U.S. Supreme Court

Chatrie v. United States

No. 25-112                          6/29/26

Issue:

Is the government’s acquisition of a cell phone user’s location history to obtain a geofence warrant a search under the Fourth Amendment?

Holding:

Yes. A cell phone user has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell phone location information (in much the same way the Court earlier found for cell site location information (CSLI)), and acquiring location data is considered a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Court rejected the government’s arguments that: 1) accessing only a small amount of cell-phone location data does not equate to a Fourth Amendment search, and 2) the third-party doctrine (essentially, allowing a service provider such as Google to collect, retain, and use the cell phone user’s location information) precludes a defendant from Fourth Amendment protection. “[P]olice officers invade a cell-phone user’s reasonable expectation of privacy when they access his Location History. It does not matter if the time period scrutinized was only two hours. Nor does it matter that the materials obtained were handed over by a third-party tech company. When the government ‘accesses historical cell phone’ location information—Location History as much as CSLI—it ‘conducts a search under the Fourth Amendment’” (citing Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 300 (2018)). The Court remanded the case to the Fourth Circuit to evaluate whether the multi-step geofence warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause and whether the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule allows admission of the location history in this case. Read opinion.

Concurrence (Jackson, J., joined by Sotomayor, J.):

The concurrence would hold that the steps of obtaining a geofence warrant give too much discretion to law enforcement. “The facts of this case illustrate why the lack of magisterial oversight is dangerous. When executing steps two and three, law enforcement initially sought unbounded data and account information from all 19 devices identified at step one. … Nothing in the warrant prevented officers from obtaining this broad set of data; they narrowed the list only because Google insisted on it.”

Concurrence (Gorsuch, J.):

“Rather than employ Katz and its third party doctrine, I would take a different approach. To decide whether the Fourth Amendment is in play, I would consult its terms, asking first whether Location History qualifies as one of Mr. Chatrie’s papers or effects, and then asking whether the government searched those papers or effects. This traditional approach remains very much part of our law. … As I see it, Mr. Chatrie’s Location History data qualifies as his personal property.” 

Dissent (Alito, J., joined by Thomas and Barrett, JJ. in part):

“Eight years ago, I warned that this Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U. S. 296 (2018), would produce one of two outcomes. Either the Court would need to clarify Carpenter’s limits in a future decision, or Carpenter would usher in ‘revolutionary developments’ in our doctrine by giving criminal suspects a ‘protected Fourth Amendment interest in any sensitive personal information about them that is collected and owned by third parties’ (citation omitted). Today, the Court takes the country down the latter path. In doing so, the Court sheds Carpenter’s self-imposed boundaries and further destabilizes longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. To make matters worse, the majority does all this in an advisory opinion. Although today’s decision will send seismic waves through our Fourth Amendment doctrine, not one iota of the majority opinion will affect the outcome of this case. The Court knows this and does not claim otherwise. Indeed, by refusing to review the one question that could have at least theoretically given Chatrie some hope of relief, the Court carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade.”

Dissent (Barrett, J.):

“I have no quarrel with Carpenter … or with the Court’s decision to grant certiorari in this case. But I agree with Justice Alito that under our Fourth Amendment precedent, including Carpenter, Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy in data about his public movements that he voluntarily disclosed to Google. I therefore respectfully dissent.”

Commentary:

As noted on page 6 of the majority opinion, the typical geofence warrant is not a single warrant but a series of warrants that gradually “zeros in on” a group of users that includes the suspect. Page 6 gives an extremely simplified version of that three-step process. The Court did not hold that the warrant process used in this case was invalid. The Court only decided that law enforcement conducted a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when they obtained cell-phone location history data that ultimately led to the defendant’s arrest, even though the data was limited in time and was obtained through a third party (Google). In reaching that conclusion, the Court also held that a defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that cell-phone location data (at least the data related to his own phone), again even though that data was obtained from Google. The Court saw no real difference between this cell-phone location history data and the cell site location information that Carpenter v. United States addressed. In that respect, the Court also rejected the government’s reliance upon the third-party doctrine, just as the Court had done in Carpenter. That is all that the Court decided, but maybe that is enough. 

