Chatrie v. United States

Chatrie v. United States | 04/27/26 | Docket #: 25-112

25-112 CHATRIE V. UNITED STATES DECISION BELOW: 136 F.4th 100 LIMITED TO QUESTION 1 PRESENTED BY THE PETITION. CERT. GRANTED 1/16/2026 QUESTION PRESENTED: This case concerns the constitutionality of geofence warrants. For cell phone users to use certain services, their cell phones must continuously transmit their exact locations to their service providers. A geofence warrant allows law enforcement to obtain, from the service provider, the identities of users who were in the vicinity of a particular location at a particular time. In this case, law enforcement obtained, and served on Google, a geofence warrant seeking anonymized location data for every device within 150 meters of the location of a bank robbery within one hour of the robbery. After Google returned an initial list, law enforcement sought - without seeking an additional warrant - information about the movements of certain devices for a longer, two-hour period, and Google complied with that request as well. Then - again without seeking an additional warrant-law enforcement requested de-anonymized subscriber information for three devices. One of those devices belonged to petitioner Okello Chatrie. Based on the evidence derived from the geofence warrant, petitioner was convicted of armed robbery. The questions presented are: 1. Whether the execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. 2. Whether the exclusionary rule should apply to the evidence derived from the geofence warrant. LOWER COURT CASE NUMBER: 22-4489