"Cops in the Garden State are not free to do as they please," the State's highest court has once again unanimously declared, in a decision released today which tosses a five-year term of incarceration as the search was warrantless.
The case involves Borough of Highlands police officers who responded on July 27, 2019 to a report that Anthony Miranda had threatened and assaulted a woman whom he had been dating for several years.
The woman told the officers that Miranda stored weapons in a black bag in a closet in the trailer where they lived. A judge issued a warrant to search the trailer for the weapons. After arresting Miranda, an officer searched the trailer, but found no weapons.
The woman and her adult daughter then informed the officer that Miranda stored some of his belongings in a nearby storage trailer and that they also kept property in the storage trailer.
The officer asked the woman “do you keep your stuff in there also?” She answered affirmatively. Her daughter then said something "about them having property in an abandoned trailer that they share” and “a Jeep on the property that they had access to.”
The officer used this as a basis to mean that she had authority to consent to a search of the storage trailer.
The officer conducted a warrantless search of the storage trailer, found and opened the bag containing the weapons, and seized the weapons.
A grand jury indicted Miranda for terroristic threats, receiving stolen property, and certain persons not to have weapons.
Miranda moved to suppress the weapons found in the black bag in the storage trailer.
Over a two-day suppression hearing held by the trial court, the State contended that the woman had apparent authority to consent to the officer's search of the storage trailer and that she consented to that search. It also asserted that the doctrines of community caretaking and exigent circumstances justified the search because of the threat to public safety posed by the weapons.
An exigency is something that requires immediate attention; for instances, preventing the destruction of evidence, or preventing the escape of a fleeing felon, or preventing harm to somebody.
Miranda argued that the only constitutional search conducted by the officer in this matter was the search of the residential trailer. He asserted that the woman had no apparent authority to consent to any search in the storage trailer, and that the officer had ample time to contact a judge and secure an additional warrant for that trailer.
The trial court denied the motion to suppress, concluding that the woman had consented to the search of the storage trailer and the seizure of the weapons found in the black bag in that trailer. It found insufficient evidence to determine whether the woman had actual authority over that trailer. The trial court concluded, however, that the woman had apparent authority to consent to a search of the storage trailer, given her and her daughter’s statements to the office that they kept property in that trailer and the fact that the door was unlocked when the officer approached the trailer.
The court also found that the black bag containing the weapons was in plain view. Although the trial court acknowledged that the parties disputed the question of exigent circumstances, it did not specifically address whether an exception to the warrant requirement applied to the officer's search of the bag and did not consider the State’s reliance on the community caretaking and exigent-circumstances exceptions to the warrant requirement.
Pursuant to a plea agreement, Miranda pled guilty to the amended charge of second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon, but reserved his right to file an appeal. The remaining charges were dismissed. In accordance with the plea agreement, the trial court sentenced Miranda to a five-year term of incarceration with a forty-two-month period of parole ineligibility.
Subsequently, Miranda appealed the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress. He argued that even if the officer's search of the storage trailer was justified by her apparent authority to consent to that search, the search of the black bag stored in that trailer and his seizure of the weapons in that bag were nonetheless unlawful. The State countered that the officer's search of the bag was warranted by the exigent circumstances that he encountered when he conducted the search, citing Miranda's alleged threats against the woman and her children, as well as the possibility that as one of only two officers on duty in a shore town on a summer weekend, might have been summoned away from the search for the weapons to address another emergency.
The Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s judgment. Noting the deferential standard governing its review of the trial court’s factual findings, the appellate court found significant the assurance of the woman and her children that they stored belongings in the storage trailer; the fact that the trailer and its contents were not secured; and the black bag’s location in the trailer, visible to anyone who entered. The Appellate Division accordingly affirmed the trial court’s determination that the officer's search of the storage trailer was constitutional.
The appellate court stated that it was not obligated to consider the specific search of the black bag because Miranda had not challenged that search before the trial court. It briefly addressed that search, however, concluding that the woman's apparent authority to consent to the search of the storage trailer extended to the black bag found in that trailer.
Thereafter, the case made its way to the Supreme Court.
Miranda argued that the woman did not have apparent authority to consent to the search of the trailer and that, even if she did, that authority did not extend to the black bag containing the weapons. He asserted that no exigent circumstances justified the search of the black bag or the weapons in that bag.
The State argued that the information available to the officer at the time of the search of the trailer indicated that the woman had apparent authority to consent to the search of the storage trailer. The State does not assert that defendant waived his argument that the search of the black bag must be separately analyzed, or rely on the community caretaking doctrine. Instead, the State maintained that the search of the black bag and the seizure of the weapons were justified by the exigency exception to the warrant requirement.
