A 2025 robbery conviction out of San Jose has been wiped out after California's Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled that police violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights by pulling his real-time cellphone location from Verizon without a warrant. The case against Marcos Andres Andrade now heads back to the trial court, where a judge and attorneys must untangle what, if any, evidence can survive now that the phone data itself has been thrown out.
The appellate panel reversed a prior order from Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Erik Johnson, who had denied Andrade's motion to suppress the cellphone data, according to The Mercury News. San Jose police investigators had requested Andrade's real-time cellphone tracking data from Verizon without first obtaining a warrant, the outlet reported, and the appeals court found that doing so crossed a constitutional line.
How Police Tracked Andrade to an Alum Rock Home
The case traces back to March 1, 2022, when Andrade and Jesus Ivan Larios were suspected of brandishing guns and robbing two people of their car in San Jose, per the Mercury News report. Detectives tracked the victims' stolen phone signals to an apartment complex on Fontaine Street, where they found the stolen car abandoned. A separate phone signal from a victim's device led detectives to a home in the Alum Rock area where Andrade was listed as a resident.
Police then placed Andrade's home and a car identified as a getaway vehicle under surveillance. According to the same report, officers faxed an emergency disclosure form to Verizon requesting both historical and real-time cell site information for Andrade's phone, and Verizon provided the data within about two hours. While detectives reviewed that information, Detective Amanda Estantino prepared search and arrest warrant applications, which a judge approved roughly four hours later. Police arrested Andrade that night, and a search of the home and car turned up one victim's purse and a gun holster. A separate search of Larios' home turned up the stolen car's keys and the victims' phones, the Mercury News noted. Larios was later sentenced to a 15-year prison term. Andrade eventually pleaded no contest to second-degree robbery and completed a four-year sentence through a combination of jail and prison time.
Court Rejects Claims of an Ongoing Public-Safety Threat
At issue was whether San Jose police had genuine exigent circumstances to bypass a warrant. Detective Estantino testified that she sought the Verizon records swiftly because of what she described as an ongoing public-safety threat, asserting that the suspects posed a risk of additional robberies, homicide or accidental shooting, the Mercury News reported. San Jose police had claimed those exigent circumstances justified the emergency request.
The appellate court was not convinced. Judges found that the record did not support a reasonable belief in an emergency requiring swift action, and separately found that Estantino provided no specific or articulable facts supporting her belief of an ongoing public-safety risk, according to the same report. The panel also noted that neither Andrade nor Larios fired shots at the victims during the robbery and that the victims were not harmed, undercutting the claimed urgency.
Judges further found that the seriousness of the alleged offense alone did not justify bypassing warrant requirements, and that police surveillance already in place at Andrade's residence and the suspected getaway vehicle undermined the claimed need to act immediately. Taken together, the court concluded there was no exigency based on public-safety risk in this particular case, per the Mercury News account.
Case Returns to Trial Court as Plea Deal Hangs in the Balance
With Andrade's cellphone data now disallowed, the appellate court ordered Judge Johnson and the attorneys to reassess whether any evidence derived from that location data should also be suppressed, the report states. Because of the reversal, Andrade may also withdraw the no-contest plea he had negotiated with prosecutors.
Deputy Public Defender Steven Otero, who represented Andrade, welcomed the court of appeal's ruling, per the Mercury News. The report also cited Mary Greenwood, who said the decision should govern similar investigations going forward and warned that allowing robbery-case experience alone to justify warrantless tracking would effectively create a robbery exception to the warrant requirement. As of Friday morning, neither the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office nor the San Jose Police Department had responded to requests for comment, according to the Mercury News.
How the Ruling Fits Into Broader Cellphone Privacy Law
The underlying legal question echoes the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, which described cell-site records as uniquely suited to showing whether a phone was within particular geographic areas when robberies occurred, calling that data potentially powerful circumstantial evidence of participation. California law, under Penal Code section 1546.1, generally requires a warrant before law enforcement can compel a provider to disclose electronic communication or device location information.
Not every court has drawn the same line on real-time tracking. In a case involving Montai Riley, the Sixth Circuit held that tracking his real-time GPS location for about seven hours before his arrest did not amount to a Fourth Amendment search under that circuit's precedent, as reported by Techdirt. In that matter, a court order had authorized AT&T to disclose real-time latitude and longitude data from Riley's phone for a period potentially stretching two months, until August 26, 2015, the outlet noted. The split underscores how unsettled the legal terrain around warrantless real-time phone tracking remains, even as California's Sixth District has now drawn a firmer line in Andrade's case.
