WELLS, AARON RAYSHAN v. the State of Texas

In the Court of Criminal
Appeals of Texas
════════════
No. PD-0669-23
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AARON RAYSHAN WELLS, Appellant

v.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

═══════════════════════════════════════
On Appellant’s Petition for Discretionary Review
From the Fifth Court of Appeals
Dallas County
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YEARY, J., announced the judgment of the Court and filed an
opinion in which KEEL, FINLEY, and PARKER, JJ., joined. FINLEY, J., filed
a concurring opinion in which PARKER, J., joined. NEWELL, J., filed a
concurring and dissenting opinion in which RICHARDSON and WALKER,
JJ., joined. MCCLURE, J., dissented. SCHENCK, P.J., did not participate.

This case involves a question about the constitutionality of a
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“geofence” warrant. 1 We conclude that use of the geofence warrant in
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this case to obtain location history data did not violate the Fourth
Amendment of the United States Constitution. 2 Accordingly, the
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judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed.
I. THE OFFENSE
Jimmy Giddings was a drug dealer. He lived with his girlfriend,
Nikita Dickerson, at a house at 4923 Veterans Drive in Dallas, across
the street from Carver Heights Baptist Church. Dickerson and Giddings
had a routine. When he returned home in the early morning hours, she
would unlock the gate at their front door and greet him in the driveway.
She would carry a .40 caliber Glock pistol because, while they lived in a
nice house, she felt the neighborhood was unsafe.
At around 3 a.m. on the morning of the offense, June 24, 2018,

1
Succinctly put, geofence warrants have been described in this way:

While traditional court orders permit searches related to known
suspects, geofence warrants are issued specifically because a
suspect cannot be identified. Law enforcement simply specifies
a location and period of time, and, after judicial approval,
companies conduct sweeping searches of their location
databases and provide a list of cell phones and affiliated users
found at or near a specific area during a given timeframe, both
defined by law enforcement.

Note, Geofence Warrants and the Fourth Amendment, 134 HARV. L. REV. 2508,
2509 (May 2021).

2 The first ground of review we granted is: “[w]hether the Court of
Appeals correctly determined the legality of geofence warrants, an issue of first
impression in Texas and an important question of state and federal law that
has not been, but should be, settled by the Court of Criminal Appeals.”
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Dickerson exited the gate outside the front door, as captured on the
home’s front-door security camera, pursuant to her and Giddings’
routine. Security cameras from the church across the street recorded
four men who had been loitering in the parking lot on the far side of the
church from Veteran’s Drive “for some hours” before the offense. When
Giddings arrived home, the four men, wearing masks over their lower
faces, rushed across the street toward Giddings and Dickerson
brandishing pistols and a rifle.
In the melee that followed, Dickerson sustained five non-life-
threatening gunshot wounds. She also dropped her pistol, and it was
retrieved by one of the masked men. At the same time, Giddings fled
into the house. Two of the assailants rushed in after him, and a third
assailant marched the wounded Dickerson into the house at gunpoint.
The fourth man, who turned out to be Appellant, quickly followed them.
All the men except for Appellant had visibly distinctive tattoos.
Once inside, during the robbery, one of the assailants—the record does
not definitively establish which one—shot Giddings in the neck,
severing his spine. As a result of this gunshot wound, Giddings died.
Afterwards, the assailants fled back across the street to their
vehicle in the church parking lot and drove off. As described by the court
of appeals:
Based on the security camera recording timestamp and
footage showing that the men were in the area of the
church immediately before and after the offense, [police]
obtained a warrant to search Google’s records for
information on devices located within a rectangular
geofence encompassing [Giddings and Dickerson’s] house
and the portion of the church directly across the street
between 2:45 a.m. and 3:10 a.m. on June 24. Ultimately, a
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cellular phone associated with [A]ppellant was identified
as being at the scene. Through [A]ppellant’s phone records
and a search of social media, police were able to identify
Milton Prentice, Brian Groom, and Kiante Watkins as the
other three men involved in the offense.

