Nevada district court applies good faith to GPS evidence, denies standing to one-time driver

In United States v. Smith, No. 2:11-cr-00058-GMN-CWH (D. Nev. 2012), the district court found that the defendants were not entitled to suppression of GPS evidence and that one of the defendants did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the car which he had driven on at least one occasion.

Law enforcement had placed a GPS device on defendant Smith's vehicle in May 2010, and Smith sought to suppress the evidence obtained from the device under the 2012 Supreme Court decision in Jones. Defendant Merritte sought similar protection though the car did not belong to him.

The court found that Merritte was not entitled to suppression because he did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the vehicle. He was not the owner and had only been seen driving the car by police on one occasion as he was usually a passenger. Further, he presented no information that he had permission from Smith to drive on that one occasion or on any other. He argued that an Eighth Circuit case should apply, but the court acknowledged it was not binding nor factually similar. In that case, the defendant had a set of keys to the car and drove it multiple times per week.

With regard to Smith, the court found that the good faith exception applies as the Ninth Circuit's decision in Pineda-Moreno was binding at the time the device was installed. The application of the good faith exception has been extensively discussed on this blog.

Related Case: The same standing rule the court used to decide Merritte's argument also came up in a recent federal case in South Dakota. In United States v. Clinton, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 150171 (D. S.D.), the court held that the defendant's possession of a cell phone, "without more, is insufficient to establish a Fourth Amendment right to privacy in its contents." He was not the owner or registered as a user, and he did not provide evidence that he had permission to use the phone.