Cops violated man’s civil rights by putting tracker on car in driveway, judges rule

The New Jersey State Police violated a suspect’s constitutional rights when troopers entered his driveway to attach a GPS tracker to his car under a warrant that only allowed them access to the man’s vehicle, an appellate panel ruled Tuesday.

The three-judge panel found officers violated state and federal constitutional protections by entering Maurice Johnson’s driveway to attach the tracker because the communications data warrant they obtained for the device did not authorize them to enter the property.

“The [warrant] did not expressly authorize entry onto the driveway. Nor did the State Police seek prior judicial authorization to enter onto defendant’s residential property when they abandoned the plan to install the device on a public street or parking lot,” the court wrote.

The court granted Johnson’s motion to suppress evidence gleaned from the improperly placed tracker.

GPS data obtained from the tracker revealed a pattern of stops consistent with drug dealing, authorities said, and eventually led police to a storage unit in Johnson’s name that held drugs, guns, and “a substantial sum of money,” the court said.

A lower court judge had rejected Johnson’s request to toss the fruits of the communications data warrant, finding that the driveway was not afforded Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches because it was unfenced, unlike the rest of the parcel.

The appeals court said the driveway, however accessible, was protected from unreasonable search and seizure.

“The fact the particular area where the subject vehicle was parked was not protected from the weather does not mean it was not protected from physical incursion under the United States and New Jersey Constitutions,” the panel wrote.

The judges acknowledged that police can have an implied license to approach a home’s front door — as any private citizen might — but said police officers veered away from the front door to plant the tracker, “thus exceeding the spatial boundaries of any ‘customary invitation’ that might be granted to a visitor such as a delivery person.”

An implied license, which allows people to, for example, knock on a front door or deliver a package without committing trespass, did not permit authorities to enter the driveway so they could put a tracker on Johnson’s car, they added.

“Simply put, installing a concealed GPS device is not something a visitor or delivery person would be expected and permitted to do,” the court wrote.

The state’s arguments, which compared officers’ actions to a private vehicle repossession, were unconvincing because the Fourth Amendment protects against state intrusion, not against private debt collectors, they added.

Portions of the warrant that left the manner of the tracking device’s installation to officers’ discretion likewise did not allow them to enter the driveway because both state and federal constitutions require warrants to “particularly describe” the locations they allow officers to search, the judges found.

“The [warrant’s] reference to the need ‘to minimize the chances of detection of the device by the person whose vehicle is the subject of this warrant’ was not some kind of code authorizing physical entry onto unspecified private property,” the court wrote.

Whether police sincerely believed the warrant allowed them to enter the driveway was irrelevant, the judges said.

A lower court discarded findings from a separate search warrant that authorized officers to look through Johnson’s home because officers did not knock and announce themselves before entering, as the warrant required. But the lower court declined to suppress evidence secured through the improperly applied GPS tracker.

The drugs, guns, and money discovered in Johnson’s storage unit formed the basis for the warrant authorizing a search of his home, according to Tuesday’s ruling.