Moot Court Case: State v. Abawi
Assume the following facts are true.
In early November, 2006, a series of home burglaries occurred in rural areas of Northern Palm Beach County. The sheriff's office (hereafter 'police') received an anonymous phonecall that Mr. Muhammed Abawi was involved. The police determined where Mr. Abawi lived, and on a few occasions attempted to follow Mr. Abawi as he drove a light-blue 1998 Honda Civic, but Mr. Abawi spotted the officer tailing him and drove evasively. Due to budget constraints, the police were unable to use an unmarked car. On November 15, Officer Roughshod of the police put a Global Positioning System (GPS) device on the Honda while it was parked outside of the Home Depot on Indiantown Road. Roughshod did this without a warrant, assuming no warrant was required so long as the device was attached to the outside of the car while the car was in a public place. The vehicle was registered to Ms. Eve Abawi, the wife of Muhammed's brother Mustafa. Eve, Muhammed and Mustafa all reside in the same home in West Palm Beach.
GPS devices listen for radio signals from satellites and calculate the length of time it takes the signal to reach the device. An accurate estimate of the device's location is transmitted to a computer and recorded. Roughshod regularly examined the computer's 24x7 record of the location of the vehicle. Following 2 burglaries at 2 addresses within 5 miles of each other on November 22, Roughshod looked up the GPS record and determined that the blue Honda was parked in the vicinity of each of the two homes that were burglarized, in each case within the timeframe that it is believed the burglaries might have taken place. The next day, Roughshod got his supervisor to agree to provide two additional officers to work in shifts so that at least one officer would be available when the blue Honda was shown by the GPS device to be at a location other than the Abawi home. The supervisor also made available an unmarked car. When on the afternoon of November 24th Roughshod determined that the Honda was stopped at the Palm Beach International Airport longterm parking lot, the police released the two officers and unmarked car for other uses, until the GPS device revealed that the car was moved from the airport lot. On December 7th, when doing his daily check of the GPS recording of the Honda's location, Roughshod observed that it was no longer parked at the airport, notified his supervisor, and the two additional officers and unmarked car were again made available to Roughshod as needed.
On December 9th at 10 a.m., Roughshod radiod to his colleague Officer Smith that the Honda was being driven from the Abawi's home toward Jupiter Farms. Smith drove toward the general vicinity of Jupiter Farms. The GPS device then indicated that the car was stopped on a residential street in Jupiter Farms. Roughshod gave the address to Smith, who arrived at the location within 15 minutes. As he arrived at the address, Smith observed a man that he later described as 'an Arab', walking from the front entrance of a home toward the Honda carrying a duffel bag. Smith took a photograph of the man entering the vehicle but did not intervene. Early that evening the police received a report of a burglary from the site at which Smith photographed the man carrying a duffel bag. That man was later identified as Muhammed Abawi.
On the basis of the facts that the Honda was located near the location of the 2 burglaries of November 22, and that Muhammed Abawi was observed at the site of the burglary on Dec. 9th, the police obtained a warrant to search the Abawi's home for evidence of the items known to be stolen from the three burglaries. After a search of the home, a number of stolen goods were found, including jewelry, a monogrammed wallet, laptop computer, and credit cards. On the basis of this evidence, Muhammed Abawi was convicted of several counts of burglary, which is a felony.
Mr. Abawi's attorney appealed his conviction on the ground that the evidence used to provide probable cause for the warrant to search Mr. Abawi's home was based on an illegal search using the GPS device and that therefore Mr. Abawi's rights under the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution were violated. The attorney argued that without use of the GPS device, the police would have no reliable indication that Mr. Abawi was involved in the burglaries, and use of the device violated Mr. Abawi's reasonable expectation of privacy since it revealed information that the police were unable to otherwise collect using normal, non-intrusive surveillance methods.
The court of appeals ruled that the use of the GPS device violated Mr. Abawi's Fourth Amendment rights, and therefore the search of his home, based on an invalid warrant, was illegal and the evidence obtained from this search must be excluded. Judge Wissen, expressing the view of the majority of the court, wrote: "While few will deny that Abawi actually committed these crimes, the state may not take shortcuts around the constitutional requirement that they gather sufficient evidence to establish probable cause and secure a warrant, issued by a judge, before placing a GPS device on the Defendant's vehicle. Mr. Abawi would be behind bars but for the state's hastiness. While today's decision means Mr. Abawi is free and our homes perhaps somewhat less secure, the right to privacy is too valuable to sacrifice for the sake of mere administrative convenience." Judge Strafe, in dissent, argued that Abawi had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a vehicle on public roads, as he was in plain view, and that he had no standing to challenge the attachment of the GPS device on a vehicle he did not own.

The state now appeals. The sole issue to be argued is the following: did the police's placing of the GPS device on Ms. Abawi's vehicle and monitoring of Defendant's whereabouts, without a warrant, violate Mr. Abawi's rights under the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?
You are not permitted to appeal to cases other than those assigned for this class.