Wells, 675 S.W.3d at 819. Watkins testified as an accomplice witness
against Appellant at trial, describing the robbery in some detail.
Appellant was charged with and convicted of the capital murder—
during the course of a robbery—of Jimmy Giddings. TEX. PENAL CODE §
19.03(a)(2). Because the State did not seek the death penalty, Appellant
received an automatic sentence of life without parole, without the
necessity of a punishment hearing. TEX. PENAL CODE § 12.31(a)(2).
II. BACKGROUND
A. The Geofence Warrant
The warrant at issue in this case was directed to “Google LLC[.]”
It ordered Google to turn over to the police “GPS, WiFi or Bluetooth
sourced location history data” corresponding to “Initial Search
Parameters” generated from devices that Google’s electronic records
showed to have been within certain, particularly circumscribed time and
location specifications. 3 The warrant required disclosure in three steps.
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In Step One, the warrant commanded, “[f]or each location point
within the ‘Initial Search Parameters’, Google shall produce anonymized

3
The warrant purported to issue pursuant to former Article 18.21,
Section 5A, of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. That statute was
repealed in 2017, but the repeal was not effective until January 1, 2019. See
Acts 2017, 85th Leg., ch. 1058, §§ 5.01(2), 6.03, pp. 4192−93, eff. Jan. 1, 2019.
The warrant issued on December 7, 2018. There is no issue before us whether
the warrant was properly issued pursuant to statutory authority.
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information specifying the corresponding unique device ID, timestamp,
coordinates, display radius, and data source, if available (the
‘Anonymized List’)[.]” Police were then to “analyze this location data to
identify users who may have witnessed or participated” in the capital
offense and “seek any additional information regarding these devices
from Google.”
In Step Two, the warrant provided that, “[f]or those accounts
identified as relevant to the ongoing investigation through analysis of”
the Anonymized List, Google “shall provide additional location history
outside of the predefined area for those relevant accounts to determine
path of travel.” It then specified that, “[t]his additional location history
shall not exceed 60 minutes plus or minus the first and last timestamp
associated with the account in the initial dataset.” This step was
intended to aid the police in ruling out any devices flagged by the
Anonymized List so that the identity of obvious non-witnesses and non-
participants would not be revealed.
Finally, in Step Three, the warrant ordered that, “[f]or those
accounts identified as relevant to the ongoing investigation through an
analysis of provided records, and upon demand,” Google “shall provide
the subscriber’s information for those relevant accounts to include,
subscriber’s name, email address, services subscribed to, last 6 months
of IP history, SMS account number, and registration IP.” 4 In other
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4 Courts that have addressed geofence warrants refer to these “Step

Three” records simply as identifying information. See, e.g., United States v.
Smith, 110 F.4th 817, 825 (5th Cir. 2024) (emphasis added) (“[A]t Step 3, law
enforcement compels Google to provide account-identifying information[.]”;
United States v Chatrie, 107 F.4th 319, 324 (4th Cir. 2024), reh’g granted en
banc, 2024 WL 4648102 (4th Cir. Nov. 1, 2024) (emphasis added) (“[A]t Step
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words, only in the last step was sufficient information revealed
permitting law enforcement to identify witnesses to, or participants in,
the capital offense under investigation. At no point during this three-
step process were police required to return to the magistrate for
incremental authorization.
B. The Warrant Affidavit
The warrant affidavit started out by providing the “Initial Search
Parameters”: a “[g]eographical area identified as a polygon defined by”
four “latitude/longitude coordinates and connected by straight lines[,]”
as specified. 5 The affidavit sought “GPS, WiFi or Bluetooth sourced
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location history data from devices that reported a location” within the

Three, law enforcement determines which individuals are relevant to the
investigation and then compels Google to provide their account-identifying
information[.]”); Price v. Superior Court of Riverside County, 93 Cal.App.5th
13, 22, 310 Cal.Rptr.3d 520, 529 (2023) (emphasis added) (“Geofence warrants
allow law enforcement agencies to identify suspects and witnesses to crimes by
obtaining location data and identifying information[.]”). Judge Newell worries
that the warrant may have gone too far to authorize a search of Appellant’s IP
history. Concurring and Dissenting Opinion at 2, 11−12, 20. There is no
suggestion in the record that police actually obtained Appellant’s IP history
pursuant to this warrant. See Jones v. State, ___ S.E.2d ___, No. S24A1085,
2025 WL 676862, at *8 n.5 (Ga. del. Mar. 4, 2025) (“[E]ven if the warrant’s
broader description of items to be seized might raise concerns about
particularity, it would not invalidate the warrant here, because the police
neither obtained nor used any evidence beyond what was needed to identify
Jones.”). In any event, to the extent that the information provided at Step
Three in this case may suggest access to anything other than identifying
information, that argument has not been raised in either the court of appeals
or this Court, and we will not address it.

