A man robbed a Virginia credit union with a phone to his ear, and that one detail sent the case all the way to the Supreme Court. In the debut episode of Unreasonable Expectations, Jay Ruane breaks down Chatrie v. United States, decided June 29, 2026, the ruling that answers a question defense lawyers have fought over for years: does the government need a warrant to pull your client's Google Location History through a geofence?
Jay walks through the facts, the three-step geofence process, and the wild road this case took to the Court, then unpacks how Justice Kagan's majority extends Carpenter, why two hours of data still counts as a search, and how the Court handled the third-party doctrine. You also get the Jackson and Gorsuch concurrences, the Alito and Barrett dissents, and a plain reading of what the Court did and did not decide. It closes with seven takeaways you can carry into your next suppression hearing.
In this episode:
00:00 The robbery that started it all
01:15 Welcome to Unreasonable Expectations, and what this show does every week
03:00 Two terms you need: geofence and Location History
05:00 The three-step warrant, and how Chatrie got identified
06:15 The wild road to the Supreme Court, and the good-faith trap
08:00 The holding and the lineup: five behind Kagan, six for the result, three dissenting
10:00 How the majority extends Carpenter, and why two hours is still a search
14:30 What the Court did not decide: the warrant, reasonableness, and good faith
15:30 A word from our sponsor, The Criminal Mastermind
16:30 The concurrences: Jackson's roadmap and Gorsuch's property theory
18:30 The dissents: Alito on advisory opinions, Barrett on the third-party doctrine
20:00 Seven takeaways for practicing criminal defense lawyers
23:00 Rate, review, and subscribe
Key point: The Court held that acquiring Google Location History is a Fourth Amendment search, even for a two-hour window and even from a third party. It did not strike the warrant or reach good faith. Those questions go back to the Fourth Circuit on remand, which means Chatrie himself could still lose.
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