Can Law Enforcement Review Ankle Monitor Location Data Without a Warrant?

Last September, the Court of Appeals decided State v. Thomas, No. COA23-210, __ N.C. App. __ (2024), a case involving law enforcement’s retrieval of ankle monitor location data gathered while the defendant was on post-release supervision. This is the first North Carolina appellate case to address whether it is constitutional for law enforcement to retrieve ankle monitor data without a warrant. This post will discuss the reasoning in Thomas and its implications for related questions. The facts in Thomas. In Thomas, the defendant was charged with murder and felony assault arising from a drive-by shooting in Raleigh. Witnesses to the shooting said they saw a red Charger near the scene before and after. Slip op. 2. Law enforcement later spoke with a confidential informant, who stated that the defendant was involved with the shooting along with a co-defendant, who drove a red Charger. Armed with this information, law enforcement investigated further and learned that the defendant was wearing a GPS ankle monitor on the night in question. Slip op. 2-3. A private company held a contract with the state to provide electronic monitoring services for the Department of Adult Probation and Parole. An employee of this company explained that Raleigh PD had two ways of accessing this data. One involved a “data dump” of every client monitored at the end of each day. The second way was more targeted: ten officers had individual log-ins allowing them to retrieve particular records and review them. One of these officers, without applying for a [...]