Philadelphia Criminal Defense Blog

Zak Goldstein 7/6/26 Zak Goldstein 7/6/26

U.S. Supreme Court: Obtaining a Person’s Google Location History Is a Fourth Amendment Search

Criminal Defense Lawyer Zak T. Goldstein, Esquire

The United States Supreme Court has decided Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), holding that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain a person’s cell-phone location data from Google. The decision extends the Court’s landmark ruling in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), to the geofence warrants that law enforcement has increasingly used to identify suspects by sweeping up the location data of every phone near a crime scene. Writing for the Court, Justice Kagan held that the police conducted a search “because an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location data,” and that they intrude on that interest even when they take it “for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company.”

The decision is a significant win for digital privacy and for the defense, but it does not end the case. The Court decided only that a search occurred. It left for the lower court whether this particular warrant was valid, and it did not disturb the separate ruling that has allowed the evidence into Mr. Chatrie’s prosecution so far.

The Facts of Chatrie

On May 20, 2019, a man robbed a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. He handed the teller a note demanding $100,000, threatened to hurt her and her family, and claimed he had lookouts outside. When she said she could not access that much money, he brandished a firearm, ordered everyone to the floor, and forced the manager to put $195,000 into a bag before leaving on foot. Witnesses and surveillance footage showed that the robber had approached from a corner of an adjacent church while appearing to talk on a cell phone, but the investigation stalled and he remained at large.

Weeks later, the police applied to a Virginia magistrate for a geofence warrant directed to Google. A geofence warrant does not name a suspect. It draws a virtual perimeter around a location and compels a company to turn over data about the cell phones that were inside it around the time of a crime. The goal, as the Court put it, “is to find out who was there and so who might have done it.” The warrant here used a 150-meter circle around the credit union and followed a three-step process Google had developed with law enforcement: first, Google would produce anonymized location data for every phone in the geofence during the hour surrounding the robbery; second, the police would narrow the list and Google would provide more data, now reaching outside the geofence over a two-hour window; and third, Google would hand over names and other identifying information for a final, narrowed set of users.

The data came from a Google service called Location History, which more than 500 million users worldwide had turned on. Location History logs a phone’s location roughly every two minutes, drawing on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell sites, GPS, and IP address information to fix the phone’s position within about twenty meters. It can even estimate elevation, which can reveal what floor of a building a phone is on. The district court described it as “the most sweeping, granular, and comprehensive tool” available for collecting and storing location data.

Running the warrant’s process, Google produced anonymized data for 19 phones at step one, the officers narrowed the list to 9 at step two, and the final list at step three contained 3 users. One was Okello Chatrie. His Location History showed that he entered the geofenced area about ten minutes before the robbery and headed toward a residential area immediately after leaving the bank. A federal grand jury charged him with robbery and related firearms offenses, and he moved to suppress the location evidence.

The lower courts splintered. The district court found that the warrant “plainly violates the rights enshrined in [the Fourth] Amendment” but admitted the evidence anyway under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. A divided panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed on the different ground that no search had occurred at all, reasoning that Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy in “two hours’ worth of Location History data voluntarily exposed to Google.” Sitting en banc, the Fourth Circuit split evenly, 7 to 7, on whether a search had taken place and affirmed in a one-sentence order. The Supreme Court agreed to decide that single question: whether obtaining the location data was a search.

What the Supreme Court Decided

The Court held that it was. The analysis tracked Carpenter, which held that obtaining historical cell-site location information from a wireless carrier is a search because people have “a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements.” Everything that drove Carpenter, the Court explained, “applies as well or better” to Location History. The data is more precise, fixing a phone within about twenty meters rather than within a sector of one-eighth to four square miles. It is more frequent, averaging 720 location points a day against roughly 101 for the cell-site data in Carpenter. And it is more personal: users treat Location History as a record of their own movements, much like the “emails, documents, photographs, or calendars” that a person “reasonably views as his own” even when a company stores them.