5 Both the affidavit and the warrant itself, besides providing a verbal

description of the area included within the geofence, also incorporated a
graphic representation of the polygon, which the court of appeals reproduced
in its opinion. Wells, 675 S.W.3d at 822.
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described polygon at a window of time within which the capital murder
occurred, namely: “June 24, 2018 0245 hrs (2:45 a.m.) to June 24, 2018
0310 hrs (3:10 a.m.) Central Time Zone[.]” Thus, the affidavit sought
location history data for an area that encompassed no more than a part
of the church and the church grounds, including the parking lot where
the assailants waited, a small segment of Veterans Drive between the
church and the house at 4923 Veterans Drive, and the house itself,
including front and back yards, for a twenty-five minute interval
corresponding to the approximate time of the offense.
In a portion of the warrant affidavit explaining “Google Location
Services and Relevant Technology[,]” the affiant, Detective Jeffrey Loeb,
explained:
Google has developed an operating system for mobile
devices, including cellular phones, known as Android, that
has a proprietary operating system. Nearly every cellular
phone using the Android operating system has an
associated Google account, and users are prompted to add
a Google account when they first turn on a new Android
device. Based on my training and experience, I have
learned that Google collects and retains location data from
Android-enabled mobile devices when a Google account
user has enabled Google location services. Google can also
collect location data from non-Android devices if the device
is registered to a Google account and the user has location
services enabled. The company uses this information for
location-based advertising and location-based search
results. This location information is derived from GPS
data, cell site/cell tower information, and Wi-Fi access
points.

In a portion of the affidavit styled “Probable Cause Statement[,]” Loeb
next narrated the facts of the offense essentially as described above,
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concluding with the assertion that:
[i]t is likely that at least one of the four suspects who
committed this offense had an Android device on him
during the commission of this offense. It is common
practice that home invasion robbery suspects keep an open
line with someone outside of the residence while
committing this type of offense to keep an eye out for
responding police officers.

Loeb also averred that he was:
also familiar with Android based cellular devices reporting
detailed location information to Google where the
electronic data is then stored. This information is captured
and recorded even when the user is not doing any specific
action on the device. As a result, Affiant is requesting a list
of any Google devices in a geographic area around the
address of 4923 Veterans Drive, Dallas, Texas 75241 in
Dallas County, Texas to help identify the suspects in this
capital murder investigation.

The warrant affidavit concluded with a description of the three-step
process by which Google releases information in response to geofence
warrants, as depicted in the warrant itself and as described above.
C. Execution of the Warrant
The warrant was signed by a district court judge on December 7,
2018. 6 Pursuant to Step One of the procedure, as outlined in both the
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warrant and the warrant affidavit, Google identified three devices
within the geofence. Once the search was expanded via Step Two, Leob

As “Grounds for Issuance[,]” the warrant affidavit cited Articles
6

18.02(10) (evidentiary search warrants) and 18.02(13) (electronic customer
data held in electronic storage) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. TEX.
CODE CRIM. PROC. arts. 18.02(10), 18.02(13). Former Article 18.21, Section
5A(b), authorized only district court judges to issue the latter type of warrant.
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was able to determine that one of those three devices belonged to an
individual who was involved in the offense. Step Three revealed that
Appellant was that individual. From there, by separate warrants, Loeb
was able to obtain Appellant’s Google account information plus
additional cell phone records to confirm his presence at the crime scene.
D. In the Trial Court
Appellant filed a pretrial motion to suppress evidence obtained
pursuant to the geofence warrant. He argued that it constituted an
unconstitutional general warrant in that it failed to identify a particular
suspect and would thus only serve to invade the privacy of any number
of individuals who had nothing to do with the capital murder in this
case. 7 He also argued that the warrant affidavit lacked probable cause
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to believe any of the assailants were carrying a cell phone with a Google
account. 8 7F

7 At a hearing on the motion to suppress, counsel for Appellant argued:

The geofence warrant in this case did not identify [Appellant] in
any way. In fact, it did not identify anyone. Instead, the warrant
operated in reverse. It required Google to identify a large cache
of deeply private data and then allowed police the discretion to
sift through it and obtain private information from devices of
interest. * * * The process effectively filtered out the innocent
through increasing levels of searches. But such a process
illustrates that the searchers themselves knew that they were
searching the innocent merely because they walked or drove
through an area in which a crime was committed.

