The Justice Department today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve a conflict among federal appellate courts over whether law enforcement officers must obtain a warrant before using GPS technology to covertly follow a person.
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the life sentence of a Washington area man named Antoine Jones, saying the government violated Jones’ privacy rights in clandestinely tracking his movement for a month in a drug trafficking investigation.
Federal prosecutors used data from a global positioning system device to link Jones to an alleged drug house in Maryland, where the authorities found nearly 100 kilograms of cocaine and about $850,000 in cash. Jone was the co-owner of a nightclub in Washington.
At issue in the Jones case is the extent to which his movement in a vehicle on streets in Maryland and in Washington was public and whether the warrantless GPS tracking constituted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. The appeals court, in a 5-4 vote, rejected rehearing the dispute, setting up the potential for a Supreme Court case.
Today, the Justice Department filed a petition (PDF) asking the Supreme Court to step in. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Criminal Division are among the lawyers on the petition. DOJ lawyers said federal appellate courts are squarely in conflict over whether the authorities need to obtain a warrant to use GPS tracking technology.
Read more…
The news brings almost routine stories about wrongfully convicted prisoners who are exonerated by DNA testing, but they often have traveled widely divergent paths to freedom.
In some states, only prisoners facing execution have the right to DNA testing to try to prove their innocence. In others, anyone who pleaded guilty is barred from asking for the testing. In the patchwork of legislation passed by Congress and 48 states, even individual prosecutors can carry great weight.
The Supreme Court is again considering the tangled legal questions that accompany the issue in the case of Henry Skinner, who says DNA evidence could settle the question of whether he murdered his girlfriend and her two developmentally disabled adult sons.
Prosecutors in Gray County, Tex., where Skinner was convicted, are convinced that he is guilty and say he passed up a chance to test DNA evidence at his trial 15 years ago. Texas courts said he didn’t meet the requirements of a state law that grants DNA testing to some convicts. Federal courts said they had no proper role in second-guessing Texas.
Read more…
Computerworld – Maine’s Supreme Court has ruled that consumers affected by the data breach at supermarket chain Hannaford Bros. in 2008 cannot claim damages from the company unless they suffered uncompensated financial losses or some other tangible injury.
The ruling is important because this marks the first time a court has ruled on whether consumers can claim compensation for the time and effort they put into changing their payment cards and bank accounts after a data breach.
The ruling also effectively puts an end to the class-action suit filed against the Scarborough, Me.-based supermarket chain in the wake of its data breach disclosure in March 2008.
The intrusion resulted in the theft of card holder data of about 4.2 million people. In many cases, the data was later fraudulently used. Several lawsuits were filed against Hannaford by consumers and by banks seeking restitution for various breach-related claims.
In May 2009, the U.S. District Court in Maine dismissed all of the consumer complaints against Hannaford. District Court Judge Brock Hornby, who heard the case, ruled that without actual loss of money or property, consumers really couldn’t sue the supermarket chain.
The lawsuits had alleged that Hannaford was negligent in its duty to protect card holder data and failed to notify consumers of the breach in a timely fashion.
Read more…
MELBOURNE – The appeal of Indian-origin doctor in Australia, Jayant Patel, against his convictions for killing and maiming his patients has been postponed till next year because of his inability to pay his lawyers’ fee.
The former Bundaberg Base Hospital chief surgeon was jailed for seven years in July after he was convicted by a Supreme Court jury of three counts of manslaughter and one of grievous bodily harm.
Sixty-year-old Patel, lodged an appeal against his conviction and sentence on the basis that the verdicts were unreasonable and his sentence was manifestly excessive, which was to be heard by the Court of Appeal in Brisbane in November.
However, during a hearing in the court today, his lawyer Michael Woodford sought to have the November 3 appeal de-listed due to shortage of funds and that a change in legal representation would be difficult for Patel.
“No counsel will be able to get on top of this (three-month trial) in the space of a month,” the Herald Sun quoted Woodford, as saying.
The charges related to Patel’s time as director of surgery at Bundaberg Base Hospital between 2003 and 2005.
The appeal has now been set for early next year, but no date has been fixed so far.Patel would reportedly appear in court for a mention on October 15 if a solution is not found in the meantime. (ANI)
View Source…
SANTA FE, N.M. — The state Supreme Court has rejected a proposal that would have blocked online public access to closed criminal cases in which there was no conviction.
A government watchdog organization and others yesterday applauded the court’s unanimous decision as a victory for transparency in government.
