United States v. Martin, No. 14-3187 (7th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseOn four occasions, Normal, Illinois, police attached battery‐powered, global‐positioning‐ system devices (GPS) to the Lincoln sedan belonging to Martin, a suspected drug trafficker, in an effort to monitor his movements. The police attached the GPS without seeking a warrant or consulting legal counsel regarding the constitutionality of this investigative technique. The GPS tracking assisted police in identifying locations Martin used for his drug‐trafficking operations, which later led to a search warrant, seizure of evidence, and indictment. Before Martin’s trial, the Supreme Court held that attachment of a GPS to a vehicle and its subsequent use to track a vehicle’s movements constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied Martin’s motion to suppress, finding that Seventh Circuit 2010 precedent permitted warrantless use of the GPS. Martin was later convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment under 21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)(A). The Seventh Circuit affirmed, the exclusionary rule does not apply “when the police conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent.”
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.