Mississippi district court refuses good faith argument for warrantless GPS use despite arguable precedent

In May, I wrote about an Alabama district court upholding the use of a GPS device prior to Jones under a good faith argument because the Eleventh Circuit has precedent (old Fifth Circuit which includes today's Fifth and Eleventh Circuits) allowing a beeper to be placed on the exterior of a car. United States v. Rosas-llescas, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74594 (N.D. Ala. 2012).

A Mississippi district court refused to do the same in United States v. Lujan, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95804 (N.D. Miss. 2012), holding that the use "was per se unreasonable without a warrant under the Fourth Amendment."

The defendant was being investigated for narcotic trafficking, and a GPS device was placed on his vehicle and was used for six days of monitoring. Thereafter, he was pulled over in Arkansas for a traffic violation, and he was subsequently charged with a variety of crimes. He sought suppression due to the use of GPS.

The district court analyzed the application of good faith to post-Jones cases throughout the country and held:

[T]he Fifth Circuit's standing precedent at the time the GPS tracker was placed was that the placement of a beeper, not specifically a GPS tracker, without a warrant was justified where the officers had reasonable suspicion that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity. Accordingly, the Court finds that application of the good faith exception in this instance, where the Fifth Circuit precedent at the time the tracker was placed could only apply to GPS by analogy, is overly broad.

However, because the evidence was obtained due to the traffic stop and valid consent as an independent source, the court denied evidence suppression.