The Court rejected the government’s argument that two hours of data is too brief to matter. Quoting Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), it noted that “even short-term monitoring” can reveal “a wealth of detail about [his] familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.” The Fourth Amendment, it added, has never been understood to apply only once an intrusion “goes too far”; it applies regardless of “the quality or quantity of information” obtained. The concern is that the government can reach “all of a cell-phone user’s movements,” giving it “a virtual panopticon with which to scrutinize its citizens’ activities,” and the ability to pick out a short window from that database after the fact is “more a practical benefit to the government than a limit on its intrusive powers.”

The Court also refused to apply the third-party doctrine, which ordinarily strips Fourth Amendment protection from information a person hands over to a business. As in Carpenter, location data is “qualitatively different” from the bank records and dialed phone numbers in the Court’s older cases, and it is “not truly shared” in any ordinary sense. The government argued that Location History is different because users must switch it on, but the Court was unpersuaded. Google “repeatedly prompts users” to enable the service, sometimes warning that a device will not “work correctly” otherwise, while saying nothing about how often it records location, how precise that location is, or that the data may end up with the government. Treating each app and feature as a separate, voluntary surrender of privacy, the Court said, “misapprehends the very nature of modern cell-phone use,” where almost everything requires some affirmative opt-in.

The holding is direct: “It does not matter if the time period scrutinized was only two hours. Nor does it matter that the materials obtained were handed over by a third-party tech company.” Accessing Location History is a search.

Where the Court stopped is just as important. A search is not automatically unconstitutional; the Fourth Amendment bars only unreasonable ones, and a search conducted under a valid warrant is generally reasonable. The Court called this an “uncommon, multi-step” warrant and declined to decide whether it satisfied the requirements of probable cause and particularity at each step. Describing itself as “a court of review, not of first view,” it sent that question back to the Fourth Circuit. It also left untouched the good-faith ruling that allowed the evidence in to begin with.

The Court divided 6 to 3. Justice Kagan wrote for five members. Justice Gorsuch agreed that a search occurred but would have reached that result by treating the Location History as Chatrie’s property rather than through the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test. Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, wrote separately to say she would have gone further and held the warrant invalid at steps two and three, where it gave officers what an earlier case called a “roving commission” to gather more data without returning to a magistrate. Justice Alito, joined in part by Justices Thomas and Barrett, dissented, arguing among other things that the third-party doctrine should control and that the opinion was effectively advisory because it would not change the outcome of Chatrie’s case. Justice Barrett also dissented separately.

The Takeaway

Chatrie matters on two levels. Doctrinally, it confirms that Carpenter was not confined to its facts. The government had hoped to read Carpenter narrowly, as a rule about long-term tracking of a single suspect that left short, location-specific requests like geofences untouched. The Court rejected that reading and made clear that the warrant requirement turns on the nature of the surveillance, not the number of hours of data the police choose to take. Justice Alito’s dissent warns that the majority’s reasoning will not stay limited to location data, and points to Amazon purchase histories, Google search histories, and payment apps as the next disputes. Whatever one makes of that concern, it cuts in the defense’s favor: the logic of Chatrie gives defendants a serious argument that other revealing digital records held by third parties are protected as well.

On the practical level, the decision matters for any case built on digital location evidence. The government can no longer defend a geofence or similar location search by claiming that no search occurred and no warrant was needed. That forces the fight onto the warrant itself, which is where the defense has the better arguments. As Justice Jackson’s concurrence and the district court’s own findings show, these multi-step warrants often let officers decide for themselves which users to pursue, with little guidance from the magistrate, and the data reached movements to and from homes, a school, and a hospital. Those are the particularity and probable-cause defects that suppression motions should target on remand and in future cases.

