Ars Technica reports about a case in Missouri that may have been dropped to law enforcement's use of Stingray:
A woman accused of being a getaway driver in a series of robberies in St. Louis has changed her plea from guilty to not guilty after finding out that a stingray was used in her case.
Wilqueda Lillard was originally set to testify against her three other co-defendants, whose charges were also dropped earlier this month. As a result of changing her plea, the local prosecutor dropped the charges against her on Monday.
Terence Niehoff, Lillard’s attorney, explained to Ars that she pleaded guilty before learning about the use of the stingray. When her co-defendants’ attorneys challenged a police detective during a deposition, and that officer refused to provide further information, the case was eventually dropped.
However, Lauren Trager, the spokeswoman for the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office denied to Ars that the dropping was related:
I am unable to provide the information you requested. Despite the opinion of the defense attorney in this matter, the dismissal of the cases was not related in any way to any technology used in the investigation."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tathra on Friday May 01 2015, @09:16PM
regardless of whether or not they have a warrant, the very use of a stingray to search and seize whats authorized by a warrant is unconstitutional because the only way it can be used to collect "everything", and warrants which are overbroad are unconstitutional, with a recent precedent [jones-mayer.com] saying that as well. because of the way it functions, no warrant can legally authorize the use of a stingray, and using them at all is nothing less than a fishing expedition, to which the courts have formally said:
Fourth Amendment does not authorize the issuance of warrants to conduct fishing expeditions to find evidence that could assist officers in prosecuting suspects.
which similarly means that fishing expeditions without warrants (like all stingray usage) are also not authorized.