In United States v. Barraza-Maldonado, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99992 (D. Minn. 2012), the district court ruled that evidence acquired from the use of a GPS device should not be suppressed because the defendant did not have standing in the vehicle.
Following an order from a magistrate, the defendant argued that the GPS evidence should be suppressed. However, the court found that in order for the use to have been unconstitutional under Jones, he would have "to be able to maintain an action for trepass," requiring him to have a property interest in the vehicle. Here's the Jones test as the district court interprets it:
When the government installs a GPS device (or similar device) on a piece of property before the defendant has any legal interest in the property, the installation of the device is not a trespass on the property of the defendant and therefore is not a search of the defendant for purposes of the trespassory test. (It may, of course, be a trespass on the property — and therefore a search — of someone else.) Moreover, when a defendant takes possession of a piece of property on which a GPS device has already been installed, the continued monitoring of that device is also not a trespass on the property of the defendant, and therefore is not a search of the defendant for purposes of the trespassory test. But the continued monitoring of the device may (or may not) be a search of the defendant under the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test. That would depend on the facts of the case.
Because the defendant did not have any property interest in the car, it was not protected under either the Jones trespass test or the reasonable expectation of privacy test. He was not the owner, and his possession was "temporary and non-exclusive." Further, because it occurred in the Eighth Circuit, the Davis good faith argument saves the evidence from suppression.
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