United States v. Diggs

385 F. Supp. 648 (N.D. Ill. 2019)

Purchase the Printed Copy at bsmsphd.com

Nature of the Case

To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.

Facts

While investigating the Razny Jewelers robbery, Hinsdale detectives came to believe-based on witness statements, video surveillance, and an anonymous tip relayed by another law enforcement officer-that the getaway vehicle was a 2003 Lexus RX with Michigan license plate number DPA 8960. It was registered to D's wife. She bought the car on credit from Headers Car Care in July 2016. Her contract with Headers includes this provision: 'If your vehicle has an electronic tracking device, you agree that we may use this device to find the vehicle.' The wife owned the Lexus, but D 'regularly drove' it. A Headers employee told one of the detectives that the Lexus was equipped with a GPS tracking device serviced by Air Assault Asset Track GPS Systems. The employee gave the detective her login credentials for Air Assault's website and authorized him to access 'all the GPS records associated with the wife's/Lexus RX account.' The GPS records included historical data tracking the Lexus's 'movement and global position.' Without first obtaining a warrant, the detective downloaded a spreadsheet containing GPS data for the period from March 1, 2017, through April 4, 2017. The spreadsheet gives the Lexus's approximate street address each time it was turned on, approximately every five minutes while it was being driven, and each time it was parked. Greater detail could be extracted from the map points using the software program that manages the GPS data, which allowed the detective to narrow each recorded location 'to specific latitude and longitude way points. The data revealed that the Lexus traveled to Hinsdale on the date of the robbery, and each of the two previous days. It showed that the Lexus traveled to and from all three defendants' 'family residences' from March 15 through March 17. The data places the Lexus on the same block as Razny Jewelers at the time of the robbery, and in the alleyway 'directly behind' the store during the robbery. Later on March 17, the Lexus was parked in the garage at D's girlfriend Jessica Christian's mother's home, where it remained until the police seized it on April 4. D argues that the warrantless acquisition of the long-term historical GPS data was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. P posits that the data was not a Fourth Amendment search because: (1) unlike in Jones, the police made no physical intrusion on the Lexus, and (2) under the third-party doctrine, D lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data because he voluntarily provided it to the third party (Headers) from which the police obtained it. P also contends that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies because the police adhered to binding appellate precedent in obtaining the data.