## Facts

- Police investigated a fatal shooting involving a sawed-off shotgun; a witness described the robbery attempt, shooting, and the shooter’s flight.
- The witness identified Jerome Almonor in a photo array as the shooter.
- Police located and interviewed the second man present at the shooting, who provided Almonor’s cell-phone number and reported Almonor still possessed the shotgun.
- Within hours, police suspected Almonor might be at an ex-girlfriend’s residence in Brockton.
- Without a warrant, police used the carrier’s exigent-circumstances process to have the carrier “ping” Almonor’s phone to obtain real-time GPS coordinates.
- The pinged coordinates were consistent with the suspected address; police went there, obtained homeowner consent, found Almonor in an upstairs bedroom, and arrested him.
- Police observed a sawed-off shotgun and bulletproof vest in plain view, then obtained a search warrant and seized those items.
- The motion judge suppressed the seized items as fruits of an unlawful warrantless search; the Commonwealth took an interlocutory appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether police-caused real-time “pinging” of a suspect’s cell phone to obtain its location constitutes a “search” under art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights (and related Fourth Amendment principles).
2. If it is a search, whether the warrantless ping was reasonable under the exigent-circumstances exception, making derivative evidence admissible.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court held that causing a cell phone to reveal its real-time location by “pinging” it is a search under art. 14.
- The court held the warrantless ping was justified by exigent circumstances in this case, given probable cause and an ongoing public-safety threat from a recently involved, armed homicide suspect.
- The court reversed the suppression order and remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- Individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the real-time location of their cell phones; compelling or causing a phone to disclose that location information is a constitutional search under art. 14.
- A warrant is generally required for real-time cell-phone location tracking absent a recognized exception.
- Exigent circumstances may justify a warrantless real-time ping when police have probable cause and reasonably face an immediate risk to public safety (including the risk posed by an armed suspect at large), making it impracticable to obtain a warrant without increasing that risk.
- Exigency determinations are fact-specific, and approval of a warrantless ping does not authorize routine warrantless use of real-time location tracking.

## Conclusion

The court recognized real-time cell-phone “pinging” as a search requiring a warrant in ordinary circumstances, but ruled that the warrantless ping here was reasonable under exigent circumstances tied to locating a recently identified, armed homicide suspect, so suppression of the seized evidence was not warranted.


Commonwealth v. Almonor, 482 Mass. 35, 120 N.E.3d 1183 (2019)