Police increasingly rely on phone location data to identify suspects. A new case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is one of the more significant developments in criminal defense law news this fall, and it may shape how courts treat that evidence.
How a Geofence Warrant Works
A geofence warrant works in reverse. Instead of naming a suspect and requesting that person’s records, police draw a boundary around a location and a window of time. They then ask a technology company to identify the devices that were inside it.
The process usually unfolds in three steps:
- The company provides anonymized data for every device in the area.
- Officers review that data and narrow the list.
- The company reveals account information for the devices police select.
Critics argue that this approach sweeps in people who were simply nearby. It is a newer form of digital evidence, and courts are still deciding where its limits are.
The Supreme Court’s Chatrie Ruling
In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that obtaining a person’s Location History through a geofence warrant is a search under the Fourth Amendment. As the Congressional Research Service explains, the Court did not decide whether the warrant in that case was valid. It remanded that question to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
A search generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause and limited in scope. Whether a geofence warrant can be narrow enough to meet that standard remains open.
Courts have long weighed limits on police power in settings such as sobriety checkpoints, where officers stop drivers without individual suspicion. A geofence warrant raises a similar concern, because it gathers information about everyone in an area before police have identified a specific suspect.
The Pennsylvania Case
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed in early October to hear Commonwealth v. Keith Anthony Choice. The court will decide whether the warrants established individualized probable cause, including whether investigators showed the shooter had a cellphone. It will also consider whether each step of the geofence process was an overbroad search of protected location data.
A lower court had upheld the warrants, finding them supported by probable cause and highly particularized. That ruling came before Chatrie.
What This Means for People Facing Charges
For anyone following criminal defense law news, the takeaway is practical. Location data is not automatically admissible. If police obtained it through a warrant that was too broad, a defense attorney may challenge it through a motion to suppress.
Geofence warrants have been used in investigations of shootings and robberies, and similar tools may appear in theft cases as well.
These challenges are technical. They turn on the warrant’s language, the size of the area, the length of the time window, and how officers narrowed the results. That is one reason representing yourself in a case built on location data carries real risk.
There are also lasting misconceptions about defense attorneys, including the belief that their work matters only at trial. Many important decisions happen earlier, such as whether key evidence comes in at all.
At Jacobson House, we track developments in search and seizure law so readers can understand how new rulings may affect their rights.
If you are facing charges and believe phone or location data played a role, speaking with a criminal defense attorney about how that evidence was obtained is an important early step.