Va. Court Upholds Conviction of Sex Offender Tracked with GPS

Fairfax Police that used a GPS tracking device to secretly follow a sex offender were cleared of wrongdoing by a Virginia Court.

A state appeals court decided to uphold the conviction of David L. Foltz Jr. on abduction with intent to defile, even though the use of a GPS tracking device in the investigation was potentially "Orwellian," according to a Virginian judge.

In 2008, the department was investigating a string of sexual assaults, when David L. Foltz Jr., a registered sex offender, became a person of interest in the case.  Officers planted a satellite tracking device on a vehicle that Foltz was driving for work, without first securing a search warrant.

Using data from the tracking device, the police were able to place Foltz's vehicle close to the scene of another sexual assault.  With this knowledge, officers began trailing Foltz.  While he was being followed by police, Foltz attempted to sexually assault a woman.  The trailing officers intervened and stopped the act, in which they said Foltz had been trying to unbutton the victim's pants.

Foltz was sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

Initially, the Foltz admitted to attacking the woman, but said that police had caught him in the middle of a purse snatching, not a sexual assault.  On appeal, Foltz's lawyers claimed that the evidence against him should be thrown out because the GPS device violated his privacy and his Constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure.

"By all reasonable standards, placing a GPS device on your car should require a warrant," Kent Willis, an executive director of Virginia's American Civil Liberties Union, said to the Associated Press.  "Otherwise we run the risk of police being able to willy-nilly use GPS to follow anyone for any purpose."

But an appeals court judge said that Foltz's rights were not violated.  In the decision, Judge J. Randolph Beales wrote that the GPS was placed on a van that did not belong to Foltz, and the van was parked on a public street, where there was no reasonable expectation of privacy.