ALFORD: A serious wreck occurred a mile or two west of Alford Friday evening, when the local passenger train had just left on its westward run. While running at a good rate of speed the passenger engine struck a freight engine attached to a long train of freights standing on a siding. The impression is that the engineer of the freight thought he was clear of the main track, but in the heavy fog the freight locomotive really stood in the path of the oncoming train. The freight engine was struck midway between cab and tender and the force of the collision threw the passenger engine, baggage car and smoker off the rails. Both engines were badly damaged and had to be sent to the repair shops, while the tracks were torn up and traffic delayed until morning. Luckily no one was hurt, the passengers in the smoker being hurled over seats and bruised some, and the baggagemaster sustained slight injuries from falling baggage. In the meantime, the postoffice was robbed, being located in Postmaster J. M. Decker’s general store, by two men, taking advantage of the confusion to cover their work. The burglars, having followed the main track towards the wreck, and fearing detection as they neared parties returning from the wreck, had thrown a bundle of stolen goods, wrapped in a white oilcloth, to one side of the track. Knowing that the burglars had gone up the track, which runs parallel for some distance with the Montrose branch, a party of men started in hot pursuit. They encountered many suspicious characters but when two men started on a run away from them, they knew they had detected the guilty parties. They dashed downhill and into an icy stream and one made it to safety and the other gave up. The prisoner was delivered to Sheriff Conklin and pleaded guilty to the charges proffered. He will probably be sentenced by Judge Little next week. The other thief has not been found.

KINGSLEY: On Friday last the Kingsley Book Club met at the home of Mrs. A. J. Masters, surprising her and presenting baby Maxine with a silver birth spoon, thus making her the fourth baby honorary member of the club. The other juvenile members are Dorothy Tiffany, Ray Wilmarth and Beatrice Miller.

GELATT: Harry Potter has been running the creamery during Mr. Miner’s absence.

RUSHVILLE: N. R. Jones had ten sheep killed and wounded by dogs on his farm at Rushville. Investigation shows that the dog tax fund, available for damages through loss of sheep by dogs, is depleted, and claims presented now will probably not be paid for three or four years. Mr. Jones met a similar loss a few years ago. He believes there should be fewer sheep-killing dogs or an increased dog tax.

LAWSVILLE: The Indian Medicine Co. is in town.

HERRICK CENTER: Sheriff-elect and Mrs. B. T. Reynolds were visitors in Montrose the first of the week, returning here Wednesday. Mr. Reynolds is preparing to sell his property preparatory to spending the next four years in the Montrose jail.

BROOKLYN: J. J. Austin’s son, Boyd Austin, has lately purchased the H. A. McKinney meat market and had his opening day Saturday. He plans to conduct an up-to-date meat market and will be pleased to receive the patronage of his friends. ALSO, O. M. Doloway is having modern lights placed in his home by Binghamton parties.

FOREST CITY: McCann Bros. and J. F. Wellbrock, who recently purchased the Hotel American, in Carbondale, for $38,000, took possession yesterday. Both of Carbondale’s leading hotels will not be under the management of former Forest City people.

SUSQUEHANNA: Lewis White, a Susquehanna boy, was shot by an unknown hunter on Saturday while out gunning. The boy heard the shot as he was about to enter the woods at the end of Jackson avenue, Susquehanna, and accompanying the report the shot tore into his thigh. There was no one in sight and the supposition is that he was accidentally shot by a careless hunter. Dr. Birdsall removed the lead pellets and it is likely the boy will recover. ALSO, we are sorry to lose so many of our good townspeople, some of whom are taking positions in Tennessee.

COLUMBIA COUNTY: In Columbia Co. the voters elected a dead man to the office of register of wills. The successful candidate, Clyde Fritz, died two days before the election. The governor will be called upon to fill the vacancy. In Susquehanna Co. the uncertainty of life was shown in the fact that three candidates for local offices died between the primaries and election, their names, however, being withdrawn from the ballot following their deaths

MONTROSE: Miss Fannie L. Read intends leaving for Gilbert, a small town in the West Virginia mountains, where she will do missionary work among the mountaineers. Miss Read will work under the Southern Presbyterian Board of Home Missions.

WEST BRIDGEWATER: The Griffis brothers have sold their farms, some 600 acres of land known as the Griffis homesteads, to Percy Ballantine, of South Montrose.