8 At the hearing, counsel for Appellant maintained:

[I]t is not enough to submit an affidavit stating that probable
cause exists for a geofence warrant because, given broad cell
phone useage [sic], it is likely the criminal suspect had a cell
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The State responded that, under the circumstances in this case,
the Initial Search Parameters were so narrow that “every single device
operating in th[e] area,” would have to have been possessed by “either a
suspect or a witness.” The prosecutor argued that the geofence warrant
was “specifically limited in order to maximize the possibility of returning
evidence of a crime and minimize the possibility of intrusion on innocent
people.” The trial court ultimately ruled that the warrant affidavit and
the warrant itself presented “sufficient particularity to be valid.”
E. In the Court of Appeals
After canvassing the limited authorities (mostly federal cases)
that have addressed geofence warrants, the court of appeals concluded:
The geofence warrant cases to date can generally be
divided into two categories—those in which the geofence
search warrant was found constitutionally infirm because
it was not sufficiently limited as to time and place so as to
restrict the executing officer’s discretion and minimize the
danger of searching uninvolved persons, and those in
which the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment
because it established probable cause to search every
person found within the geofence area.

Wells, 675 S.W.3d at 826−27. Because “the geofence warrant [in this
case] was as narrowly tailored as possible to capture only location data
for suspects and potential witnesses[,]” the court of appeals concluded
that “the warrant here falls into the second category” as identified in the
cases. Id.
Addressing Appellant’s argument that the warrant affidavit

phone. If this were the standard, a geofence warrant could issue
at almost any criminal investigation where a suspect is
unidentified.
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failed to establish probable cause to believe that any of the suspects were
carrying a device with enabled Google location services, the court of
appeals invoked the well-known ubiquity of cell phones in modern
society. Id. at 826. The court of appeals observed that, “[a]lthough it is
possible the suspects were not carrying cell phones with enabled Google
location services during the offense, probable cause is about ‘fair
probabilities,’ not near certainties.” Id. We agree.
III. APPLICABLE LAW
A. Probable Cause and Particularity
The Fourth Amendment provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall
issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

U.S. CONST. amend. IV. As the court of appeals did, Wells, 675 S.W.3d
at 827, we will assume (without deciding) that for law enforcement to
obtain Google cell phone location history data for a particular area at a
particular time constitutes a “search” within the parameters of the
Fourth Amendment. 9 8F

9 The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Fifth Circuit Court of

Appeals have recently disagreed on the question of whether the Government’s
acquisition of location history data by way of a geofence warrant constitutes a
“search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. Compare Chatrie, 107 F.4th at 332
(applying the third party doctrine to hold that it does not constitute a search),
with Smith, 110 F.4th at 836 (holding that the third party doctrine does not
apply to geofence warrants and concluding that “law enforcement in this case
did conduct a search when it sought Location History data from Google”);
Pierre Grosdidier, Courts Are Split: A Look at the Constitutionality of Geofence
Warrants, 87 TEX. B.J. 776 (Nov. 2024). The court of appeals in this case found
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The United States Supreme Court has said that, generally, when
law enforcement officers undertake a search for evidence of criminality,
before that search may be deemed “reasonable” under the Fourth
Amendment, they must first obtain a warrant. Carpenter v. United
States, 585 U.S. 296, 316 (2018). Here, a warrant was obtained. The
search pursuant to the geofence warrant was therefore reasonable so
long as the warrant affidavit supplied probable cause to justify the
search, and the warrant itself set out the place to be searched and the
things to be seized with sufficient particularity to avoid granting the
officers unguided discretion in conducting the search. Dalia v. United
States, 441 U.S. 238, 255 (1979); Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204,
220 (1981). See Bonds v. State, 403 S.W.3d 867, 874−75 (Tex. Crim. App.
2013) (listing “limiting the officer’s discretion and narrowing the scope

