Cops' use of cellphone location records didn't violate Fourth Amendment, en banc court says
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A court order authorizing disclosure of cellphone business records showing a suspect was in the vicinity of six armed robberies didn’t violate his Fourth Amendment rights, though they were obtained under a more relaxed standard than probable cause, an en banc federal appeals court has ruled.
The government obtained cellphone records for Quartavius Davis after a magistrate judge found there was reasonable cause to believe they were relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation, according to the en banc opinion by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The order requiring disclosure did not violate Davis’ Fourth Amendment rights, the court ruled in a 9-2 opinion (PDF). The Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the Associated Press have stories.
Davis had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the cellphone records, which did not reveal the content of his calls, the en banc court said.
“The use of cellphones is ubiquitous now, and some citizens may want to stop telephone companies from compiling cell tower location data or from producing it to the government,” Judge Frank Hull wrote in the majority opinion. “Davis and amici advance thoughtful arguments for changing the underlying and prevailing law; but these proposals should be directed to Congress and the state legislatures rather than to the federal courts.”
Davis, whose first name is spelled differently in the case caption, was convicted of conspiracy and robbery under the Hobbs Act. He was sentenced to 162 years in prison.
Davis’ lawyer, David Markus, told AP that the dissent could provide a roadmap for a probable appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Unfortunately, the majority is stuck in the early ’80s when cellphones were the size of bricks and cost $3,000. The cases from that long-ago era aren’t helpful in today’s world,” Markus said.
