Civil liberties: concepts and constitutional protections

Civil Liberties:

Jones case is one of the major recent cases regarding civil liberties that basically examined whether the government requires a search warrant before placing a GPS device on a vehicle and tracking the movements of that vehicle. The ruling by the Supreme Court in this case upholds the extensive right for citizens to be free from unreasonable searches. However, the ruling on the case also demonstrated the struggle within the Supreme Court to balance the objectives of law enforcement with privacy concerns. Generally, the Supreme Court has continued to explore the limits of civil liberties, especially in light of the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

This case can be traced back to when Antoine Jones was arrested on October 24, 2005, in possession of drugs. The law enforcement officers had attached a tracker to his Jeep albeit without judicial approval and followed Jones for a month ("United States v. Jones," par, 1). The police had suspected the defendant of drug trafficking and obtained a warrant to place a tracking device on a car registered to Jones' wife in the District of Columbia. The law enforcement officers installed the GPS tracking device 11 days after receiving the warrant while the vehicle was parked in one of the public parking lots in Maryland. After tracking the car for 28 days and gathering evidence from the device, the government charged the defendant and others for conspiracy to traffic drugs.

Jones was not found guilty on all charges except conspiracy that the jurors hang on in the district court. As the district prosecutors were upset at the loss, they re-filed a single count of conspiracy against the defendant and Maynard, his business partner. However, the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided that the use of a beeper to track suspects was not a justification of a 24-hour surveillance without a warrant.

The case was taken by the Supreme Court in order to resolve the split in the circuit courts since some of these courts had found the use of the tracking device lawful while others found that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy for law enforcement officers to use a tracking device for a particular limited period ("Case Summary," par, 4). The main issue to address in the case was whether the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device on Jones' car to track the suspect's movements on public streets infringed Jones rights according to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court stated that the installation and use of the tracking device without a warrant was an illegal search based on the Fourth Amendment. The court also argued that the placement of the GPS device was likened to trespass since the police had physically intruded the defendant's private property to place the device. Therefore, the law enforcement officers were required to obtain a warrant in order to use the GPS device. The main reasoning for the ruling is that the Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches. In this case, the amendment forbids federal agents and the police from installing a GPS tracking device to a private car and recording its movement without prior court approval. The majority of the judges in this case concurred that the government violated Jones' Fourth Amendment rights. The reasoning behind this decision is that the Fourth Amendment provides some protection against trespass onto personal property. If I was one on the Supreme Court, I would have ruled in the same way as the majority because the government's actions clearly violated Jones' rights as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.