it unnecessary to address this question. Wells, 675 S.W.3d at 827. In Price v.
Superior Court of Riverside County, a case upon which the court of appeals
relied heavily, the intermediate California appellate court likewise “assumed
for purposes of discussion . . . that the search for location data and identifying
information, as authorized by the geofence warrant, constituted a ‘search’
within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” 93 Cal.App.5th at 37 n.9, 310
Cal.Rptr.3d at 541 n.9. We will too.
Judge Newell contends that the court of appeals in this case “erred” not
to reach the threshold question of whether there was even a search for Fourth
Amendment purposes. Concurring and Dissenting Opinion at 4 & n.5, 19. Even
if this Court were to find that the court of appeals erred in its probable cause
analysis, however, that would not mean it erred in failing to reach the
threshold “reasonable expectation of privacy” question. See Byrd v. United
States, 584 U.S. 395, 411 (2018) (“Because Fourth Amendment standing is
subsumed under substantive Fourth Amendment doctrine, it is not a
jurisdictional question and hence need not be addressed before addressing
other aspects of the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim.”); Jones, 2025 WL
676862, at *3 n.1. It would just mean that it would be necessary to remand the
case to that court, which is what Judge Newell advocates anyway. Concurring
and Dissenting Opinion at 19.
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of the search” and “minimizing the danger of searching the person or
property of an innocent bystander or property owner” as among the
objectives of the particularity requirement).
B. The Cases Addressing Geofence Warrants
Geofence warrants are a relatively new phenomenon, having only
come into use “since 2016[.]” Note, Geofence Warrants and the Fourth
Amendment, 134 HARV. L. REV. 2508, 2509−10 (May 2021). The few
cases so far that have addressed their legitimacy have tended to
emanate from lower federal courts and intermediate state appellate
courts. And, as the court of appeals observed, those cases “can generally
be divided into two categories[.]” Wells, 675 S.W.3d at 826−27.
Which category a given case falls into depends upon the size of
the area covered by the requested geofence, the length of time specified,
and the circumstances of the offense under investigation. Geofence
warrants that are confined, covering a relatively small space over a
relatively short time, in a remote or rural area, or at a time of day when
only the perpetrators of the offense or witnesses would be likely to be
present, have generally been found to pass constitutional muster. 10 But 9F

10 See, e.g., In re Search Warrant Application for Geofence Location Data

Stored at Google Concerning an Arson Investigation (“Arson”), 497 F.Supp.3d
345, 358 (N.D. Ill. 2020) (“Streets in the wee hours of the morning in the City
of Chicago are generally sparsely populated by pedestrians, and roads have
few cars traversing through them. Furthermore, the affiant has provided
additional information obtained through the investigation to support the
conclusion that location data from uninvolved individuals will be minimized.”);
In re Search of Information that is Stored at Premises Controlled by Google
LLC, 579 F.Supp.3d 62, 85−86 (D.D.C. 2021) (“[T]he geofence drawn here is
located in an industrial area, not a ‘congested urban area,’ and no residences
can be seen [within it, and] the target area is small and lightly trafficked
enough to render the search reasonable.”); In re Search of Information that is
Stored at Premises Controlled by Google, No. 2:22-mj-01325, 2023 WL 2236493,
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warrants that cover larger or more congested urban areas over a longer
span of time generally have not, since they are much more likely to

at *12 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 14, 2023) (“The timing of the request indicates narrow
tailoring to avoid collection of data at times when uninvolved devices, and the
people possessing them, would likely be within the polygon. * * * The polygon
itself is also narrowly tailored to ensure that Location History information,
with a fair probability, will capture evidence of the crimes only.”); Price, 93
Cal.App.5th at 43−44, 310 Cal.Rptr.3d at 546 (“The target location was limited
to the front yard . . . where the shooting occurred, and the street in front of the
house, for the length of two houses in each direction, where the two suspects
were seen fleeing after the shooting. * * * Additionally, because the warrant
sought first-stage location data after 10:00 p.m. in a suburban, residential
neighborhood, it was likely that any individuals traversing the geofence were
either suspects or witnesses to the shooting.”); Tomanek v. State, 261 Md.App.
694, 715, 314 A.3d 750, 762 (2024) (“[B]y limiting the search area to within a
100-meter radius of the main residence [of a rural homestead], the police
virtually ensured that any cell phone activity that met the [geofence] search’s
parameters would have had to come from within the property’s boundaries.
Given that the property was privately owned and included ‘no trespassing’
signs, and given that the property owner had claimed no family member had
been to the property between April 4 and April 11, 2020, the chance that the
search would result in any unauthorized or unnecessary invasion of privacy
was almost non-existent.”); State v. Contreras-Sanchez, 5 N.W.3d 151, 168
(Minn. Ct. App. 2024), rev. granted (May 29, 2024) (“The geofence did not
include any buildings at all. The closest residence was over 1,200 feet away.
And due to the remoteness of the area, the warrant’s inclusion of a scarcely
used road did not risk pulling in vast swaths of location-history data from
drivers who just happened to be passing through this rural area.”); Jones, 2025
WL 676862, at *7 (“[T]he time range matched the approximate time period
when the suspect was seen at and around the [murder] victim’s home, and the
geographic range was reasonably targeted to capture the suspect’s movements,
especially given that Google location history is not precise.”); see also, 2 Wayne
R. LaFave, SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH AMENDMENT §
4.6(d), at 35−37 (6th ed. 2020) (Supp. 2024) (discussing Arson and Price
approvingly); Mary D. Fan, Big Data Searches and the Future of Criminal
Procedure, 102 TEX. L. REV. 877, 886 (April 2024) (“[D]igital probable cause
and particularity can be established by a tightly framed . . . geofence warrant
likely only to net persons for whom there is probable cause to believe
perpetrated an unsolved crime.”).
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infringe upon a greater number of innocent, uninvolved bystanders. 11 10F

