A Franklin County judge has ruled that deputies didn't violate the constitutional rights of two home-invasion suspects by attaching a GPS device to their car without a warrant.

Common Pleas Judge Michael J. Holbrook issued the decision yesterday in the case of Montie E. Sullivan and David L. White, who are awaiting trial in six home-invasion robberies in Franklin County.

The ruling is consistent with a decision handed down last year by a judge in Fairfield County, where the pair were convicted in what investigators said was the last in a string of home invasions.

An Ohio appeals court also ruled last year that motorists should not expect privacy when traveling on public roads, meaning that their movements could be monitored with a tracking device.

Attorneys for Sullivan and White filed a motion in October asking Holbrook to throw out the evidence against their clients. They argued that Franklin County deputy sheriffs violated their clients' Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful searches by tracking their movements without a court order. Their movements were tracked for nine days using a GPS device attached to Sullivan's car.

Holbrook wrote that "a reasonable expectation of privacy" does not exist for those parking and traveling on public roads.

"The device was attached to a vehicle found on public property" and "monitored their travel in public and at no time did the defendant attempt to shield the vehicle from the public," he wrote.

"Clearly, without an expectation of privacy, the defendant cannot assert the protection of the Fourth Amendment."

i'm not sure i want to think about the implications of this ruling, which basically just upholds a 9th US circuit ruling from last year saying that unless you put your vehicle behind a fence and *obvious* privacy structures, you have no expectation of privacy in your own vehicle, even when parked in your own driveway! i can only hope that our literal constitutionalists on the supreme court strike down these rulings, otherwise we might as well just throw out the 4th amendment altogether since we have very few places left where we can expect our privacy to be upheld.