Two cautions are worth stating plainly. First, Chatrie himself has not won. The Court decided only that a search occurred and remanded everything else, including the good-faith question that has kept the evidence in his case from the start. A favorable ruling on the constitutional question does not guarantee suppression when a court is willing to excuse the violation as reasonable reliance on a warrant. Second, this particular technique is already fading. Google has represented that, as of July 2025, it stores Location History on users’ own devices and can no longer respond to geofence warrants for that data. The lasting significance of Chatrie lies less in the specific procedure it addressed than in the principle it confirms: new tools do not shrink old protections, and the government generally needs a warrant before it can turn a person’s phone into a record of everywhere they have been.

Finally, the real takeaway from Chatrie is that the Court has drastically limited the third-party doctrine for electronic data. In this case, it applied to the location data stored by Google. But ultimately, the Court seems inclined to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in other types of electronic data where even though the generation of that data is arguably optional, the reality is that people have no choice if they want to exist in the modern world. The Court has now applied it to cell phone location data and Google location data, and it could expand into other areas. The Pennsylvania Constitution has already recognized this and has a much more limited version of the doctrine.

Facing Criminal Charges or Appealing a Criminal Case in Pennsylvania? We Can Help.

If you are facing criminal charges or under investigation by the police, we can help. We have successfully defended thousands of clients against criminal charges in courts throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We have successfully obtained full acquittals and dismissals in cases involving charges such as Conspiracy, Aggravated Assault, Rape, Violations of the Uniform Firearms Act, and First-Degree Murder. We have also won criminal appeals and PCRAs in state and federal court, including the successful direct appeal of a first-degree murder conviction and the exoneration of a client who spent 33 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Our award-winning Philadelphia criminal defense lawyers offer a free criminal defense strategy session to any potential client. Call 267-225-2545 to speak with an experienced and understanding defense attorney today.

Zak Goldstein 6/19/26 Zak Goldstein 6/19/26

PA Superior Court: The Commonwealth Cannot Appeal a Pretrial Ruling That Lets the Defense Present Evidence

The Pennsylvania Superior Court has decided Commonwealth v. Broomes, 2026 PA Super 103, ruling that prosecutors could not appeal a trial judge’s decision to let the defense cross-examine the complaining witness in a domestic violence case. The trial court had allowed the defendant to question the alleged victim about her own dropped charges for stealing from him. The prosecution tried to appeal that decision before the trial even started. The Superior Court dismissed the appeal, holding that prosecutors do not get to appeal a pretrial ruling simply because the judge decided the defense could present its evidence.

The decision matters because it limits how much prosecutors can delay a trial. They are allowed to appeal before trial when a judge throws out their evidence. They are not allowed to appeal just because a judge lets the defense ask its questions or present its case. When that happens, the prosecution has to go to trial and raise its objections in front of the jury instead of putting the case on hold with an appeal.

The Facts

The defendant was charged in Monroe County with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, and related offenses. Prosecutors alleged that he struck the complainant in the head with a large rock and then drove his car, with her inside, over an embankment, causing a crash.

Before the case reached trial, the complainant had herself been arrested for theft and identity theft. The allegation was that she had taken money from the defendant’s bank and credit accounts while he was in jail. A prosecutor who handled the case decided to drop those charges, later explaining that the police investigation was weak and that no deal had been made with her in exchange. The charges were dropped before any hearing, so no judge ever found there was enough evidence to support them.

The defense wanted the jury to hear about this. Its theory was that the complainant had made up part of her story in order to take the defendant’s money, which gave her a reason to lie. To build that argument, the defense planned to cross-examine her about the dropped theft charges.

What Happened in Court

On the morning of trial, prosecutors asked the judge to block that line of questioning, arguing that a person’s arrest is not a fair basis for attacking her credibility. The judge disagreed and ruled that the defense could ask about it. Rather than go forward, the prosecution announced that it would appeal, and the trial was called off before the jury was even sworn.

