The GPS device in this case was put on defendant’s vehicle three years before Jones. Karo and Knotts were strong enough an indication that it was lawful that the Davis good faith exception would be applied to save the search. [Note that other courts disagree; thus, there’s a conflict.] People v. Leflore, 2015 IL 116799, 2015 Ill. LEXIS 510 (May 21, 2015):
[*P29] Thus, if it can be said in the present case that “binding appellate precedent” existed on April 23, 2009, allowing for warrantless GPS use when Detective Shufelt installed the device, then Davis controls without a doubt and the exclusionary rule does not apply. However, even if it could be concluded that “binding appellate precedent” did not exist in this case, it would not end the inquiry. It would still be necessary to conduct the “good-faith inquiry” and consider “whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal in light of all of the circumstances.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Herring, 555 U.S. at 145. Clearly, application of the good-faith inquiry is not limited to the specific circumstances addressed by the Supreme Court in Davis or any other Supreme Court case. Stephens, 764 F.3d at 336. The Supreme Court has found the exclusionary rule to be inapplicable in a variety of settings after undertaking the good-faith analysis, and the fact that a court might apply the good-faith exception in a new context not yet addressed by the Supreme Court does not mean that it is creating a “new, freestanding exception” to the exclusionary rule. Id. at 336 n.10; see also Davis, 564 U.S. at __, 131 S. Ct. at 2428 (noting that “[t]he Court has over time applied this ‘good-faith’ exception across a range of cases”).
[*P30] III. Exclusionary Rule Does Not Apply for Three Reasons
[*P31] We find that application of the exclusionary rule to this case is not appropriate for three reasons. First, the exclusionary rule does not apply because at the time of Detective Shufelt’s conduct in April 2009, the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in Knotts and Karo were “binding appellate precedent” that he could have reasonably relied upon. Second, we find in the alternative that, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s general good-faith analysis, the police conduct in relying on the legal landscape that existed at the time was objectively reasonable and a reasonable officer had no reason to suspect that his conduct was wrongful under the circumstances. And third, this case fits squarely within the specific holding of Davis, because United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 996-97 (7th Cir. 2007), was binding precedent as far as the Aurora police detective was concerned and he stood in exactly the same shoes as the Alabama police officer in Davis that relied upon binding Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals precedent when he conducted a search in the course of investigating a state law traffic offense. Accordingly, suppression of the evidence is not warranted for each of these reasons.
[*P32] IV. Knotts and Karo Were Binding Appellate Precedent
[*P33] There is no question that decisions of the United States Supreme Court interpreting fourth amendment law are binding precedent for Illinois police officers and Illinois courts. We conclude that the Supreme Court cases of Knotts and Karo clearly authorized the police conduct in this case. Even though the underlying facts of those cases differ from the facts of the present case, it is the rationale that underlies those cases that is relevant to our discussion. See Katzin, 769 F.3d at 173-74; Stephens, 764 F.3d at 337-38.
[*P34] In Knotts, the police were investigating suspects relative to a conspiracy to manufacture illegal drugs. Knotts, 460 U.S. at 278. The police arranged for one of the suspects to voluntarily take into his vehicle a container of chloroform that, unbeknownst to the suspect, contained a beeper. By tracking the signals emitted from the beeper, police were able to locate it at defendant’s secluded manufacturing site. The defendant sought to suppress the evidence that was obtained as a result of the warrantless monitoring of the beeper. The Supreme Court held that the use of the beeper to track a vehicle was not a search under the fourth amendment. Id. at 285. The Court explained that “[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another,” and the beeper simply revealed what could have been seen by the public through visual surveillance and it made no difference that the officers’ “sensory faculties” were augmented by its use. Id. at 281, 282.
[*P35] In Karo, the defendant ordered 50 gallons of ether (for use in cocaine smuggling) from an informant. Karo, 468 U.S. at 708. After obtaining the informant’s consent, federal agents substituted one of the informant’s cans of ether with its own can, which contained a beeper. Defendant bought the can and took it into his car. For the next several months, the agents monitored the beeper to determine the location of the ether. One of the questions presented before the Supreme Court was whether the warrantless installation of the beeper was legal. Id. at 711.
[*P36] The Court in Karo concluded that the warrantless installation of the beeper did not violate the fourth amendment. Id. at 713. The Court found that the transfer of the can with the beeper did not convey any information, and although there was a potential that the defendant’s privacy could be invaded, the transfer itself infringed no privacy interest. Id. at 712. Moreover, the Court found that the transfer was not a seizure despite the “technical trespass on the space occupied by the beeper,” which the Court referred to as “unknown and unwanted foreign object.” Id. The Court then proceeded to “broadly discredit[ ] the relevance of trespass in the context of electronic surveillance of vehicles: ‘[A] physical trespass is only marginally relevant to the question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated, … for an actual trespass is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a constitutional violation.'” Katzin, 769 F.3d at 175 (quoting Karo, 468 U.S. at 712-13); see also Aguiar, 737 F.3d at 261 (also noting that Karo discounted the importance of trespass in placing a tracking device).