THOMPSON: Thursday last, as C. D. Washburn started from the Erie station with a load of household goods, his team became frightened and ran against the depot and down Main street to the cemetery, where one horse jumped the iron fence and could go no further. No serious damage was done, one horse being slightly injured. The driver kept hold of the reins and the wagons and furniture were uninjured.

JACKSON: A “calico carnival” was held here on Friday evening. The proceeds were for the benefit of the M. E. church.

ARARAT: Two prominent men, after a day’s stroll here, came down on the last train. They were so imbued with the sights that they beheld here, they did not know their home town and they were passed on by the conductor until they were beyond Uniondale, their home. When the conductor noticed the passengers aboard, he stopped the train and the passengers walked back.

UNIONDALE: Frank Corey reports having seen a deer near Stillwater a few days ago. It went in the direction of Cotterel pond. ALSO, Ira Carpenter is on a ten days’ furlough and is stopping with relatives here. Ira joined the regular army and has over 14 years to his credit. He is stationed at Sandy Hook, N.Y.

The United States Supreme Court recently held arguments on an interesting case - the use of GPS equipment to surreptitiously track suspects. In the case, law enforcement placed a GPS tracking device on the motor vehicle belonging to Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner in Washington, D.C., whom was a suspect in a drug trafficking investigation. Through the use of the GPS, law enforcement was able to track all of Jones’ movements with his motor vehicle, including his frequent trips to a residence in Maryland, which turned out to be a stash house, i.e., the place were Mr. Jones kept his drugs that he distributed.

There is no prohibition against the police tailing a suspect in public places as the suspect’s expectation to privacy was never violated. In other words, you do not have an expectation of privacy when you are driving around on public streets. Justice Scalia pressed the defense attorney on this very issue - asking that if a police tail for 1 day was constitutionally permissible, then why a GPS tracking for 100 days unconstitutional. The defense attorney fell back to the privacy interest that was implicated when the police surreptitiously attached something to a private citizen’s car. The defense attorney argued that this violated a private citizen’s private property rights and the expectation to privacy attendant to his motor vehicle.

The defense attorney was forced to concede that a 24-hour a day police tail would be permissible under the constitution - but the use of technology to accomplish the same thing was impermissible because of the “possessory interest” that a citizen has in his motor vehicle. In other words, if the police wanted to dedicate the personnel and overtime to a constant, physical tail, the constitution permitted it. But the use of a cheap and effective piece of technology affixed to the car crossed the line and violated the defendant’s privacy rights.

Justice Breyer retorted at one point that he had concerns that the use of such GPS surveillance had the feel of the totalitarian world depicted in George Orwell’s classic novel, “1984.” On the other hand, the justices noted that there was no constitutional prohibition that prevented the police from using strategically placed video cameras through an urban area to track the movements of suspected vehicles. When pressed on the use of such video, the defense attorney conceded that a “few” cameras would not implicate any privacy interests, but that a GPS was the equivalent of “millions” of cameras that tracked the defendant’s movement - and that crossed into an unreasonable intrusion into the defendant’s privacy interests.

In response to the “million” camera argument made by defense counsel, Justice Sotomayer reportedly threw up her hands and responded: “What an unworkable rule tethered to no principle. A thousand video cameras may or may not be okay, depending on how large the city is?” I could not imagine being the defense attorney at that moment. To have a United States Supreme Court Justice exclaim in open disgust that your argument was “an unworkable rule tethered to no principal” would be utterly humiliating. In the real world lingo, Justice Sotomayer essentially told the defense attorney he was “full of it.”

The Supreme Court has been struggling with weighing privacy interests against the advancing technological world that provides law enforcement with powerful tools to track and monitor individuals. Most recently, Justice Scalia authored an opinion that noted that the use of infrared cameras to sense marijuana-growing operations was unconstitutional as it resulted in a search of the inside of the residence, even though law enforcement remained outside the residence itself. This case provides another opportunity for the justices to take a look at the old case law that allows the police to personally track a suspect and weigh it against advanced technology that provides an easier, cheaper and more effective means of tracking suspects through GPS devices.

While I rarely agree with Justice Breyer, there does seem to be something Orwellian about surreptitious tracking of suspects without any judicial authorization. On the other hand, the legal experts seem to think that the Supreme Court will likely determine that it is constitutionally permissible - and then let the legislatures decide to what extent law enforcement can utilize GPS technology.

Please submit any questions, concerns, or comments to Susquehanna County District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 218, Montrose, Pennsylvania 18801 or at our website www.SusquehannaCounty-DA.org or discuss this and all articles at http://dadesk.blogspot.com/.