The Superior Court’s Decision

The Superior Court declined to hear the appeal. Pennsylvania gives prosecutors a limited right to appeal certain rulings before trial, but that right is meant for situations where a judge keeps out the prosecution’s own evidence. This was the opposite situation. The judge had not kept out any of the prosecution’s evidence. He had only allowed the defense to present its case. Because the ruling was about the defense’s evidence, the court held that the prosecution had no right to appeal it and dismissed the appeal.

Why It Matters

Broomes is a good result for the defense. It confirms that prosecutors cannot stop a trial and run to the appeals court every time a judge lets the defense ask a question or present evidence. That keeps cases moving, which is especially important for a defendant who is in custody. Here, the attempt to appeal pushed the trial back by roughly a year all over a ruling the prosecution could have challenged with an objection at trial.

It is worth being clear about what the decision did not do. The court decided only that the prosecution could not appeal yet. It did not decide whether the defense’s questions about the dropped charges are ultimately proper. That issue still has to be worked out when the case returns for trial. For now, the trial judge’s ruling stands and the case can move forward.

Facing Criminal Charges? We Can Help.

If you or a loved one are facing criminal charges, serving a state or federal sentence, or considering a direct appeal, post-conviction petition, or federal habeas petition, we can help. We have successfully defended thousands of clients against criminal charges in courts throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and we have won criminal appeals and PCRAs in state and federal court, including the successful direct appeal of a first-degree murder conviction and the exoneration of a client who spent 33 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Our award-winning Philadelphia criminal defense lawyers offer a free criminal defense strategy session to any potential client. Call 267-225-2545 to speak with an experienced and understanding defense attorney today.

Zak Goldstein 2/12/26 Zak Goldstein 2/12/26

Third Circuit: A General Rule 29 Motion Does Not Preserve Specific Sufficiency of the Evidence Arguments for Appeal

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has decided the case of United States v. Abrams, Nos. 24-1998, 24-3003 (3d Cir. 2026), holding that a bare, non-specific motion for judgment of acquittal under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29 does not preserve every sufficiency of the evidence argument a defendant may later want to raise on appeal. This is an important decision for criminal defense lawyers practicing in federal court because it means that if you do not articulate your specific sufficiency challenges at trial, meaning provide the reasons for the sufficiency challenge at time time you move for a new trial or judgment of acquittal in the trial court, you will be limited to plain error review on appeal, which is an extremely difficult standard to meet.

The Facts of United States v. Abrams

The defendant in this case was convicted at a nine-day jury trial on 48 criminal counts, including wire fraud, mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, unlawful monetary transactions, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. The charges arose from a scheme in which the defendant solicited investors for his clean energy startup by providing forged documents and false financial information. He then diverted investor funds for personal use, including purchasing a residence in South Carolina. The District Court imposed a 72-month prison sentence and ordered approximately $1.2 million in restitution.

The Rule 29 Motion at Trial

At the close of the government's case, the defendant moved for judgment of acquittal under Rule 29(a). The entire colloquy was remarkably brief:

THE COURT: Now that you are going to rest, are there motions?
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Yes. I move for judgment of acquittal on Rule 29(a). I waive argument.
GOVERNMENT COUNSEL: Subject to the pending stipulation, there's more than enough evidence in the record to justify all 48 counts in the indictment for a myriad of Title 18 offenses.
THE COURT: It's clear that the presentation of evidence so far if believed by the jury would certainly satisfy the government's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and so the Rule 29 motion is denied.

That was it. The defendant made no specific arguments about which elements of which offenses the government had allegedly failed to prove. He failed to identify any particular weaknesses in the evidence. He simply made a bare motion for an acquittal, with argument expressly waived.

On appeal, the defendant then raised a host of specific sufficiency arguments he had never presented to the trial court, including challenges to whether the government had proven the "money or property" element of fraud and whether the evidence established specific intent to defraud.

The Third Circuit's Holding on Preservation

The Third Circuit held that because Abrams made only a general, non-specific Rule 29 motion, he had not preserved his specific sufficiency arguments for appellate review. The Court applied plain error review instead of the de novo standard that ordinarily applies to sufficiency challenges.