Michael Corwin, who runs a private investigation and research business in Albuquerque, said the court’s ruling “recognizes the public’s right to know.” Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said the decision ensured “accurate court docketing records will continue to be available through the online case lookup.”
A court advisory board had recommended that an online case-lookup system no longer contain records of criminal cases that were closed because the defendant was acquitted or the charges were dismissed or vacated.
The panel contended that the change would protect those individuals’ privacy and shield them from “social stigma,” as well as potential housing or employment discrimination. Opponents of the proposed change said it would have made it harder for employers or others to research the criminal background of potential workers.
The justices, in a three-page order, didn’t explain their decision but said they had considered “the various competing concerns inherent in issues regarding public access to court records, including openness and transparency in government, accuracy in reporting and record-keeping and the avoidance of unjustifiable harm to reputation.”
Read more…
Last month, in United States v. Maynard, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment “reasonable search” requirement applies to police when they track the movements of a person’s car via an attached GPS device. In so holding, the D.C. Circuit joined a growing list of federal appellate courts that have opined on both sides of the question whether GPS-tracking constitutes a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
This question is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court before long, and it asks about the nature and extent of privacy that the Constitution grants us against government intrusion.
Reasonable Expectations of Privacy
In the 1967 case of Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court held that attaching a recording device to a public pay telephone to record conversations triggers the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Court reasoned as follows: “[A] person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment. One who occupies it, shuts the door behind him, and pays the toll that permits him to place a call is surely entitled to assume that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world.”
Technological advances have all but eliminated the phone booth, but the legal test that emerged from Katz lives on. To assess whether a method of surveillance qualifies as a Fourth Amendment “search,” courts ask whether an individual who is engaged in the sort of activity at issue, under the circumstances in which he is placed under surveillance, has an expectation of privacy that society is “prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Stated differently, a “search” that triggers Fourth Amendment requirements (such as a prior warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion) is something that invades a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Read more…
THE FOURTH Amendment protects Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures.’’ But that protection, the Supreme Court has held consistently for more than 40 years, applies only where there is “a legitimate expectation of privacy.’’ This means, for example, that the police do not need a warrant to follow a suspect as he drives through town, since a person’s public movements are visible to anyone who chooses to look.
But that test is fast becoming outmoded in an age when advancing technology makes possible a degree of relentless 24/7 surveillance that would have been the stuff of science fiction four decades ago. The Supreme Court should take the first opportunity to reassess its test in light of improved electronic surveillance devices, and Congress should step in to provide guidelines of its own.
The latest case involves Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident suspected by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency of marijuana trafficking. Sneaking onto his property without a warrant late one night, DEA agents attached a GPS tracking device to his Jeep, which was parked in the driveway. Weeks later — alerted by the GPS monitor — the agents pulled Pineda-Moreno over as he was driving out of a suspected marijuana growing site. Sure enough, his Jeep contained a hefty stash of marijuana.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the agents had done nothing wrong in planting the GPS tracker, since there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in an open driveway. After all, the judges reasoned, no one would object “if a neighborhood child had walked up Pineda-Moreno’s driveway and crawled under his Jeep to retrieve a lost ball or runaway cat.’’
Read more…
A new ruling by the state Supreme Court aims to protect the identities of criminal by limiting information the public can access in background searches and court records. Pat Davis with the Bernalillo County district attorney’s office explains researching someone’s criminal history will become difficult, especially if the subject has a common name.
“Businesses who are doing background checks are going to get multiple hits off persons who are not the person applying, but they’re not going to have a way to sort that out,” said Davis.
The new ruling also requires law enforcement and the DA’s office to file court documents in two versions: One with the defendant’s complete information including social security number and date of birth, and a second version without that information for the public. “At a time when we’re already cutting back on jobs and we’ve had an almost 6 percent decrease in our budget in the last 2 years, it means that we already don’t have the people we need to do the job; now we have to do twice the work,” Davis said.
Sarah Welsh, a spokeswoman for the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government says the move has been building for a few years now and that, in general, “the changes are a good thing and that they will protect people.” State Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Daniels concurs.
“We have no reason to be hiding things that are [of] important use to the public, but we do have obligations that have to balance. Protecting privacy (with) balancing the right to protect public access to information: These rules open it up even more,” said Chief Justice Daniels.
Read more…
Sullivan & Cromwell is a law firm with glittering offices in a dozen cities around the world, and some of its partners charge more than $1,000 an hour. The firm’s paying clients, at least, demand impeccable work.