Indeed, the issue is often not so much whether there is probable cause
to believe the search will uncover evidence of the offense as it is whether
the warrant is “overbroad”—that is, whether the search it authorizes
outstrips the probable cause that justifies it by casting too wide a net

11 See, e.g., In re Search of Information Stored at Premises Controlled by

Google, 481 F.Supp.3d 730, 756 (N.D. Ill. 2020) (finding the geofence warrant
overbroad, while also observing: “It is also possible to imagine other
applications of geofence technology that might comport with Fourth
Amendment standards. Say, for example, that the government develops
information supporting probable cause to believe that its geofences will not
capture the information of uninvolved persons, such as a scenario in which the
government can establish independently that only the suspected offender(s)
would be found in the geofence, or where probable cause to commit an offense
could be found as to all present there.”); In re Search of Information that is
Stored at Premises Controlled by Google, LLC, 542 F.Supp.3d 1153, 1158 (D.
Kan. 2021) (“[T]he geofence boundary appears to potentially include the data
for cell phone users having nothing to do with the alleged criminal activity.
The boundary encompasses two public streets, so anyone driving their
automobile by the target location during the relevant time period could be
identified in the data. Google Maps also indicates that the subject building
contains another business, which the application does not address. * * * And
the nexus between the alleged criminal activity and [the] one-hour duration [of
the requested temporal scope of the search] is weak.”); People v. Meza, 90
Cal.App.5th 520, 312 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 18−19 (2023) (“The failure to sufficiently
narrow the search parameters potentially allowed a location-specific
identification of thousands of individuals . . . for whom no probable cause
existed. * * * The warrant here, authorizing the search of more than 20 acres
total over a cumulative period of more than five hours in residential and
commercial areas did not meet the fundamental threshold requirement [of
particularity].”); see also, In re Search of: Information Stored at Premises
Controlled by Google, as Further Described in Attachment A, No. 20 M 297,
2020 WL 5491763, at *7 (N.D. Ill. July 8, 2020) (finding the geofence warrant
overbroad, but observing that, “if the government had constrained the
geographic size of the geofence and limited the cellular telephone numbers for
which agents could seek additional information to those numbers that appear
in all three defined geofences, the government would have solved the issues of
overbreadth and lack of particularity”).
WELLS – 16

and thereby impacting an unacceptable number of people who cannot
possibly have any connection to the offense. 12 11F

IV. ANALYSIS
In this case, the geofence warrant affidavit supplied ample
probable cause to believe both that an offense had occurred and that
evidence of the identity of one or more of the perpetrators could be
discovered by searching the Google database. Moreover, the warrant
itself was framed narrowly enough that almost any device found to have
been present within its parameters would have belonged to one of the
perpetrators, or potentially to a witness who might identify the
perpetrators or testify about the offense, but not merely an innocent
bystander.
A. Probable Cause
1. An Offense Occurred . . .
Probable cause to support a search warrant is present when,
under the totality of circumstances, there is at least a “fair probability”
or “substantial chance” (it need not be “more likely than not”) that

12 E.g., Meza, 312 Cal.Rptr.5th at 16, 20 (observing that “the warrant in

this case sufficiently described the place to be searched (Google’s database of
users’ location history) and items to be retrieved from that search (designated
records for users to be found within the boundaries of certain coordinates at
certain times)[,]” while nevertheless concluding that the warrant lacked
particularity for failing to be structured so as to minimize the potential for
capturing location data for uninvolved individuals and maximize the potential
for capturing location data for suspects and witnesses); United States v.
Chatrie, 590 F.Supp.3d 901, 929−30 (E.D. Va. 2022) (“To be sure, a fair
probability may have existed that the Geofence Warrant would generate the
suspect’s location information. However, the warrant, on its face, also swept in
unrestricted location data for private citizens who had no reason to incur
Government scrutiny.”).
WELLS – 17

evidence of an offense will be found at the location that law enforcement
seeks to search. Flores v. State, 319 S.W.3d 697, 702 (Tex. Crim. App.
2010) (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238, 243 n.13 (1983)). 13 12F

