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The justices heard nearly two hours of arguments in an appeal
from Okello Chatrie, who pleaded guilty to robbing a bank in a
suburb of Richmond, Virginia.
Chatrie eluded the police until they turned to the geofence
warrant, a powerful technological tool that erected a virtual
fence and allowed them to locate cellphones that were near the
bank around the time it was robbed in May 2019.
The justices did not appear to embrace arguments offered by Adam
Unikowsky, Chatrie's lawyer, that geofence warrants are too
general to comply with the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits
unreasonable searches.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the warrant that led to Chatrie's
identification as a suspect did not seem to be general. “This
isn't that. It identifies a place, a crime, a timeframe,”
Sotomayor said.
The federal appeals court in Richmond upheld Chatrie's
conviction in a fractured ruling. In a separate case, the
federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that geofence
warrants “are general warrants categorically prohibited by the
Fourth Amendment.”
The case is the court's latest contemplation of how a
constitutional provision ratified in 1791 applies to technology
the nation’s founders count not have envisioned.
The justices seemed eager to avoid a broad ruling. They could
limit the time and geographic area covered by such warrants, and
they might even decline to say whether what police did in
Chatrie's case even amounted to a search that requires a
warrant.
Instead the court might rule that, assuming a warrant is
required, police can constitutionally conduct geofence searches.
A ruling for Chatrie, who is serving a prison term of nearly 12
years, might not ultimately help him. Even the federal judge who
ruled that the search violated Chatrie’s rights allowed the
evidence to be used because the officer who applied for the
warrant reasonably believed he was acting properly.
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