Judges Drive Truck Through Loophole in Supreme Court GPS Ruling

A federal judge in Iowa has ruled that evidence gathered through the warrantless use of covert GPS vehicle trackers can be used to prosecute a suspected drug trafficker, despite a Supreme Court decision this year that found such tracking unconstitutional without a warrant.

US District Judge Mark Bennett in Sioux City ruled that the GPS tracking evidence gathered by federal DEA agents last year against suspected drug trafficker Angel Amaya, prior to the Supreme Court ruling, can be submitted in court because the agents were acting in good faith at the time. The agents, the judge said, were relying on what was then a binding 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent that authorized the use of warrantless GPS trackers for surveillance in Iowa and six other states. It’s the third of such “good faith” rulings by federal court judges in the wake of the recent and historic Supreme Court decision, all of which illustrate that the Supreme Court ruling can be easily skirted by law enforcement agents and prosecutors who work in circuit court regions where it was previously legal to use the devices without a warrant. Legal experts say the “good faith” exception, which comes out of another court ruling last year, has created a mess of the Supreme Court’s GPS decision.