United States v. Juan Pineda-Moreno

In this matter which arose prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones, — U.S.-, 132 S.Ct. 945 , 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012), we must decide whether to apply the exclusionary rule where law enforcement agents attached mobile tracking devices to the underside of a defendant’s car and used those devices to track the car’s movements.

I

In 2007 the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) came to suspect that Juan Pineda-Moreno was growing marijuana in the back country of southern Oregon. That suspicion arose on May 28, when a DEA agent saw Pineda-Moreno and some other men pay cash for a large amount of a fertilizer favored by local marijuana growers. The men loaded the fertilizer into a Jeep Grand Cherokee that belonged to Pineda-Moreno.

The DEA began to investigate the men and to monitor the travels they made in Pineda-Moreno’s Jeep (which had California license plates) and in a second Jeep with Oregon license plates. The DEA’s surveillance disclosed that the men bought large quantities of food in the first half of June, that they bought deer repellent and a portable hand sprayer that same month, and that they visited an irrigation supply store in late…