Posted on 02/26/2020 1:40:05 PM PST by FewsOrange
Back in 2012, the US Supreme Court declared it was illegal for law enforcement to attach a GPS tracker to a suspect’s car without first getting a warrant. But in 2018, cops in Indiana charged a suspected drug dealer with theft after he removed such a tracking device from his SUV, triggering a legal debate over whether you can legally remove such devices.
As it turns out, you most assuredly can.
A new unanimous ruling from the Indiana Supreme Court has declared that the suspect in question did not “steal” the government-owned device, and that law enforcement should have known better before bringing the charges.
The case started back in July of 2018, when the Warrick County, Indiana Sheriff's Office obtained a warrant to attach a GPS tracking device to an SUV belonging to Derek Heuring, after receiving a tip from a confidential information who claimed he used the vehicle to sell meth.
While the attached device delivered Heuring’s location data to police for around a week, it stopped transmitting shortly thereafter—leading police to suspect it had been removed. Police waited another 10 days to see if the device would start transmitting again, then applied for a new search warrant to search both Heuring and his parents’ homes.
Under US law, law enforcement has to show probable cause that a crime has been committed before performing a property search. In Heuring’s case, police declared that the probable cause was the suspicion that Heuring had committed a crime by removing the device, something the court was skeptical of from the start.
"I'm really struggling with how is that theft," Justice Steven David stated during oral arguments last November.
Once they raided Heuring’s home, police discovered methamphetamine and paraphernalia, and shortly thereafter charged him with drug dealing and theft of the GPS device.
The gambit didn’t turn out particularly well for law enforcement.
In the court ruling, first reported by Ars Technica, judges declared that law enforcement’s justification for the warrant was illegal. The ruling was also quick to note that even if police were able to prove Heuring had removed the device, it didn’t mean he had stolen it, and that suggesting otherwise opened the door to all manner of weedy problems.
"To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don't have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles," Chief Justice Loretta Rush said in the ruling.
The court went on to admonish Indiana law enforcement, suggesting that officers should have known better than to lean on such a flimsy excuse for probable cause. Under a principle known as the exclusionary rule, evidence obtained with an invalid search warrant can’t be included at trial, which could easily undermine the Warrick County Sheriff's Office entire case.
"We find it reckless for an officer-affiant to search a suspect's home and his father's barn based on nothing more than a hunch that a crime has been committed," the court wrote. "We are confident that applying the exclusionary rule here will deter similar reckless conduct in the future."
Of course, this is only a ruling in Indiana state court, but it bodes well for other, similar cases around the country.
“Wanna have lots of fun, remove it from your car, find the head of the local Democrat Party Committee and stick it to HIS car.”
Then they would accuse you of being in all those shady places. knowing my luck the Dem car would have been at the scene of one of those “Suicides”. Then I would be a suspect.
A crack and hooker map!
remove from your vehicle, go to the local doughnut shop and put it on a cop car.
> find the head of the local Democrat Party Committee and stick it to HIS car <
Odds are that guy is already under investigation for some morals crime. So he might already have one on his car. But I guess there’s nothing wrong with having multiple trackers.
Just take it off and throw it into the trash. Then claim you don’t know what happened.
He WAS the head of the local Democrat Party Committee.
This is obviously a correct decision.
Think about it this way. Obama’s DOJ targets you because of your posts on Free Republic. They stick a tracker on your car. You find it and throw it in the trash.
This is just a process crime, like lying to the FBI. Even if you aren’t guilty of anything, just being interviewed probably gives them something they can argue wasn’t true. For example, you say, “I don’t remember.” Do you really want to go in front of a jury to prove you really didn’t remember when you said it? That’s exactly what they got the Valerie Plame guy for in the Bush administration, saying I don’t recall.
Even if you aren’t guilty, pulling the tracker off your car makes you a criminal and subject to search of your home.
Put it on a slow-moving train.
Or an Amazon delivery van.
Oh, the naivete of my younger years, believing innocent people should have no concerns over being monitored or pulled over on the road.
Look at my post #32 for what REAL lawyers take on it.
This is interesting. It isn’t theft (IMHO) because the police knew where it was. They just didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t moving. There was no intent to re-sell the tracker to the advantage of the person being tracked (who indeed was a meth dealer).
I’m reminded of the scene in Schwarzenegger,s “Total Recall” when he removes a tracking device from his sinuses and attaches it to a rat. The villain played by Michael Ironside follows the tracker and winds up blasting a bunch of rats.
More importantly, there’s the analogy to the FISA mess created by the Democrat-linked operatives. Note that the judges threw out every bit of evidence found in the search, because the search had a faulty basis. How is the situation with Trump, Stone, or Flynn any different? (Manafort is different—they had him dead to rights long before he worked for Trump, even if they only decided to persecute/prosecute him afterwards because he worked for Trump. F’d up, but chalk it up to prosecutorial discretion.)
So the cops are saying that you have to cooperate with them when they spy on you? BS.
How would you know it was a cop bug? Could be from a PI. In any case the cops can GFT.
“Your Honor, Officer Smith and I pursued the suspect. Suddenly the suspect turned and reached for something in his pocket. We were afraid he was armed so we fired our service weapons. Though the suspect was struck several times, he was still able to flee. We eventually located the individual in an alley, wounded but still breathing. We arrested the suspect for, among other things, stealing our bullets...a total of the four that had struck him when we fired our guns at him.”
Or drill a hole in it and fill it with salt water.
We have judges who say it isn’t illegal to break out of an ankle monitor.
Might want to read about the specifics in this case and the issue.
And will probably walk free because the police decided to break the law.
If someone dies as the result of the meth he will likely continue to sell can the police be sued?
After all if they had not engaged in criminal activity this person might not have been out to sell the meth that resulted in the death.
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