The Court grounded its analysis in United States v. Joseph, 730 F.3d 336 (3d Cir. 2013), which drew a careful distinction between “issues” and “arguments.” Under Joseph, a single “issue” can encompass more than one discrete “argument.” To preserve a specific argument for appeal, a party must raise the same argument, not merely the same broader issue, in the district court. Merely raising an issue that encompasses the appellate argument is not enough.

The Court had previously applied this framework to Rule 29 motions in United States v. Williams, 974 F.3d 320, 361 (3d Cir. 2020), holding that when a Rule 29 motion raises specific grounds, all arguments not raised are unpreserved. But Williams expressly left open the question of whether a broadly stated Rule 29 motion, meaning one that raises no specific grounds at all, preserves all sufficiency arguments. In United States v. Johnson, 19 F.4th 248, 255 n.6 (3d Cir. 2021), the Court reaffirmed that Williams did not hold that a general Rule 29 motion preserves all sufficiency arguments.

In Abrams, the Court squarely decided that open question: a general Rule 29 motion does not preserve all sufficiency arguments later raised on appeal. This holding was driven by two principles of preservation doctrine. First, a party must put the district court “squarely on notice” of the point at issue, giving the court a chance to consider and resolve the matter in the first instance. Second, arguments must be sufficiently particularized and framed as specific arguments because judges “are not clairvoyant” and need not “anticipate and join arguments that are never raised by the parties.”

The Court acknowledged that several other circuits have held (often with little analysis) that a broadly stated Rule 29 motion without specific grounds preserves the full array of sufficiency challenges for appeal. The Third Circuit declined to follow that approach, finding it inconsistent with preservation principles and noting that it would create a perverse incentive for defense lawyers to say as little as possible in the district court in order to save their best arguments for appeal. The Court cited Judge Oldham's concurrence in United States v. Kieffer, 991 F.3d 630, 638-39 (5th Cir. 2021), which observed that this double standard “encourages defendants to say as little as possible in the district court and to save their good arguments as 'gotchas!' for appeal.”

What Happens Under Plain Error Review

Because Abrams had not preserved his sufficiency arguments, the Third Circuit reviewed them only for plain error under United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725 (1993). That standard requires a showing that (1) there was an error, (2) the error was plain, (3) the error affected substantial rights, and (4) not correcting the error would seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. An insufficiency claim succeeds under this standard only where affirmance would produce a '“manifest miscarriage of justice,” meaning the record must be devoid of evidence of guilt or the evidence must be so tenuous that a conviction is shocking. United States v. Burnett, 773 F.3d 122, 135 (3d Cir. 2014). That is an extremely high bar. Unsurprisingly, the Third Circuit found no plain error in Abrams, noting that the evidence of fraud was overwhelming.

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Zak Goldstein 12/11/25 Zak Goldstein 12/11/25

Pennsylvania Superior Court Upholds Admission of Google Maps Timeline Data Without Requiring Expert Testimony

Criminal Defense Lawyer Zak Goldstein — Criminal Defense Lawyer Zak T. Goldstein, Esquire

The Pennsylvania Superior Court has decided the case of Commonwealth v. Jones, holding that the Commonwealth need not call an expert witness to introduce Google Maps timeline data recovered from a defendant’s cell phone. The Court held that no expert is required so long as the testifying witness does not offer their own technical opinion and instead simply replays what the app automatically displays. This decision makes it easier for either side to introduce cell phone location data obtained from various Google apps and records.

The Facts of Jones

At around 2:00 a.m. on June 18, 2024, a masked man robbed a Turkey Hill convenience store in Lancaster County. The store clerk later identified the defendant based on his eyes, dreadlocks, and voice after seeing his Facebook profile. The police obtained a search warrant. After obtaining the warrant, the police seized the defendant’s cell phone and tablet. Both devices were synchronized with and linked to his Google account.

