A case involving a suspect dubbed “Killer” put New Jersey’s protections of motorists’ privacy to the test, but the state’s supreme court has maintained that police must get a warrant before searching a vehicle without its owner’s consent.
In the court’s decision, Justice Douglas Fasciale cited the state’s constitution, which provides more protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of property than the federal constitution’s Fourth Amendment, reports the New Jersey Monitor.
The case surrounded evidence that was gathered from the vehicle of Kyle A. Smart, who was being surveilled by police in August 2021. Police were investigating the suspect’s condo complex after residents reported drug activity and an informant told them that a drug dealer known as “Killer” drove a 2017 GMC Terrain.
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Police followed Smart, pulled him over, and found that he had no drugs on his person. He then refused to allow officers to investigate his vehicle, but they called in a drug dog, which served as probable cause for their search of the vehicle without a warrant.
According to Justice Fasciale, though, the steps that led to the search were neither unforeseeable nor spontaneous. Police had been surveilling Smart and collecting evidence, so they should have gotten a warrant.
“The fact that the canine sniff is what culminated in probable cause does not eviscerate the steps that led to the sniff,” wrote Justice Fasciale. “The sniff did not exist in a vacuum, but rather served to confirm and provide evidentiary support for the investigators’ suspicions. The canine sniff was just another step in a multi-step effort to gain access to the vehicle to search for the suspected drugs.”
Although the judge said that this issue is “fact-sensitive” and should be decided on a case-by-case basis, he wrote that in this case, the “investigative stop was deliberate, orchestrated, and wholly connected with the reason for the subsequent seizure of the evidence […] A warrant was required before searching the GMC.”
As result, evidence gathered in the stop, which included drugs, weapons, and ammunition, is inadmissible, the court ruled. Following the decision, Smart’s lawyer, Clifford P. Yannone, said he anticipates the state will dismiss the charges against the defendant.
The decision has been celebrated as a victory against police overreach by the members of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey.
“This is a reaffirmation that the New Jersey Constitution protects individual rights and privacy,” said Bruce S. Rosen, speaking on the association’s behalf. “Prosecutors have been trying to return the state to the federal standard for years. But without really blinking, the Supreme Court stood by its view of how the state constitution applies to criminal law. In that respect, it’s a very important decision.”
