Title: New Jersey v. Chisum

State: new-jersey

Issuer: New Jersey Supreme Court

Document:

SYLLABUS

This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. 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. Deyvon T. Chisum (A-35/36-17) (079823/079835)

Argued October 9, 2018 -- Decided February 5, 2019

FERNANDEZ-VINA, J., writing for the Court.

        In this case, police officers responded to a noise complaint at a motel room and
determined not to issue a summons when the renter of the room immediately complied with
their request to turn down the music. The police nevertheless conducted an investigatory
detention on a group of ten people and ran warrant checks on them. More than twenty
minutes into the detention, police arrested Deyvon Chisum for an outstanding warrant and
discovered a concealed firearm on him. They then conducted pat-down searches on the
remaining occupants and found a firearm on defendant Keshown Woodard. The trial court
denied defendants’ motions to suppress the firearms, and the Appellate Division affirmed.
The Court reviews that denial.

        Shortly before midnight on February 7, 2014, two Neptune police officers, Officer
Harris and Officer Sibole, were dispatched to the Crystal Inn Motel to investigate a noise
complaint. Officer Harris was familiar with the Crystal Inn Motel based on prior calls to the
motel and the motel’s reputation as a site where criminal activity took place. Officer Harris
could hear “loud music” and “multiple voices” coming from inside Room 221. He identified
himself as a police officer and informed the occupants that the police were there in response
to a noise complaint. From his vantage point, Officer Harris could see “about ten people” in
the room. Officer Harris then asked to speak to the renter of the room, at which time Zykia
Reevey identified herself as that person. She apologized for the noise and invited the officers
inside. Around that time, three back-up officers arrived. Officer Harris, Officer Sibole, and
one of the back-up officers entered the room, while the two other officers remained in the
hallway as a safety precaution. Officer Harris spoke to Reevey, who lowered the volume of
the music at the officer’s request.

        The officers then asked Reevey and the other occupants of the room for their
identification. The officers relayed the occupants’ information to dispatch to check for
outstanding warrants. Officer Harris stated that the occupants of the room were not allowed
to leave until the results of their individual warrant checks came back. The occupants were
released from the scene on an individual basis, as each was cleared by the dispatcher.

        Officer Harris did not issue any noise violation summons. He testified that the
“investigation was complete when [Reevey] agreed to turn the noise down and [he] decided
not to give her a summons for the ordinance violation.” When asked, however, why he and
                                               1
the other officers did not leave once Reevey turned the music down, Officer Harris explained
that it is standard police practice to obtain a person’s identification in the course of issuing a
summons for violation of a noise ordinance. According to Officer Harris, one of the reasons
that identification is obtained is in the event of a callback to that location. The officers
detained the occupants for a total of about twenty minutes while awaiting the results of the
warrant checks.

        The results of the warrant checks began to come back at 12:21 a.m., and at least three
individuals were released. Woodard was cleared at 12:23 a.m. but either chose to stay on the
premises or was not released. The warrant check for Chisum came back positive for
warrants at 12:32 a.m., and he was placed under arrest. After handcuffing Chisum and
escorting him into the hallway, Officer Harris conducted a search incident to arrest and
patted Chisum down for weapons, revealing a handgun tucked into his waistband. The
handgun was retrieved, and Chisum was secured in the hallway. Officer Harris ordered the
remaining occupants in Room 221 to place their hands above their heads and informed them
that they would all be patted down for weapons. The pat-down of Woodard revealed that he
also possessed a handgun. The handgun was seized, and Woodard was placed under arrest.
Chisum and Woodard were indicted for weapons offenses.

        The trial court denied defendants’ motions to suppress the evidence. Chisum pled
guilty to one weapons charge; Woodard pled guilty to one weapons offense and to a drug
possession offense arising from an unrelated indictment. The Appellate Division panel
affirmed. The Court granted defendants’ petitions for certification “limited to the issues of
whether the police were authorized to detain the defendants and to conduct pat-down
searches for weapons.”  232 N.J. 88 (2018).

HELD: Once the renter of the motel room lowered the volume of the music and the police
declined to issue summonses, the police no longer had any reasonable suspicion that would
justify the continued detention of the room’s occupants. Once the noise was abated, the
police no longer had an independent basis to detain the occupants, or a basis to run warrant
checks on them. Such action was unlawful. And because the detention and warrant checks
were unlawful, the subsequent pat-down of Woodard was also improper. The judgment of
the Appellate Division is therefore reversed, and the matter is remanded to the trial court for
the withdrawal of defendants’ guilty pleas and further proceedings.

1. Warrantless searches and seizures are presumptively invalid as contrary to the United
States and the New Jersey Constitutions, and the State bears the burden of proving by a
preponderance of the evidence that a warrantless search or seizure falls within one of the few
well-delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement. One such exception is an
investigatory stop of a person. An investigative detention, also called a Terry stop, Terry v.
Ohio,