GPS errors almost cost a man 15 years in prison.

Last week the Florida District Court of Appeals vacated the sentence of a man who was convicted of violating his probation because his driving logs didn’t match his GPS tracking.

In Laing v. Florida, the defendant appealed his conviction and sentence for violating probation by allegedly falsifying his driving logs and allegedly lying to his PO about it. He was sentenced to 180 months for the violation.

At trial, he testified that his driving logs were 100% accurate, but his PO testified that although she had no personal knowledge where he was, his 3M GPS monitoring device which was supposed to track his location and movements said he was elsewhere. She testified that, “When she reviewed Laing’s driving logs, she learned that none of Laing’s entries matched the reported 3M GPS data.”

Thank God he appealed or he would be spending the next decade and a half behind bars!!!

The appellate court ruled: “The only evidence tending to prove that Laing violated his probation by falsely reporting his driving logs was the testimony of Officer Ciuzio. Officer Ciuzio did not have personal knowledge of Laing’s whereabouts that contradicted the locations reported in the driving logs. On the critical issue of whether Laing was accurately logging and reporting his driving and destinations, Ciuzio could only repeat to the court the information that she obtained from the 3M electronic monitoring system. The 3M GPS data were offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, namely that Laing was at the specific GPS locations reported by 3M at particular times on particular dates. This is definitive hearsay.”

There are some incredibly important lessons to learn from this near disaster.

(1) Technology is imperfect and can fail or be inaccurate.

(2) GPS reports are hearsay and cannot be used to convict someone for a probation revocation. In the court’s own words, “Without the hearsay evidence, namely the 3M GPS data, there is no proof that Laing falsified his driving logs. A probation revocation cannot be based solely on hearsay. See, e.g., Arndt v. State, 815 So. 2d 674, 675 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002) (holding that hearsay alone was insufficient to support a revocation of probation).”

(3) Fight back! We unfortunately are caught up in a flawed and corrupt system. If you’ve done nothing wrong, fight it. If the prosecutor tries to railroad you by saying, “if you don’t take this plea, we’ll do…”, don’t acquiesce to the extortion. You’re on the sex offender registry for life – nothing much to lose and at least if you did nothing wrong, you have a chance. If you bend over you have no chance!

As a side note, the FAC recently received the State’s contracts with 3M and all GPS vendors and will be reporting shortly on how many millions of dollars taxpayers are eating as a result of this flawed scheme.