A detective accessed the defendant’s Google Maps “Your Timeline” feature, which automatically logs a user’s past movements when enabled. The Timeline showed:

The defendant leaving home at 1:35 a.m.,
The defendant arriving at a hotel directly next to the Turkey Hill at 1:47 a.m.,
The defendant remaining there until 2:01 a.m., which was the time of the robbery, and
The defendant then traveling to a nearby Sheetz convenience store, where surveillance video confirmed the defendant’s presence.

At trial, the Commonwealth introduced screenshots of the defendant’s Google Maps data through the detective’s testimony. The defendant objected, arguing that an expert witness from Google or a digital forensics specialist was required to explain how the timeline information was generated. The trial court denied the motion, and the jury convicted the defendant of robbery, theft, and simple assault. He received a lengthy state prison sentence.

The Issue on Appeal in the Pennsylvania Superior Court

The defendant argued on appeal that the Google Maps Timeline contained inaccuracies, including suspicious travel distances and impossible driving times, and that only an expert could explain those discrepancies. Therefore, he claimed, allowing the detective to testify as a layperson about the data violated Pennsylvania Rules of Evidence 701 and 702.

The Superior Court’s Holding

The Superior Court affirmed the judgment of sentence, concluding:

Google Maps Timeline data may be introduced through a lay witness when the witness is simply describing the information displayed on the app and is not explaining any underlying technical processes.

The Court emphasized several key points:

1. The detective did not provide technical or scientific testimony. He accessed Google Maps the same way an ordinary user would. He opened the app and clicked “Your Timeline.” He did not testify about how Google calculates GPS coordinates or how the software functions internally.

2. The data was automatically generated by Google, not manually interpreted by police. Because the app itself creates and stores the Timeline, the officer was merely relaying what he saw on the screen, much like reading business records or phone-company logs.

3. Any inaccuracies went to the weight of the evidence, not admissibility. The defendant pointed to anomalies such as a twelve-minute trip to travel 0.2 miles, but the Court held these issues were for the jury to consider, not grounds for exclusion. The detective freely acknowledged the inconsistencies on cross-examination.

4. Lay testimony is proper when interpreting data within common understanding. The Court compared the case to Commonwealth v. Grubbs, where a detective testified to cell-site location data without expert qualification because he merely relayed coordinates already calculated by service providers. In contrast, cases where expert testimony was required, such as interpreting technical IP address data, were distinguishable because they involved complex digital processes. In reality, it is not so clear what the difference is.

This opinion signals that Pennsylvania courts will generally treat Google Maps data as non-technical user data, similar to ordinary phone records, so long as:

The witness does not attempt to explain how the data is generated,
The witness only describes the app’s output, and
The prosecution can authenticate the device and account.

It also underscores that defendants may need their own expert if they wish to challenge the reliability of such location data.

The Takeaway

The Superior Court held that Google Maps GPS Timeline screenshots are admissible through lay testimony, and any questions about their accuracy go to the weight of the evidence, not whether the jury may consider them.

This ruling will likely make it easier for prosecutors to introduce Google-based location evidence in robbery, homicide, and gun cases without needing specialized experts, while placing the burden on the defense to identify and challenge inaccuracies through independent expert analysis when appropriate. It does, however, also make it easier for the defense to introduce this evidence should the evidence be helpful to the defendant. In general, this case follows a trend of courts making it easier for the Commonwealth to introduce electronic evidence without requiring much in the way of safeguards.

Facing criminal charges or appealing a criminal case? We can help.

If you are facing criminal charges or under investigation by the police, we can help. We have successfully defended thousands of clients against criminal charges in courts throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We have successfully obtained full acquittals in cases involving charges such as Conspiracy, Aggravated Assault, Rape, and Murder. We have also won criminal appeals and PCRAs in state and federal court. Our award-winning Philadelphia criminal defense lawyers offer a free criminal defense strategy session to any potential client. Call 267-225-2545 to speak with an experienced and understanding defense attorney today.