The federal judge's ruling would seem to go against a decision earlier this year by the Supreme Court, which ruled that law enforcement's placing of GPS tracking devices on a vehicle without a warrant was an unlawful search and seizure.
In its decision, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision, which reversed the conviction of Antoine Jones, a night club owner who was convicted of drug dealing based in part on data obtained from a GPS device placed in his wife’s car by law enforcement without first obtaining a warrant.
However, US District Judge Mark Bennett ruled last week that because the federal agents who placed the GPS tracker on the suspect’s car did so before the Supreme Court decision and after the 8th US Circuit Court in the Marquez case authorized the use of warrantless GPS trackers for surveillance, they were acting in “good faith”. Therefore, the evidence gathered could be used in the prosecution of Angel Amaya and five other defendants.
Amaya and the codefendants are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of pure methamphetamine or 500 grams of methamphetamine, 5 kilograms or more of cocaine, and marijuana.
“In sum, the agents here strictly complied with the directive of Marquez that no warrant is required to use non-invasive GPS monitoring for a reasonable period of time, when agents have reasonable suspicion that a suspect may be using a vehicle for drug trafficking, and the devices are installed while the vehicle is parked in public”, the judge wrote in his decision.