The Court remanded the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to determine if the geofence warrant process used in this case was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. If law enforcement has conducted a thorough investigation, and a geofence warrant process has been done well, reasonableness or probable cause might still be established at each step of the process. However, there are practicalities that may seriously limit the use of geofence warrants in the future. As noted in footnote 3, page 6 of the majority opinion, these warrants have been directed to several different companies, but the vast majority are directed to Google. Footnote 2, page 4 of the majority opinion reports that Google now stores location history data on individual users’ devices rather than its own servers. Therefore, Google claims that it is no longer capable of responding to a geofence warrant that seeks location history data. Even so, prosecutors should keep watch over geofence-warrant case law. The day after issuing this opinion, the Supreme Court remanded the Texas case of Wells v. State back to the Court of Criminal Appeals to be decided in light of Chatrie. The Court of Criminal Appeals may issue a more definitive word for Texas prosecutors on the legal viability of geofence warrants in Texas.

McCarthy v. Hernandez

No. 25-748                          6/22/26

Issue:

Does a defendant have a federal right to have the jury evaluate the lawfulness of his confession under Missouri v. Seibert?

Holding:

No. The U.S. Constitution does not require that both a judge and jury evaluate the admissibility or voluntariness of evidence when the defendant argues constitutional grounds for excluding it. In this case, the defendant made statements about his involvement in the cold case disappearance of a 6-year-old boy to his brother-in-law, who reported it to police. Police questioned the defendant without giving him Miranda warnings, and he ultimately confessed to strangling the child and dumping his body in an alley. At the DA’s office, the defendant waived his rights and made a second video-recorded confession. He also confessed to his ex-wife and two psychiatrists. In his trial for murder, the jury asked for instruction from the judge on whether the defendant’s first confession was voluntary. The judge concluded that it was not appropriate to give the jury an instruction on voluntariness and attenuation, and the jury found the defendant guilty. In a habeas corpus application, the defendant argued that the judge’s refusal to instruct the jury violated Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (post-warning confession obtained through a deliberate two-step strategy predicating on violating Miranda is inadmissible unless law enforcement takes “specific, curative steps” to attenuate it from the pre-warning confession). The Supreme Court, in a per curiam opinion, held that the defendant in this case had no federal right to have the jury evaluate the lawfulness of his confession after the judge had ruled on it. “So no federal law, much less any clearly established federal law, required the trial court to instruct the jury on the grounds for suppression set out in Miranda or Seibert.” The Court also concluded that it has “never held that ‘the Due Process Clause, or any other provision of the Federal Constitution, requires a trial court to explain to a jury an issue that the jury is not required to decide.’” Read opinion.

Commentary:

This was a very easy issue for the Court to decide. There are certainly situations in which the Constitution requires the trial judge to instruct jurors on certain legal concepts. But the Constitution does not require a trial judge to instruct jurors on the law set forth in Miranda v. Arizona or Missouri v. Seibert. Because there was clearly established federal law on the desired jury instruction, there is no way the defendant could prevail in this federal habeas corpus action. Of course, Texas prosecutors are aware that a defendant may be entitled to an instruction on the voluntariness of his confession under Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 38.22, §§6 or 7 or Art. 38.23. The leading case for jury instructions on defendant’s statements is still the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals in Oursbourn v. State, 259 S.W.3d 159 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008).

Hunter v. United States

No. 24-1063                       6/18/26

Issue:

Can a defendant’s federal court waiver of appeal—a promise by the defendant not to appeal his conviction or eventual sentence—be unenforceable?

Holding:

Yes, “when it would result in a miscarriage of justice—meaning, when it would leave in place the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute.” In this case, the defendant entered into a written plea agreement to plead guilty to one of 10 counts of bank and wire fraud in exchange for waiving his right to appeal. The judge imposed a condition of the defendant’s release after he completed his prison sentence to participate in a mental-health treatment program and take all mental-health medications prescribed by his treating physician. The defendant immediately appealed the medication condition, arguing that it violated a fundamental constitutional right. The Supreme Court noted a split in federal courts of appeals on when appeal waivers are unenforceable in the sentencing context. Most have held that a waiver cannot be enforced if doing so would result in a miscarriage of justice. The Fifth Circuit and others have instead specified a few circumstances in which an appeal can occur despite a waiver. The Court adopted the “miscarriage of justice” approach and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit to consider whether, under that standard, the defendant’s appeal should be dismissed. Read opinion.

Concurrence (Gorsuch, J., joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, JJ.):

“In our times, the jury trial has given way to a conveyor belt of plea bargains. At least some responsibility for that development lies with this Court. When confronted with coercive prosecutorial tactics designed to induce defendants to take plea deals, the Court has often condoned those practices or let them pass in silence. Today, the Court begins to correct course. It rules that prosecutors may not always leverage their plea-bargaining power to induce a defendant to forego the right to contest his sentence on appeal.”

