The Supreme Court will hear a D.C. case to determine whether police need a warrant before attaching a global positioning system device to track a suspect’s movements.
The federal appeals court in Washington overturned a criminal conviction because the police did not get a warrant for the GPS device before secretly installing it on the vehicle of D.C. nighclub owner Antone Jones.
A three-judge panel in D.C. unanimously tossed the conviction and life sentence of Jones, who was accused of operating a cocaine ring.
In April, a Virginia appeals court upheld a similar case involving the conviction of a man accused of a series of sexual assaults of women in Fairfax County.
