United States v. Taylor, No. 14-1981 (7th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseSergeant Schwomeyer received a tip that Taylor possessed cocaine and firearms, checked Taylor’s criminal history, and learned that he had been convicted for possessing cocaine. A confidential informant reported that Taylor was trafficking kilogram quantities of cocaine, and another officer told Schwomeyer that Taylor associated with cocaine traffickers. Taylor’s phone records reflected that his most frequent contact had been convicted of dealing cocaine. A judge granted a petition and a GPS unit was attached to Taylor’s car, which revealed that Taylor had traveled to a storage facility. A drug-detection dog alerted to Taylor’s locker. Schwomeyer obtained a warrant. In his affidavit, Schwomeyer did not mention that surveillance of Taylor involved GPS tracking. The locker contained 752.61 grams of cocaine, four firearms, and digital scales. Taylor moved to suppress, arguing that GPS tracking of his car violated the Fourth Amendment and that the warrant was invalid for failure to refer to GPS tracking. The court denied Taylor’s motion, finding that officers reasonably relied on judicial authorization when using the GPS. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, noting that the events occurred before the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS to a car to gather information was a search under the Fourth Amendment (Jones, 2012); the officers used the GPS in objectively reasonable reliance on appellate precedent then in effect.
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