There can be little doubt—and Appellant does not contest—that the
warrant affidavit established that an offense had occurred, namely, the
murder of Giddings. The question is whether there is probable cause—
at least a “fair probability” or “substantial chance”—that the thing to be
searched—the Google location history database—will contain evidence
of that offense. For the following reasons, we agree with the court of
appeals that the magistrate who signed off on the warrant affidavit had
a “substantial basis” to conclude that probable cause existed to believe
that Google’s location history database would reveal evidence of who
murdered Giddings (if it revealed any information at all). Id. (citing
Gates, 462 U.S. at 238).
2. . . . For Which Evidence of the Perpetrator’s Identity Could
be Found in Google’s Location History Database

Detective Loeb’s warrant affidavit established that Google’s
location history database could contain location information for a
substantial number of both Android devices as well as non-Android

13 Assuming that the warrant in this case was controlled by Article
18.01(c) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, because it is a so-called
“evidentiary” search warrant under Article 18.02(10), it could not have issued
absent probable cause as to three things: “(1) that a specific offense has been
committed, (2) that the specifically described property or items that are to be
searched for or seized constitute evidence of that offense or evidence that a
particular person committed that offense, and (3) that the property or items
constituting evidence to be searched for or seized are located at or on the
particular person, place, or thing to be searched.” TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. arts.
18.01(c), 18.02(10). For reasons we describe in the text, all three statutory
criteria are satisfied here.
WELLS – 18

devices that were registered to Google accounts with enabled location
services. Appellant argues, however, that probable cause requires a
specific showing that one of the assailants was indeed carrying a device
with enabled Google location services. Like the court of appeals, we
disagree that probable cause necessarily requires so much. Wells, 675
S.W.3d at 826.
Loeb’s affidavit claimed that “[i]t is likely that at least one of the
four suspects . . . had an Android device on him during the commission
of the offense,” since home-invasion-type offenses commonly involve
“someone outside of the residence . . . to keep an eye out for responding
police officers.” From this the magistrate could reasonably have inferred
a “fair probability” or “substantial chance” that the home invaders
carried cell phones to keep contact with an outside lookout.
Moreover, a magistrate is entitled to take it as well-established
fact that, in this day and age, almost everyone possesses a cell phone on
or about his person at practically any time of day or night—they are,
indeed, ubiquitous. See Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 311 (noting that people
“compulsively carry cell phones with them at all times”); Riley v.
California, 573 U.S. 373, 385 (2014) (noting that cell phones “are now
such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial
visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of
human anatomy”). “The core inquiry here is probability, not certainty,
and it is eminently reasonable to assume that criminals, like the rest of
society, possess and use cell phones to go about their daily business.” In
re Search of Information that is Stored at Premises Controlled by Google
WELLS – 19

LLC, 579 F.Supp.3d 62, 78 (D.D.C. 2021). 14 13F

In this case, the warrant-issuing magistrate had a “substantial
basis” to conclude that there was a “fair probability” (or “substantial
chance”) that at least one of the four assailants possessed a device that
Google could locate within the geofenced area. 15 This constitutes
14F

probable cause to believe that Google’s location history database would
contain evidence relevant to the identity of the person who killed
Giddings.

14 In State v. Baldwin, 664 S.W.3d 122, 123 (Tex. Crim. App. 2022), this

Court concluded that, in order to conduct a search of the content of a suspect’s
cell phone, law enforcement must be able to demonstrate probable cause in the
form of a “nexus” between the cell phone and the commission of the offense
itself. The Court later concluded that probable cause can be established that
the contents of a cell phone might contain evidence of a crime without
necessarily showing that the cell phone was directly used in the commission of
the offense. Stocker v. State, 693 S.W.3d 385, 388 (Tex. Crim. App. 2024). In
any event, in the instant case, mere possession of the cell phone at the time
and location of the offense may well be enough—never mind what is contained
in the cell phone—to constitute evidence of the identity of the perpetrator of,
or witnesses to, the offense.

15 One legal commentator has observed that, at least as of 2022:

[S]tatistics demonstrate a fair probability that Google will have
location data on the target of a geofence query. Eighty-five
percent of Americans own a smartphone, and Google enjoys a
40% domestic market share (compared to 60% for Apple). This
means that 34% of Americans own an Android smartphone while
51% own in iPhone. If Google has location data on almost all
Android users (30%) and half of iPhone users (25%), then Google
has location information on 55% of Americans, meeting the
preponderance standard, and thus by definition satisfying the
lower probable cause test.