Concurrence (Cavanaugh, J., joined by Alito and Barrett, JJ.):

“I appreciate Justice Gorsuch’s thoughtful concurrence. But I respectfully disagree with his understanding of the miscarriage-of-justice exception. As I read it, his concurring opinion would set a lower bar for the miscarriage-of-justice exception than the Court’s opinion does. In my view, therefore, the concurrence may not be entirely consistent with the Court’s opinion. In any event, the Court’s opinion of course speaks for itself.”

Concurrence (Barrett, J.):

“When the Government moves to enforce an appeal waiver, it is asking the court of appeals to hold a defendant to a position that he knowingly and voluntarily took below. In the mine run of cases, that waiver should be enforced: The right to appeal, like most other rights, can be relinquished, either when the appeal is ripe (by declining to file an appeal) or prospectively (by signing an appeal waiver). But as the Court explains, there are some extreme cases where enforcing an appeal waiver would paper over an ‘egregious’ and ‘obvious’ error that would ‘bring the judicial system into disrepute.’ In those rare circumstances, the appellate court should decline to enforce the waiver so that it may correct the error.”

Dissent (Thomas, J.):

“The Court today creates a ‘miscarriage-of-justice’ exception to this rule. But it cannot identify any source of law for its exception. Neither the contract-law principles that Hunter invoked nor this Court’s supposed ‘supervisory power’ give it the authority to override Hunter’s appeal waiver. Without any source of law to justify its decision, the Court appears to rest on its policy concern that holding defendants to their waivers may sometimes lead to unfair results or make federal courts look bad. But policy concerns are not rules of decision in courts of law. Because I would decide Hunter’s case based on law rather than policy, I respectfully dissent.”

Commentary:

The Supreme Court did not hold that this defendant’s waiver of his right to appeal was invalid. Rather, the Court decided under what circumstances a federal court can decide that a defendant’s waiver of his right to appeals is invalid—essentially, if the waiver of the right to appeal would result in a miscarriage of justice, and the Court remanded the case for the lower court to evaluate. This decision does not appear to have any direct impact on Texas state criminal cases. The issue in Texas will almost certainly be controlled by the jurisprudence from the Court of Criminal Appeals on whether and under what circumstances a defendant can be bound by a waiver of his right to appeal. Nevertheless, prosecutors—especially post-conviction prosecutors—should be aware of this decision, as it may be raised by the defense to encourage Texas courts to expand on that post-conviction jurisprudence.

Texas Supreme Court

In the Interest of J.D.H.

No. 25-0588                       6/19/26

Issue:

May a parent who fails to timely appeal a judgment terminating her parental rights because of ineffective assistance of counsel pursue an out-of-time appeal?

Holding:

Yes. The Court noted that in criminal cases, the Court of Criminal Appeals has continued to grant similar post-conviction relief when a trial court has determined that defense counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to file a timely notice of appeal. “We conclude that we must follow a similar course in parental termination cases.” The Court reversed and remanded with instructions to the court of appeals to abate the appeal and remand to the trial court to conduct a hearing on whether the mother received effective assistance of counsel. Read opinion.

Dissent (Sullivan, J., joined by Young and Hawkins, JJ.):

“Federal and state courts alike hold that a timely notice of appeal is necessary to invoke a court of appeals’s jurisdiction. Because the notice of appeal is a document of jurisdictional significance, a court of appeals is powerless to review a judgment absent a timely notice—even if the failure to file it is a lawyer’s fault. Yet today the Court holds that a parent whose ineffective lawyer files an untimely notice of appeal from a judgment terminating parental rights can still appeal that judgment. Because my genuine sympathy for this parent can’t confer appellate jurisdiction, I respectfully dissent.” Read dissent.

Commentary:

The Texas Supreme Court continues its focus on cases involving parental termination (see summaries for several termination cases from June 5, 2026 here). In this case, the Court found that a parent whose attorney failed to file a timely notice of appeal can appeal the trial court’s dismissal order. The Court noted that both a parent subject to a termination suit and a criminal defendant have fundamental rights that include effective assistance of counsel. In the criminal context, courts have allowed habeas relief when defense counsel failed to file a timely notice of appeal. See Ex parte Axel, 757 S.W.2d 369 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988). The Supreme Court applied this principle to termination cases and remanded for the trial court to determine whether an attorney who misses the filing deadline for a notice of appeal has provided ineffective assistance. The Court offered two caveats, however: 1) an attorney’s failure to file a timely notice of appeal does not necessarily equate to ineffective assistance of counsel, and 2) Family Code §161.211 provides a hard deadline for challenging a termination order of six months after the order is signed, regardless of ineffective assistance.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Montgomery v. State

Nos. PD-0581-22 & -0582-22                 7/2/26

Issue:

Did the trial court’s decision to hold an adjudication hearing via Zoom violate the defendant’s rights under the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause?

