Court Suppresses Illegal GPS Evidence

Attorney Lown recently won a suppression motion in Suffolk Superior Court that resulted in all charges against his client being dismissed.

The case began when police secretly placed a GPS tracking device on someone else’s car without legal authority. That tracking eventually led officers to Attorney Lown’s client.

Attorney Lown argued that basic fairness and constitutional rights apply to everyone. Police should not be allowed to break the rules by placing a GPS on one person’s car without probable cause even if that GPS later helped them build the case against his client. Because that initial GPS was illegal, it poisoned all of the evidence which officers found as a result. The resulting evidence which the officers sought to use against his client had to be suppressed. The court agreed and suppressed it. Without that evidence, the prosecution dismissed all charges.

A motion to suppress is rooted in the Fourth Amendment: to deter illegal government searches, evidence which was obtained illegally cannot be used in court. We as a democracy have drawn a line between the government and private citizens. We’ve decided that to hold that line, it doesn’t matter if police find evidence of wrongdoing if they came at it by violating a person’s constitutional rights.

What is a Motion to Suppress?: Under the Fourth Amendment, you have a constitutional right to privacy. Our democracy prevents police officers from searching our property or our bodies at will. A motion to suppress challenges the government’s justification for a particular search.

How do I win a Motion to Suppress?: Whether a search was justified depends on the facts of each case. Previous cases have defined the scope of the government's power to search private persons. The defense lawyer will seek to connect prior cases which ruled in favor of suppression to your case to show that the search was unconstitutional.

Can I file a motion to suppress?: If there was a search in your case, it can likely be challenged in court. According to our Constitution, we have the right to be free from unreasonable searches.  If police search a person without a warrant, the government has the burden to show that the search was justified. Even if the search was done with a warrant, the defense can argue that the warrant was not supported by probable cause and that the search was therefore unconstitutional.