -,
This case should have given law enforcement pause as to the applicability of Knotts and Karo to the new world of GPS. At the very least, they should have known that prolonged surveillance could be an issue and one that could be easily fixed by getting a search warrant from a neutral magistrate.
By its plain terms, the express holding in Davis is inapposite to this case because I believe that Knotts and Karo do not qualify as appropriate binding appellate precedent. Neither case involved a physical trespass onto the target vehicle; in both cases the police placed the beeper inside of a container which was then loaded into the target vehicle by the driver (all with the container owner’s permission). See Karo,
III. Conclusion
The majority’s good faith analysis is flawed because it finds that, where the law is unsettled, law enforcement may engage in constitutionally reckless conduct and still reap the benefits of the good faith exception. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence dictates a different outcome. When the law is unsettled, law enforcement should not travel the road of speculation, but rather they should demonstrate respect for the constitutional mandate — obtain a warrant. Anything less would require suppression. I cannot condone the majority’s accommodation to law enforcement at the expense of our civil liberties. I am compelled to dissent.
. That the GPS placed on Katzin's vehicle violated his Fourth Amendment rights was not argued before the Third Circuit en banc, as argument was restricted to the question of the applicability of good faith. Before a good faith analysis can proceed, there must first be a finding that a Fourth Amendment violation occurred. The majority downplays the significance of this requirement, noting that “we need not determine whether the agents' conduct was an unreasonable search because, even assuming so, we conclude that the good faith exception applies_" Majority Op. at 170. However, simultaneously, the majority notes that "[a] panel of this Court unanimously affirmed the District Court's conclusions that the agents’ conduct required a warrant and that all three brothers had standing.” Majority Op. at 169. Here, the agents' conduct constituted an unreasonable search, and this finding is a predicate to any good faith analysis. See, e.g., Davis v. United States,-U.S. -,
. At oral argument, the Government stated that its position regarding United States v. Knotts,
. At oral argument, the Government acknowledged that it was asking for an expansion of the good faith exception, to which, with today's ruling, the majority has clearly acquiesced. Id. at 23.
. The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion in Davis was also explicit on this point: "[We refuse] to apply the exclusionary rule when the police have reasonably relied on clear and well-settled precedent. We stress, however, that our precedent on a given point must be unequivocal before we will suspend the exclusionary rule’s operation.” Davis,
. I limit my discussion to scenario (b) based on the facts of this case.
. Johnson addressed retroactive application of Fourth Amendment decisions. In discussing the matter, the Court stated:
If, as the Government argues, all rulings resolving unsettled Fourth Amendment questions should be nonretroactive, then, in close cases, law enforcement officials would have little incentive to err on the side of constitutional behavior. Official awareness of the dubious constitutionality of a practice would be counterbalanced by official certainty that, so long as the Fourth Amendment law in the area remained unsettled, evidence obtained through the questionable practice would be excluded only in the one case definitively resolving the unsettled question. Failure to accord any retroactive effect to Fourth Amendment rulings would encourage police or other courts to disregard the plain purport of our decisions and to adopt a let’s-wait-until-it’s-decided approach.
Johnson,
. While the Supreme Court has leant its imprimatur to alternative holdings, see, e.g., MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. Yolo Cnty.,
. See also Kyllo,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting,
joined by McKEE, Chief Judge, AMBRO, FUENTES, and GREENAWAY, JR., Circuit Judges.
I join Judge Greenaway’s eloquent dissent in its entirety. There is little that can be added to Judge Greenaway’s devastating critique. I write here only to expand on a worrisome facet of the majority’s reasoning. Because Knotts
I do see, however, considerable tension between an approach that permits law enforcement officers who invoke the good faith exception to take refuge in the rationale of certain Supreme Court cases, and the limiting language which the Supreme Court itself chose to employ in Davis which referred to binding precedent “specifically authoriz[ing]” a particular police practice. Davis v. United States, — U.S. -,
For this reason, and for those so ably expressed by Judge Greenaway, I respectfully dissent.
. See United States v. Knotts,
. See United States v. Karo,