Holding:

No. The Confrontation Clause does not apply to adjudication of guilt hearings. “It is undeniable that these proceedings are at least related to a predicate criminal prosecution and that there is some overlap. And this includes the possibility that the defendant may lose his liberty. However, several characteristics of these proceedings lead us to conclude that such a proceeding is not a true ‘criminal prosecution’ protected by the Sixth Amendment.” Read opinion.

Concurrence (Keel, J.):

I agree with the majority and join its opinion because an adjudication hearing is not a ‘criminal prosecution,’ regardless of its outcome, and a respondent to the motion to adjudicate is not ‘accused,’ and the witnesses at the hearing are not ‘against’ him.” Read concurrence.

Concurrence (Parker, J.):

“The Court does not grapple with the differences between deferred adjudication and regular probation, and there are differences, with the most salient one being that sentencing hasn’t occurred yet. The dissent sees the sentencing distinction but assumes without critical inquiry that the Confrontation Clause applies to sentencing. But contrary to that assumption, the Supreme Court has suggested and the federal circuits have unanimously concluded that the Confrontation Clause does not apply to sentencing. Based mainly on that authority, I agree with the Court that the Confrontation Clause does not apply to proceedings involving the revocation of deferred adjudication.” Read concurrence.

Dissent (Walker, J.):

“Deferred is different from regular probation. That is why this case mattered. … This Court should squarely address whether the right to be present under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment applies in a hearing on a motion to adjudicate because it is, or is not, part of the criminal prosecution.” Read dissent.

Dissent (Finley, J.):

“[T]he Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause applies to deferred adjudication probation hearings for two reasons. First, deferred adjudication is unlike probation revocation because a sentence has not yet been imposed at the time of the adjudication hearing (citation omitted). Second, as we explained in Doan, Texas ‘[c]ommunity-supervision revocation proceedings … are judicial proceedings, to be governed by the rules established to govern judicial proceedings.’” Read dissent.

Commentary:

This is a momentous decision, and one for which prosecutors have been waiting for a long time. This decision dealt specifically with the applicability of the Confrontation Clause to an adjudication of guilt after a defendant was placed on deferred adjudication. The decision deals specifically with the defendant’s right to be present under the Confrontation Clause, and not the types of evidence admissible under the Confrontation Clause. But if the Confrontation Clause does not apply, then a confrontation objection to a particular piece of evidence should properly be overruled at a revocation hearing. In the last paragraph of the opinion, the majority concludes that the Confrontation Clause does “not apply to an adjudication of guilt and probation revocation hearing.” Thus, it appears from reading all of the judges’ opinions in this case that a majority of the judges have concluded that the Confrontation Clause also does not apply to a proceeding on a motion to revoke “regular” community supervision, as well as a motion to adjudicate deferred adjudication community supervision. Judge Parker, in her concurring opinion, notes a distinction between the two, but she (and the judges who joined her concurrence) appears to be of the opinion that the Confrontation Clause does not apply to sentencing at all (a battle for another day). This decision does not mean, however, that prosecutors should begin to introduce whatever evidence they would like at a motion to adjudicate hearing. The Due Process Clause may still place some limits on what evidence prosecutors can introduce at such a hearing. With regard to the admissibility of evidence, the Due Process jurisprudence has largely focused on whether the defendant had an opportunity to respond to the particular allegation that supported the revocation of his community supervision. There will certainly be future litigation in this area, but this is great—and long-awaited—decision.

Texas Attorney General Opinion

No. KP-0522                     6/26/26

Issue:

What is the extent of commissioners court authority over employees of local elected officials?

Conclusion:

Though it may be legally advisable, we find no statute that requires all county elected officials to publicly advertise for job openings in their offices. Whether any particular employment practice adopted by a commissioners court as to an elected official’s employee is permissible depends on: 1) whether the action taken is within the authority of the commissioners court and, if so, 2) whether the action usurps or unreasonably interferes with the performance of the elected official’s constitutional or statutory duties. A commissioners court must restrict the amount of time that an employee may contribute to and withdraw from a county sick leave pool as provided in Chapter 157, Subchapter E of the Local Government Code. Read opinion. 

Requested by:

Gary D. Trammel, Stephens County Attorney