Reed Sawyers, For Geofences: An Originalist Approach to the Fourth
Amendment, 29 GEO. MASON L. REV. 787, 807−08 (2022) (internal footnotes
omitted).
WELLS – 20

B. Particularity
We also agree that the geofence warrant in this case provided
sufficient particularity with respect to both the “place to be searched”
and the “things to be seized.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. The “place”
designated by the warrant to be searched, which was directed to “Google
LLC,” was wherever Google stores its “[r]ecords pertaining to GPS, WiFi
or Bluetooth sourced location history data[.]” The “thing to be seized”
was the “location history data generated from devices that reported a
location within the geographical region bounded by the following
latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, dates and times (“Initial
Search Parameters”) and Identifying information for Google Accounts
associated with the responsive location history data[.]”
The warrant then identified the specific latitudinal and
longitudinal coordinates, narrowly drawn to include no more than a part
of the church, the appurtenant church grounds where the assailants
waited, the street they rushed across, the front yard of the house where
Dickerson was shot, and the house itself, in which Giddings was killed.
It also gave a specific date—the date of the murder—as well as the 25-
minute window of time during which the offense took place. This degree
of specificity appropriately circumscribed police discretion, limiting the
information they could obtain from the location history database to that
which was relevant to identifying whoever was present at the specific
time and place of the offense itself.
Moreover, the “Initial Search Parameters” were sufficiently
tailored in terms of time and place as to minimize the potential for
infringing on the privacy rights of persons who could not reasonably be
WELLS – 21

regarded as either suspects or witnesses to the offense. The area to be
searched was small and restricted to the places where police knew that
the unidentified suspects were located: a part of the church grounds,
where the suspects hid in waiting for Giddings to arrive home; the street
between the church and the home, which the suspects rushed across;
and the front yard and interior of the house itself, where the assaults on
Dickerson and Giddings took place. These were not high traffic areas—
especially not during the brief period of time in the middle of the night
when the offense occurred. 16 It was not at all likely that the geofence in
15F

this case would have identified many innocent bystanders or passersby
who would not have been relevant to the investigation.
Indeed, the “Initial Search Parameters” were so narrow in this
case as to allay any concern about Steps Two and Three of the warrant
process, as described in both the warrant and the warrant affidavit.
Appellant argues that, even if there was probable cause to support Step
One of the processes authorized by the geofence warrant in this case,
police should have been required to involve the magistrate in deciding
which devices identified by Step One merited additional disclosure from
the location history database, via Steps Two and Three. Otherwise,
Appellant asserts, the warrant allowed police improper unilateral

16 The geofence polygon also embraced part of the interior of the church,

and the back yard to the house—places the police would have no reason to
believe the suspects had gone. But there is no reason to believe uninvolved
persons would have been found in those two places either, at least not between
2:45 and 3:10 o’clock in the morning—even, as here, on a Sunday morning.
Moreover, anyone who may, for whatever reason, have been present at those
locations at that time would likely at least have heard gunshots, and therefore
would at least have been potential witnesses to the offense.
WELLS – 22

discretion to determine whether there is probable cause to justify that
additional disclosure, contrary to Fourth Amendment principles.
But while some geofence warrants may be so broad in scope at
Step One as to call for additional involvement by a magistrate at the
later stages, we do not believe that to be the case here. The Initial Search
Parameters in this case were sufficiently narrow as to provide probable
cause, under the circumstances, to believe that whichever devices were
revealed to have been present at the narrowly circumscribed place and
time captured by the geofence polygon would almost certainly have
belonged to legitimate suspects, or potential witnesses, so that any
additional disclosure of information via Steps Two and Three would be
justified by the same probable cause that supported Step One. See Price
v. Superior Court of Riverside County, 93 Cal.App.5th 13, 44−45, 310
Cal.Rptr.3d 520, 546−47 (2023) (concluding that, when the warrant
affidavit supplied probable cause “to seize all location data and
identifying information for all devices traversing the geofence[,]”
additional disclosure in Step Two did not improperly vest police with
unguided discretion). On the specific facts of this case, we do not deem
the geofence search warrant to have been so lacking in particularity as
to require an additional magisterial imprimatur in the later stages of its
execution.
V. CONCLUSION
Assuming that the Fourth Amendment generally requires police
to obtain a search warrant for corporate-held location history data, we
conclude that the geofence warrant in this case was supported by
probable cause and that it satisfied the particularity requirement of the
WELLS – 23

Fourth Amendment. The judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed. 17 16F

FILED: April 2, 2025
PUBLISH

17 We also granted a second ground for review in this case: “[w]hether

the Court of Appeals correctly determined the reliability of Google data[.]” But
we now dismiss that ground as improvidently granted.
.