Supreme Court, Geofence Warrants

The Supreme Court will hear Chatrie v. United States on Monday, April 27, in a case over whether police violated the Fourth Amendment by using a Google geofence warrant. (scotusblog.com) (supremecourt.gov) A geofence warrant works like a reverse search: instead of naming a suspect, police ask a company for data on every device that was in a place during a set time window. In this case, investigators used Google location-history records after a 2019 robbery of a federal credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. (scotusblog.com 1) (scotusblog.com 2) According to the case preview, the robber took about $195,000 and appeared to be talking on a cellphone when he entered the bank. Police then sought a geofence covering a 150-meter radius around the bank for 30 minutes before and after the robbery. (scotusblog.com) Google first gave police anonymized accounts for devices in that area, then more detailed location points for selected accounts over a two-hour period, and finally subscriber information for three accounts. One of those accounts belonged to Okello Chatrie. (scotusblog.com) (supremecourt.gov) Chatrie moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the warrant lacked the probable cause and particularity the Fourth Amendment requires. A federal district judge agreed the warrant was deficient but still let the evidence in under the good-faith exception. (scotusblog.com) Chatrie later pleaded guilty while preserving his right to appeal, and he was sentenced to 141 months in prison plus three years of supervised release. A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the denial of suppression. (scotusblog.com 1) (scotusblog.com 2) The Supreme Court did not take up the separate exclusionary-rule question. It granted review only on whether execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. (supremecourt.gov 1) (supremecourt.gov 2) The case lands eight years after Carpenter v. United States, the court’s 2018 ruling that police generally need a warrant to obtain seven or more days of historical cell-site location information. Chatrie asks how that digital-privacy rule applies when police start with a place and time rather than a named person. (scotusblog.com) The government says the records here were sent to Google and obtained under a judicial warrant. Chatrie and several amici argue the problem is that the warrant swept in many unknown people first and let police decide later whose identities to unmask. (supremecourt.gov) (supremecourt.gov) SCOTUSblog called it the court’s most important digital-privacy case in years, and the docket drew more than 30 amicus briefs before argument. By Monday afternoon, the justices’ questions should offer the clearest sign yet of how far the court may let police search location databases for suspects they do not yet know. (scotusblog.com) (scotusblog.com)