OAKLAND, Calif. — A legal case with implications that some say spring straight from the pages of George Orwell's "1984" is headed to the Supreme Court in November.
Its outcome could have a major effect on one of the Bay Area's biggest murder cases in the past decade.
Justices are being asked to decide whether law enforcement officers need a warrant to hide GPS devices on suspects' cars to track their movements with satellites and computers.
Critics of the warrantless tracking say that without checks, police could routinely monitor everyone's location, all the time. Others say police already are free to conduct surveillance by simply following people, and there is no legal difference between trailing someone by car or on foot and using technology to, in effect, do the same thing.
Earlier this year, evidence from a tracking device installed in Vallejo without a warrant on a car belonging to Yusuf Bey IV, the former leader of Oakland's Your Black Muslin Bakery, helped convict him and another man in the 2007 murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey. Bey IV's lawyer argued that the tracking data was obtained illegally, but a judge ruled otherwise.
If the Supreme Court rules that installing a tracker without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unfair searches and seizures, the convictions of Bey IV and his co-defendant Antoine Mackey could be thrown out and a new trial ordered in the Bailey case, legal experts said. Two other murder convictions against Bey IV and one against Mackey would not be affected.
The case headed for the Supreme Court, U.S. vs. Jones, has already been cited in Bey IV's preliminary appeal documents, said Gene Peretti, who represented Bey IV at trial.
"All the police have to do is get a warrant. What's the big deal?" Peretti said.
Alameda County deputy district attorney Melissa Krum, who prosecuted Bey, declined to comment, saying she would wait for the Supreme Court ruling, which is expected next year.
In the case headed for the high court, a federal judge signed a warrant allowing a GPS tracker to be placed on the car of Antoine Jones, a suspected drug dealer in Washington, D.C., who was later convicted of selling cocaine and sentenced to life in prison based, in part, on evidence of his movements obtained by the device. However, the warrant had expired before the device was installed. An appeals court overturned Jones' conviction, and the government appealed to the Supreme Court.
In the Bey IV case, Judge Thomas Reardon said he saw no real difference between police following a car around or tracking it by sitting at a desk staring at a computer.
Police investigating Bey IV's suspected involvement in the kidnapping of two women hid the device on his car while he was at a Vallejo courthouse for an unrelated hearing.
The GPS was still active more than a month later when data showed the car parked outside Bailey's apartment less than seven hours before his Aug. 2, 2007, slaying and then driving past the killing scene less than an hour after the shooting.
The GPS data was a key part of the prosecution's evidence against Bey IV.
