Source: http://www.njlawarchive.com/archive/a0032-13.pdf
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 22:26:56+00:00

Document:
By leave granted, the State appeals the Law Division’s July 18, 2013 order granting defendant’s motion to suppress evidence seized following a motor vehicle stop. We affirm. We discern the following facts and procedural history from the record on appeal.In the early afternoon of June 10, 2011, Warren Township Officer Robert Ferreiro stopped Henderson on Hillcrest Road for operating a motor vehicle with excessively tinted windows, contrary to N.J.S.A. 39:3-75. Ferreiro ascertained that Henderson’s driver’s license was suspended. In addition, Henderson was unable to produce a current insurance card for the vehicle.
portions of a cigar which are often used to roll marijuana cigarettes.” However, Ferreiro did not detect the odor of burnt or raw marijuana or any other illegal substance. According to Ferreiro, black and gray work gloves he observed on the passenger seat when he first spoke to Henderson were not there when he returned from his patrol car after running record checks on Henderson and the vehicle. After calling for a backup officer, Ferreiro requested Henderson’s consent to search the car, which was refused.
Ferreiro then issued Hendersonsummonses for the “tinted windows and driving while suspended” and “released” him. Henderson told Ferreiro that the owner of the vehicle, his employer Carl Brown, would come to drive the car away. Ferreiro refused to allow Brown to pick up the vehicle, and told Henderson it was being impounded. According to Ferreiro, although “usually we offer people the opportunity to park their car and have someone with a valid driver’s license pick up the vehicle,” he “[p]robably [would] not” have allowed someone with a valid license and proof of insurance to retrieve the vehicle at that point because he “had a reasonable suspicion to suspect that there was some sort of criminal activity occurring.” Ferreiro based his suspicion of criminal activity on “Henderson’s extreme and unusual nervousness,” the fact that his “stories were a little different,” and the tobacco shavings. Ferreiro called for a canine (K-9) unit to perform “an exterior sniff of the vehicle.
motion to suppress the heroin, arguing that there was an legal basis for Ferreiro’s retention of the vehicle for a dog stiff or a search. The motion judge heard two days of testimony in June 2013. In an order and written opinion issued on July 18, the judge granted Henderson’s motion and suppressed the evidence resulting from the search. We granted the State’s motion for leave to appeal.
POINT II: THE POLICE LAWFULLY STOPPED DEFENDANT’S VEHICLE FOR A MOTOR VEHICLE INFRACTION.
1 Point I addressed the State’s motion for leave to appeal.
POINT III: DEFENDANT IN THIS CASE WAS NOT UNREASONABLY DETAINED BECAUSE POLICE ISSUED HIM SUMMONSES AT THE SCENE, AND THEN DELIVERED HIM TO A LOCATION OF HIS CHOOSING.
POINT IV: THE K-9 HIT PROVIDED A REASONABLE BASIS TO REQUEST CONSENT TO SEARCH FROM THE OWNER OF THE VEHICLE.
Before addressing those issues, we outline the legal considerations that govern our decision in this case. “‘[A]n appellate court reviewing a motion to suppress must uphold the factual findings underlying the trial court’s decision so long as those findings are supported by sufficient credible evidence in the record.'” State v. Mann, 203 N.J. 328, 336 (2010) (quoting State v. Elders, 192 N.J. 224, 243 (2007)).
vehicle offense.'” State v. Locurto, 157 N.J. 463, 470 (1999) (quoting State v. Smith, 306 N.J. Super. 370, 380 (App. Div. 1997)).
(alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Johnson, 58 F.3d 356, 357-58 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 936, 116 S. Ct. 348, 133 L. Ed. 2d 245 (1995)).
specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, 906 (1968). “Reasonable suspicion” is “less than proof . . . by a preponderance of evidence,” and “less demanding than that for probable cause,” but must be something greater “than an ‘inchoate or unparticularized suspicion or’ ‘hunch.'” United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7, 109 S. Ct. 1581, 1585, 104 L. Ed. 2d 1, 10 (1989).
reasonable suspicion the same test applicable to justify a request for consent to search.” State v. Elders, 386 N.J.
Super. 208, 228 (App. Div. 2006) (citing State v. Cancel, 256 N.J. Super. 430, 435 (App. Div. 1992), certif. denied, 134 N.J.
L. Ed. 2d 842, 846-47 (2005) (finding dog sniff for narcotics appropriate when conducted concurrent with the police officer “in the process of writing a warning ticket”).
the vehicle: [I]f the circumstances that bring a vehicle properly to the attention of the police are such that its driver, even though arrested, is able to make his own arrangements for its custody, or if the vehicle can be conveniently parked and locked without constituting an obstruction of traffic or other public danger, the police should permit that action to be taken rather than impound it against the will of the driver and thereafter search it routinely.
subordinated to mere considerations of convenience to the police short of substantial necessities grounded in the public safety.” Id. at 12 (emphasis added).
there were insufficient facts to support a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. [T]his Court notes that the K-9 unit was called immediately after defendant was asked for consent to search his car. That is, upon refusing to provide the officers with consent to search the vehicle, the defendant was advised that a K-9 sniff for narcotics will be forthcoming.
Neither of these actions (refusal to provide consent to search the vehicle nor failure to possess a driver’s license, registration or insurance) provided justification, under the circumstances, as they were known to the officers, to suspect that this defendant was in possession of narcotics. This Court therefore finds that the circumstances do not rise to the level of reasonable suspicion of narcotics possession and therefore the K-9 investigation, over an hour later, was 2 The motion judge found, and we agree, that there was a sufficient factual and legal basis for the initial stop.
. As to the general demeanor of the defendant, this Court, after a thorough review of the MVR, does not find that the defendant appeared excessively nervous. Therefore, neither of these two “observations” provided the suspicion necessary to prolong the motor vehicle stop.
illegal drugs. Henderson’s purported change in story, which involved whether Henderson was coming from a friend’s or his family’s house in Jersey City, was similarly insufficient.
by precluding Henderson from arranging for Brown to retrieve his car, there was an impermissible detention of the vehicle. We agree.
155 N.J. 83, 101, cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1033, 119 S. Ct. 576, 142 L. Ed. 2d 480 (1998).

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