A Clay County Judge at Liberty is preparing to hear arguments later this week about evidence in the perplexing disappearance of a Northland woman more than three years ago.
Kansas City Police presume Renee Pernice was murdered, her body never found. Her husband is about to go on trial the end of this month.
Without revealing finer points of evidence against Shon Perice, documents filed by the defense show that police had attached some kind of GPS tracking device on the vehicle he drove in January 2009.
The defense wants any information obtained against Pernice via the tracker thrown out as inadmissible.
The argument may not have been germane when Renee Pernice vanished and police were investigating her husband, but it might be now. The U.S. Supreme Court has limited use of GPS in following people.
The question will be, how retroactive is the time limit? At a court hearing Friday, Pernice’s lawyer is expected to ask for an accounting of evidence that derives from his surveillance.
Search teams of police, police recruits, volunteers and friends and family of the missing woman spent days examining woods and creeks near where she lived. Investigators claim to have evidence the 35-year-old woman was murdered. They have never revealed the scope of it.
Neither defense nor prosecution has spoken publicly of merits of their respective cases.