Wells v. State
Texas’s highest criminal court affirmed a conviction involving a narrowly drawn Google geofence warrant, but the judges did not produce a majority rationale governing the warrant’s constitutionality.
Executive Summary
Wells offers extensive competing analysis of geofence warrants, but it must be cited with exceptional care. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment below without a five-judge majority agreeing on a constitutional rationale.
The warrant directed Google to identify devices within a small polygon covering a murder scene, part of the church and parking lot across the street, and a short segment of roadway for a 25-minute period. Google initially returned three devices. A staged process ultimately identified a device associated with Aaron Rayshan Wells, and later warrants helped connect him to the capital murder.
Judge Yeary’s opinion, joined by three other judges, concluded that the warrant was supported by probable cause and was sufficiently particular. Judge Finley, joined by Judge Parker, also reasoned that Wells lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in location information he voluntarily shared with Google. Judge Newell, joined by two judges, rejected the probable-cause rationale, accepted the first two stages on narrower privacy grounds, and identified a privacy concern with six months of IP history described at the third stage. Another judge dissented without opinion.
The affirmed judgment is real; a majority constitutional rationale is not. Do not describe Wells simply as “the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held geofence warrants constitutional.” Any discussion must identify the fractured alignment and distinguish the court’s judgment from the reasoning of individual opinions.
The Investigation
On June 24, 2018, four masked and armed men waited near Carver Heights Baptist Church across from Jimmy Giddings’s Dallas home. At about 3:00 a.m., they rushed Giddings and his girlfriend, Nikita Dickerson. Dickerson was shot five times but survived. Giddings was shot in the neck during the home invasion and died.
Security cameras documented the men near the church before and after the offense and provided a reliable event timeline. Police did not yet know their identities, so investigators sought Google location-history records for devices reported inside a defined area during the offense.
Wells was later convicted of capital murder committed during a robbery. Because the State did not seek death, the sentence was life without parole.
The Geofence Warrant
The warrant, signed December 7, 2018, directed Google to disclose GPS-, Wi-Fi-, or Bluetooth-sourced Location History information for devices within an expressly defined polygon. Both the affidavit and warrant incorporated geographic coordinates and a graphic depiction.
The polygon covered the victim’s home and yards, a small portion of Veterans Drive, and part of the church and parking lot used by the assailants. The time window ran from 2:45 to 3:10 a.m.—25 minutes corresponding to the recorded offense.
The affidavit explained Google’s collection of location information from Android devices and other devices registered to Google accounts when location services were enabled. It asserted that at least one of four home-invasion suspects likely carried an Android device and that such offenders commonly maintain contact with an outside lookout.
The State argued that the physical and temporal limits made it likely that every responsive device would belong to a perpetrator or witness rather than an unrelated bystander.
The Three-Step Execution
- Step One: Google searched for anonymized device identifiers reporting within the polygon during the 25-minute window. Three devices were responsive.
- Step Two: the location history for responsive devices was expanded sufficiently to evaluate whether their movements were relevant. Investigators determined that one device was associated with a participant.
- Step Three: identifying information connected that device to Wells. The warrant language also referenced six months of IP-address history, a feature that became important in Judge Newell’s separate opinion.
Police then obtained separate warrants for Wells’s Google account information and additional cellphone records. Those records confirmed his presence and helped investigators identify the other alleged participants.
The warrant’s narrow opening stage was central to the opinions defending the search. Later-stage requests should remain limited to information necessary to identify relevant devices; expansive historical information requires a separate, fact-specific justification.
The Court’s Fractured Result
Eight judges participated. Four joined Judge Yeary’s probable-cause and particularity analysis. Five judges expressed some form of agreement that the first two stages did not invade a reasonable expectation of privacy, but they did not share a single rationale. Four judges rejected or necessarily disagreed with the conclusion that probable cause supported the full warrant.
The judgment of the Dallas Court of Appeals was affirmed, leaving Wells’s conviction intact. But Texas law distinguishes an affirmed judgment from a precedential majority opinion. A fractured decision supplies binding reasoning only when a majority’s common, narrow ground can be reliably identified.
On rehearing, Judge Newell wrote that no coherent majority rule could be extracted from the opinions. His rehearing statement is itself a separate opinion, but it accurately highlights the principal citation hazard: the competing writings do not establish a clean statewide rule approving the full three-step warrant.
What the Separate Opinions Said
Judge Yeary: probable cause and particularity
Judge Yeary’s four-judge opinion assumed without deciding that obtaining the location-history data was a Fourth Amendment search. It concluded that the affidavit established a fair probability that at least one of the four perpetrators carried a device reporting to Google. The crime type, possible lookout communications, number of offenders, and ubiquity of cellphones supported that inference.
It also concluded that the warrant particularly described the Google database records, coordinates, and timeframe. The limited polygon and 25-minute interval made it likely that responsive devices belonged to offenders or witnesses, minimizing exposure of uninvolved people.
This is not a majority opinion. Four participating judges joined this probable-cause analysis, while four did not.
Judge Finley: no reasonable expectation of privacy
Judge Finley reasoned that Wells had voluntarily enabled Google Location History, accepted disclosures concerning collection and sharing, and retained the ability to disable or delete it. In his view, the third-party doctrine meant that obtaining this information did not invade a reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore did not require a warrant.
Judge Newell: limited privacy rationale, no probable cause
Judge Newell, joined by two judges, would uphold the first two steps because their brief, geographically confined identifying information did not implicate a reasonable expectation of privacy. He nevertheless rejected the affidavit’s probable-cause showing as boilerplate lacking facts that connected any particular device or Google’s database to the offense.
He treated the third stage differently because it described six months of IP-address history. That information could reveal an extensive record of online activity and the “privacies of life.” He would have remanded for analysis of that stage, any resulting evidence, and fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree questions.
Judge McClure: dissent without opinion
Judge McClure dissented, but did not supply a written rationale. Presiding Judge Schenck did not participate.
Rehearing and the Controlling Takeaway
The court denied rehearing on June 18, 2025. The reported rehearing decision is Wells v. State, 721 S.W.3d 260 (Tex. Crim. App. 2025).
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment in a case involving a narrowly designed geofence warrant. The participating judges did not agree on a majority rationale resolving probable cause, particularity, or the expectation-of-privacy question for the complete warrant.
The intermediate appellate opinion, 675 S.W.3d 814 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2023), had upheld the warrant on probable-cause and particularity grounds and alternatively found objectively reasonable reliance. Practitioners should specify which level and which opinion they are citing.
What Wells Does—and Does Not—Establish
- The case does not create a majority rule that all geofence warrants are constitutional.
- The affirmance involved a small, evidence-based polygon and a 25-minute window around a violent offense at approximately 3:00 a.m.
- Judge Yeary’s four-judge probable-cause analysis is not a majority holding.
- The judges who accepted a privacy rationale did not agree on its complete scope or reasoning.
- The third-stage reference to six months of IP history raised a materially different privacy question from the initial location query.
- The number of responsive devices—three—does not itself prove the warrant was valid when issued.
- Google’s architecture and Location History practices have changed; current applications must accurately describe the data source and retrieval process that exists when the warrant is sought.
- Federal precedent, including Fifth Circuit authority, may govern a different proceeding even when the investigation occurs in Texas.
Agency Guidance
Primary Sources and Further Reading
This monograph is provided for training and general informational purposes. It is not legal advice and does not replace review of the complete opinion, current statutes, controlling federal and state authority, provider requirements, agency policy, technical documentation, or consultation with prosecutors and agency counsel.
© 2026 Shield Public Safety Training. All rights reserved. Reviewed September 3, 2026.