A bank robber made off with $195,000 and got caught after his cell pinged a geofence. Now SCOTUS decides whether that violated the Fourth Amendment

Okello Chatrie’s cellphone gave him away.

Chatrie made off with $195,000 from the bank he robbed in suburban Richmond, Virginia, and eluded the police until they turned to a powerful technological tool that erected a virtual fence and allowed them collect the location history of cellphone users near the crime scene.

The geofence warrant police served on Google found that Chatrie’s cellphone was among a handful of devices in the vicinity of the bank around the time it was robbed.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. It’s the latest high court case that forces the justices to wrestle with how a constitutional provision ratified in 1791 applies to technology the nation’s founders could not have contemplated in their wildest dreams.

Chatrie’s appeal is one of two cases being argued Monday. The other is an effort by Bayer to have the court block thousands of state lawsuits alleging the global agrochemical manufacturer failed to warn people that its popular Roundup weedkiller could cause cancer.

Geofence warrants turn the usual way of pursuing suspects on its head. Typically, police identify a suspect and then obtain a warrant to search a home or a phone.

With geofence........

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