The Supreme Court agreed that the record is sufficient to show that the woman did have apparent authority to consent to the search of the storage trailer.
However, while her consent cleared the way for officers to search those additional places that the couple both used, Justice Patterson wrote, her consent did not empower officers to search Miranda’s closed drawstring bag that was inside a storage trailer.
Given the unrebutted evidence in the record that the closed black bag found in the storage trailer was exclusively the property of defendant, the State does not contend that the woman had apparent authority to consent to the search or seizure of that bag. Prosecutors had argued that officers could open and search the bag because the domestic violence allegations and firearms created exigent circumstances. State law allows warrantless searches in exigent circumstances, including if a suspect is likely to flee, hurt someone, or destroy evidence and if police are in “hot pursuit” of a suspect.
However, Justice Patterson wrote that none of those circumstances existed in Miranda’s case because he was under arrest and heading to county jail.
“He was therefore not in a position to retrieve, use, or conceal the weapons pending the issuance of a warrant, and there is no evidence in the record that he could have secured the assistance of a third party who had a key to the storage trailer,” Patterson wrote.
While items “in plain view” also are an exception to the warrant requirement, Patterson wrote, the guns in question were in a bag and not in plain view.
Justice Patterson cited the 2008 case known as State v. Johnson, in which the Supreme Court identified a non-exclusive set of factors to be considered in the court’s inquiry as to whether the exigent-circumstances exception can be justified:
These include:
2) the urgency of the situation faced by the officers,
4) the threat that evidence would be destroyed or lost or people would be endangered unless immediate action was taken,
5) information that the suspect was armed and posed an imminent danger,
Addressing the second factor -- the urgency of the situation faced by the officers -- the State argues that 1) the officer faced urgent circumstances because defendant might have retrieved the weapons in the bag had the officers taken the time to secure a search warrant, thus endangering the woman, her family, and others; and 2) the officer was one of only two officers of the Department available to handle emergencies in a busy shore community on a July weekend.
Neither contention is persuasive. When the officer entered the storage trailer, however, Miranda was under arrest and detained at the Police Department for processing pending his transfer to county jail. There was no realistic basis for concern that if the officer paused to contact a judge and requested a warrant, defendant would be in a position to retrieve his weapons from the storage trailer pending the judge’s issuance of that warrant.
Additionally, although it is possible, given the police department’s minimal staffing on the day of the search, that the officer could have been called away for an emergency while he waited for a warrant, he could have ensured that the storage trailer was locked during his absence and returned after a warrant was issued to seize the weapons.
The fourth factor -- the threat that evidence would be destroyed or lost or people would be endangered unless immediate action was taken -- does not support a finding of exigent circumstances. Again, Miranda was under arrest and would shortly be incarcerated. He was therefore not in a position to retrieve, use, or conceal the weapons pending the issuance of a warrant, and there is no evidence in the record that he could have secured the assistance of a third party who had a key to the storage trailer.
The fifth factor -- information that the suspect was armed and posed an imminent danger -- similarly weighs against a finding of exigency. The officer had no information indicating that defendant was armed and dangerous; to the contrary, he knew that Miranda was unarmed and in custody and would not be immediately released.
"Weighing those factors, we conclude that the State did not prove its claim that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless search of the black bag and the seizure of the weapons. With Miranda under arrest, the officer had the opportunity to apply for and secure a warrant to search the bag and seize the weapons within it. The circumstances facing the officer were not so urgent as to obviate the need to obtain a warrant.
"Accordingly, we do not concur with the Appellate Division that the State met its burden to justify the search of the black bag and the seizure of the weapons by an exception to the warrant requirement. Defendant’s motion to suppress the weapons seized through that unlawful search should therefore have been granted. Because those weapons constituted the central evidence against defendant on the charge of unlawful possession of a weapon, defendant’s conviction must be vacated," the Court concluded.
Today's ruling is at least the third in which the State's highest court underscored the rights of people subjected to warrantless searches.
As previously reported here on FAA News, back in March 2023, the court decreed that police stopping motorists to investigate crimes cannot search their cars without a warrant unless the circumstances that sparked their suspicion were “unforeseeable and spontaneous.”
Additionally, in January 2022, the court ruled that police who arrest people outside their homes can’t then enter and search their homes without a warrant unless there’s a clear potential of life-threatening danger to officers on the scene.
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