Case Title: New Jersey v. Radel

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: new-jersey

Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Date: 2022-01-20T00:00:00Z

Document:
SYLLABUS

This syllabus is not part of the Court’s opinion. It has been prepared by the Office of the
Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the
Court. In the interest of brevity, portions of an opinion may not have been summarized.

                     State v. Christopher Radel (A-44-20) (085129)
                        State v. Keith Terres (A-45-20) (084778)

Argued September 27, 2021 -- Decided January 20, 2022

ALBIN, J., writing for a unanimous Court.

       These consolidated appeals present an issue of first impression. The Court
considers whether the police have a right to conduct a protective sweep of a home when
an arrest is made outside the home and, if so, the requisite justification for a warrantless
entry and protective sweep. In doing so, the Court balances two important values: an
individual’s fundamental privacy right in the home and the significant state interest in
officer safety.

        Radel: In June 2011, defendant Christopher Radel pled guilty to a weapons
offense. In March 2015, the trial court sentenced Radel to a probationary term with
credit for two days served in custody. In October 2015, the court entered an order
directing in part that “members of Little Falls Police Department respond to [Radel’s]
home, located at 103 Browertown Road in the Township of Little Falls, immediately
upon receipt of a copy of this Order, for the limited purpose of retrieving” any firearms,
including a Beretta. (emphasis added). The Prosecutor’s Office faxed the order to
Sergeant Robert Prall more than two months after entry of the order. Before carrying out
the order twelve days later, Sergeant Prall learned that Radel resided at 81 Browertown
Road; that Radel had two active municipal arrest warrants; and that -- based on a firearms
registry search -- Radel possessed firearms other than the Beretta listed on the order. On
January 19, 2016, Sergeant Prall set in motion a plan to enforce the order to retrieve
weapons and arrest Radel on the outstanding warrants.

        At 10 a.m., seven Little Falls police officers positioned themselves to surveil both
103 and 81 Browertown Road, which were separated by only two other houses. Within
ten minutes of the start of the surveillance, a sergeant heard a very loud metallic bang
coming from the backyard of 81 Browertown and, almost simultaneously, saw a person
“wearing something blue” enter the rear door of the residence. Less than ten minutes
after the sergeant’s sighting of a blue-clad person in the backyard, Radel walked out the
front door of 81 Browertown, wearing a blue coat and carrying a laundry basket. Radel
placed the basket in the backseat of his car, which was parked in the driveway. When
Radel turned around, a detective arrested and handcuffed him. He did not resist.
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        Sergeant Prall hoped to secure Radel’s consent to search his house but determined
that Radel’s impaired condition due to alcohol or drugs ruled out that option. Sergeant
Prall ordered a protective sweep of 81 Browertown for purposes of officer safety because
there were weapons and other persons “potentially on the property.” Sergeant Prall came
to that conclusion because two vehicles were parked in the driveway; the home’s
windows had coverings, obstructing a view into the residence; the blue-jacketed person
the other sergeant observed in the backyard may not have been the same person who
exited the front door; and the order directed the officers to retrieve the firearms.

        During the approximately five-minute sweep, no one was found inside. In
carrying out the sweep, however, the officers observed in plain view imitation firearms,
butterfly knives, hatchets, bows and arrows, a ballistic vest, simulated police
identification badges, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, a glass pipe, and a safe capable of
storing firearms. The police transported Radel to headquarters and secured the residence.
After obtaining a search warrant, the police found multiple weapons, drugs and related
paraphernalia, and over $8,000 in cash.

        The trial court denied Radel’s motion to suppress the evidence, and the Appellate
Division reversed, finding “no support for the [trial court’s] conclusion that the police
had a reasonable and articulable suspicion that there were other persons inside the home
or that they posed a risk to the police or others.”  465 N.J. Super. 65, 78 (App. Div.
2020). The Court granted certification.  245 N.J. 466 (2021).

       Terres: On September 11, 2017, a Superior Court judge issued a warrant for Tyler
Fuller’s arrest. Detective John J. Petrosky, a member of the Gloucester County
Prosecutor’s fugitive unit, learned that Fuller might be staying with defendant Keith
Terres at the Ca Nook Trailer Park in Salem County and spoke with Trooper Richard
Hershey to coordinate efforts to arrest Fuller. Trooper Hershey told Detective Petrosky
that Terres was in the custody of the State Police and had been arrested for possessing “a
large amount of narcotics.” Thereafter, Trooper Hershey learned from Terres that Fuller
might be staying in the first building to the right in the trailer park.

