United States v. Jones - Essay Example

In the making of court decisions involving the fourth amendment of the Bill of Rights, three critical aspects are considered. The aspects include the kind of activities considered by the government to constitute searches and seizures, the probable cause constituted by the actions in the government activities, and the appropriate mechanisms of addressing the violations of the fourth amendments (Wetterer 94). In the case between the state and Jones, it is in order to put clear some facts to understand the unfolding of events in the court decision and reasons for such decisions.

First, Jones, who is the respondent in the case, is the owner and operator of a nightclub come under suspicion that he could be dealing in drug trafficking. Based on the above occurrence, police after conducting their investigations sort for a warrant from the Federal District Court, which the courts granted for to use of a GPS tracking device on the Jeep registered to Jones’ wife, which, however, driven exclusively by Jones (McDonald and Means 112). However, the officers failed to beat the ten-day deadline issued and instead put the GPS tracking device on the car to track on the car’s movement on the eleventh day while in Maryland, outside of DC, which the permit granted.

With the help of satellite, the GPS device was in a position to monitor the car’s movement for twenty-eight day, sending its data to a government-monitored computer and producing data comprising of over 2,000 pages over the same period (McDonald and Means 62). From the findings, Jones was charged for conspiracy of cocaine distribution by the government. Concerning the evidence presented to the court by the state, the judges suppressed the data obtained from the GPS while the car was parked in Jones garage while holding the remaining data based on the aspect that Jones had no expectation of privacy whenever the car was in a public place at the pre-trial hearing of the case (Arcila 88).