Cory R. Maples, a death row inmate in Alabama, must have been grateful when lawyers from the firm agreed to represent him without charge. But the assistance he got may turn out to be lethal.
When an Alabama court sent two copies of a ruling in Mr. Maples’s case to the firm in New York, its mailroom sent them back unopened.
One envelope had “Return to Sender — Left Firm” written across the front along with a stamp that said “Return to Sender — Attempted Not Known.” The other was stamped with slightly different language: “Return to Sender — Attempted Unknown.”
Two associates handling Mr. Maples’s case had indeed left the firm, but it seems that no one bothered to tell the court or the mailroom that new lawyers there had stepped in. By the time Mr. Maples’s mother called, her son’s time to appeal had run out.
Read more…
The Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that it was okay for police to use GPS tracking on a stalking suspect’s car. The high court Tuesday did not address whether secretly attaching the tracker was unconstitutional but did decide law enforcement acted in accordance by obtaining a search warrant to monitor Michael Sveum’s movement.
In 2003, Sveum was suspected of stalking a woman for whom he’d already been convicted of stalking. Police obtained a search warrant from a Dane County judge to install the tracking device on Sveum’s car. After being convicted of stalking in 2007, he appealed on the grounds that the GPS violated his rights of unlawful search and seizure; and the warrant was not legitimate for GPS tracking.
The appellate court ruled against him claiming because Sveum’s Chevy Berreta was parked in public view, police could’ve obtained the same information by visual surveillance.
However, where the car was parked is of concern to attorney Amelia Bizzaro, who helped file the brief questioning the constitutionality of the GPS monitoring. The vehicle was parked in Sveum’s driveway where law enforcement attached the device and replaced it several times. “As someone who parks in a driveway, not a garage I find that particular concerning,” says the Henak Law Office attorney.
Read more…
Wisconsin’s highest court yesterday approved police use of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to track motorists, as long as a valid search warrant is obtained. In 2003, Madison Police Detective Mary Ricksecker attached a tracking device to the 1980 Chevy Beretta as it sat on the private driveway belonging to Michael A. Sveum, then age 35. Sveum was suspected of stalking his ex-girlfriend, Jamie Johnson based on nine hang-up calls that were placed at payphones around the city. The tracking device was eventually used to connect Sveum to the time and place of other calls.
Sveum argued that this method of tracking was illegal because the Fourth Amendment protected him against unreasonable searches. The state countered that police are free to attach a GPS device to track a vehicle on public roads because the same information would have been available to any human officers stationed to observe the streets. As this was the prosecution’s only argument, the court of appeals last year upheld the use of GPS without a warrant (view opinion). The supreme court took a different view, and considered whether the warrant that a judge issued in Sveum’s case was valid.
“We exercise our discretion to reach this issue, rather than deem it waived,” Justice Patience Drake Roggensack wrote for the majority. “We conclude that the order authorizing the installation and monitoring of a GPS tracking device on Sveum’s vehicle was a valid search warrant under the Fourth Amendment. First, the order was signed by a neutral and detached magistrate. Second, Ricksecker’s affidavit provided probable cause… Finally, the order particularly described the object into which the GPS was to be placed, i.e., Sveum’s vehicle; the circumstances that led agents to seek to install the GPS, i.e., evidence of Sveum’s stalking activities; and the length of time for which GPS surveillance was requested, i.e., no more than 60 days.”
The court dodged the question of whether warrantless spying was allowed.
Read more…
The use of stun guns is again a point of debate after three high-profile incidents over the past week, one involving the nephew of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Early Saturday morning, Northumbria Police in England fired two Taser stun-gun shots at fugitive gunman Raoul Moat—the 37-year-old bouncer and ex-convict who went on a rampage starting July 3, shooting his ex-girlfriend and killing her boyfriend.
Late Friday, police surrounded Moat, beginning a six-hour stand-off during which Moat held a sawed-off shotgun to his neck and head area. As police circled Moat and tried to coax him to give up, officers reportedly pounced on him and used stun guns in an attempt to subdue him, but Moat shot and killed himself.
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the British police watchdog, has launched an investigation into the events surrounding Moat’s death and how police handled the situation, including the use of Tasers. According to the Guardian, IPCC “will ask if the 50,000-volt charges from the stun gun prompted the former bouncer to fire his shotgun on himself after a six-hour confrontation with police.”
Northumbria Police, according to the Telegraph, have refused to provide specifics on the Tasers’ use. Northumbria Police’s Acting Chief Constable Sue Sim said Saturday, however, that the Taser shots “did not prevent his death.”
Read more…