        On the morning of September 14, Detective Petrosky and Sergeant Koller of the
Prosecutor’s Office, accompanied by Trooper Hershey and Trooper Smith, went to the
trailer park to arrest Fuller. The four officers went directly to the front building where
Terres had said Fuller might be found. As Detective Petrosky and Trooper Hershey
approached the front door, which was wide open, they observed two men inside, later
identified as Mark Boston and William Willis. As soon as Petrosky announced their
presence, Boston ran toward a bedroom. Detective Petrosky pursued him, believing that
he might be Fuller, while Trooper Hershey stayed with Willis. In the bedroom, which
was littered with loose bullets and shell casings, Detective Petrosky struggled with
Boston and eventually handcuffed him. A computer check revealed that both Boston and
Willis had outstanding warrants for their arrest.
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       Willis identified a photograph of Fuller shown to him and indicated that Fuller
could be found in a back trailer. Willis stated that, minutes earlier, he had seen Fuller
there with another male. The officers knew that the trailer described by Willis belonged
to Terres. Willis warned the officers to “be careful. . . . There’s two males back there.”
Sergeant Koller and Trooper Smith took charge of Boston and Willis while Detective
Petrosky and Trooper Hershey proceeded to Terres’s trailer two hundred yards away.

       Once there, Detective Petrosky and Trooper Hershey split up to cover different
sides of the trailer. Peering through one of the trailer’s windows, Detective Petrosky
observed Fuller talking to a woman later identified as Allison Terres. Petrosky yelled to
Fuller to get to the ground and that he was under arrest. Disobeying that command,
Fuller ran through the front door. He was intercepted by Trooper Hershey, who got
Fuller face down and handcuffed on the trailer’s deck within five feet of the door and
attempted to pull a hypodermic needle from Fuller’s pants pocket.

        Ms. Terres said no one else was inside, and Detective Petrosky instructed her to
move outside the doorway. Detective Petrosky shouted into the trailer, commanding that
anyone inside was to come to the front door. With no response, Detective Petrosky
stepped into the trailer and saw a cross bow hanging inside and arrows scattered about.
He conducted a quick search of each room for the presence of the other man earlier
mentioned by Willis. During the sweep, Detective Petrosky observed a hole in the floor
partially covered by plywood. The hole appeared large enough for a person to hide under
the residence. When Petrosky looked into the hole, he saw a handgun and the barrels of
either shotguns or rifles. He did not touch any of the weapons. The sweep of the trailer
lasted approximately three to five minutes. Law enforcement officers secured the trailer
overnight as Trooper Hershey applied for a search warrant. The next day, a search
warrant was issued, and multiple weapons were seized from Terres’s trailer.

       The trial court denied Terres’s motion to suppress the evidence, and the Appellate
Division affirmed. After initially denying certification,  244 N.J. 309 (2020), the Court
granted both Terres’s motion for reconsideration and his petition,  245 N.J. 471 (2021).

HELD: When an arrest occurs outside a home, the police may not enter the dwelling or
conduct a protective sweep in the absence of a reasonable and articulable suspicion that a
person or persons are present inside and pose an imminent threat to the officers’ safety.
This sensible balancing of the fundamental right to privacy in one’s home and the
compelling interest in officer safety will depend on an objective assessment of the
particular circumstances in each case, such as the manner of the arrest, the distance of the
arrest from the home, the reasonableness of the officers’ suspicion that persons were in
the dwelling and likely to launch an imminent attack, and any other relevant factors. A
self-created exigency by the police cannot justify entry into the home or a protective
sweep. Here, a protective sweep was not warranted in the Radel case but was
constitutionally justified in the Terres case.
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1. The fundamental privacy interests of the home are at the very core of the protections
afforded by our Federal and State Constitutions, and the warrantless search of a home is
permissible only if the search falls within one of the few specifically established and
well-delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement. One such exception is the
protective sweep doctrine. In Maryland v. Buie, the United States Supreme Court
recognized that “an in-home arrest puts the officer at the disadvantage of being on his
adversary’s 'turf’” and in possible jeopardy of “[a]n ambush in a confined setting of
unknown configuration.”