Title: New Jersey v. Nyema
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 
State: new-jersey
Issuer: new-jersey Supreme Court
Date: January 25, 2022

New Jersey v. Nyema Annotate this Case Justia Opinion Summary Around midnight on May 7, 2011, a 7-Eleven was robbed. Approximately three-quarters of a mile from the 7-Eleven, Sergeant Mark Horan saw a car approaching in the oncoming traffic lane. Using the spotlight mounted to his police vehicle to illuminate the inside of the car, he observed that the occupants were a man and a woman and let them pass. Sergeant Horan testified that as he continued on, a second set of headlights approached. He illuminated the inside of the vehicle and observed three Black males; “[t]he description of the suspects was two Black males so at that point I decided to issue a motor vehicle stop on the second vehicle.” Horan later explained that he was also struck by the lack of reaction to the spotlight by the occupants of the car, and that he “took into consideration the short distance from the scene, as well as the short amount of time from the call” as he made the stop. Horan radioed headquarters with the license plate number and a description of the car, and two more officers arrived. Defendant Peter Nyema was sitting in the passenger seat and Jamar Myers was in the rear passenger-side seat. The dispatcher advised Horan that the vehicle had been reported stolen. All three occupants were placed under arrest. The question this case presented was whether a reasonable and articulable suspicion existed when a police officer conducted an investigatory stop of the vehicle in which defendants Peter Nyema and Jamar Myers were riding with co-defendant Tyrone Miller. The New Jersey Supreme Court concluded the only information the officer possessed at the time of the stop was the race and sex of the suspects, with no further descriptors. "That information, which effectively placed every single Black male in the area under the veil of suspicion, was insufficient to justify the stop of the vehicle and therefore does not withstand constitutional scrutiny." Read more Want to stay in the know about new opinions from the Supreme Court of New Jersey? Sign up for free summaries delivered directly to your inbox. Learn More › You already receive new opinion summaries from Supreme Court of New Jersey. Did you know we offer summary newsletters for even more practice areas and jurisdictions? Explore them here . SYLLABUSThis 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. Peter Nyema (A-39-20) (085146) State v. Jamar J. Myers (A-40-20) (082858)Argued October 25, 2021 -- Decided January 25, 2022PIERRE-LOUIS, J., writing for a unanimous Court. In this case, the Court considers whether reasonable and articulable suspicion existed when a police officer conducted an investigatory stop of the vehicle in which defendants Peter Nyema and Jamar Myers were riding with co-defendant Tyrone Miller. Around midnight on May 7, 2011, a 7-Eleven was robbed. At approximately 12:15 a.m., Sergeant Mark Horan of the Hamilton Township Police Department received a transmission about the armed robbery, which “had just occurred.” Horan testified that the dispatch described the suspects “as two Black males, one with a handgun.” Horan activated the lights and sirens on his marked patrol car and drove towards the 7-Eleven. Approximately three-quarters of a mile from the 7-Eleven, Horan saw a car approaching in the oncoming traffic lane. Using the spotlight mounted to his police vehicle to illuminate the inside of the car, he observed that the occupants were a man and a woman and let them pass. Sergeant Horan testified that as he continued on, a second set of headlights approached. He illuminated the inside of the vehicle and observed three Black males; “[t]he description of the suspects was two Black males so at that point I decided to issue a motor vehicle stop on the second vehicle.” Horan later explained that he was also struck by the lack of reaction to the spotlight by the occupants of the car, and that he “took into consideration the short distance from the scene, as well as the short amount of time from the call” as he made the stop. Upon stopping the vehicle, Sergeant Horan radioed headquarters with the license plate number and a description of the car, and two more officers arrived. Before he approached the vehicle, Horan learned from one of the other officers that the robbery suspects had been wearing dark or black clothing or jackets. As he approached, Horan observed “some dark jackets” on the unoccupied rear passenger seat and on the floor of the vehicle. Horan spoke with the driver, who was later identified as Miller. Nyema was sitting in the passenger seat and Myers was in the rear passenger-side seat. The dispatcher advised Horan that the vehicle had been reported stolen. All three occupants were placed under arrest. 1 More officers arrived on the scene, and while several officers secured the arrestees, others assisted Horan in searching for a weapon. First, Horan retrieved the clothing he had observed from the backseat of the vehicle. Then, he and the other officers searched other parts of the vehicle, locating additional clothing in the trunk and a black semi-automatic handgun under the hood. Searches of the men themselves yielded just under $600 cash. Approximately $600 was reported stolen from the 7-Eleven. The vehicle was then impounded, and police transported the three men to the police station. Miller pled guilty to two weapons offenses and agreed to testify against Nyema and Myers, who jointly moved to suppress the physical evidence seized from the stop. The trial court granted the motion in part as to the items seized from the trunk and the hood. But the court found that the initial stop was supported by reasonable and articulable suspicion, that the retrieval of clothing from the interior of the vehicle was permitted under the plain view exception to the warrant requirement, and that the money was lawfully seized incident to defendants’ arrest. As to the robbery of the 7-11, both Myers and Nyema pled guilty to first-degree robbery. Both defendants appealed from the partial denial of their motion to suppress. In Myers’s case, the Appellate Division affirmed. In Nyema’s case, the Appellate Division held that the stop was not based on reasonable and articulable suspicion. 465 N.J. Super. 181, 185 (App. Div. 2020). Accordingly, Nyema’s conviction was reversed, his sentence vacated, and the matter remanded for further proceedings. Ibid. The Court granted certification in Nyema. 245 N.J. 256 (2021). On reconsideration, it granted certification in Myers “limited to the issue of whether the police officer had reasonable articulable suspicion to stop the car.” 245 N.J. 250, 251 (2021).HELD: The only information the officer possessed at the time of the stop was the race and sex of the suspects, with no further descriptors. That information, which effectively placed every single Black male in the area under the veil of suspicion, was insufficient to justify the stop of the vehicle and therefore does not withstand constitutional scrutiny.1. Searches and seizures conducted without warrants issued upon probable cause are presumptively unreasonable and are invalid unless they fall within one of the few well- delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement. The exception at issue in this case is an investigative stop, a procedure that involves a relatively brief detention by police during which a person’s movement is restricted. An investigative stop or detention does not offend the Federal or State Constitution, and no warrant is needed, if it is based on specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. (pp. 21-22)2. Although reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause, neither inarticulate hunches nor an arresting officer’s subjective good faith suffices. 2 Determining whether reasonable and articulable suspicion exists for an investigatory stop is a highly fact-intensive inquiry that demands evaluation of the totality of circumstances surrounding the police-citizen encounter. In many cases, the reasonable suspicion inquiry begins with the description police obtained regarding a person involved in criminal activity and whether that information was sufficient to initiate an investigatory detention. In State v. Shaw, 213 N.J. 398 (2012), and State v. Caldwell, 158 N.J. 452 (1999), the Court determined that police lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct an evidentiary stop based on descriptions limited to the race and sex of the suspect. The Court reviews those cases in detail and notes that even inquiries or investigative techniques that do not qualify as searches and seizures must still comport with the Equal Protection Clause. And New Jersey jurisprudence is well-settled that seemingly furtive movements, without more, are insufficient to constitute reasonable and articulable suspicion. The totality of the circumstances of the encounter must be considered in a fact- sensitive analysis to determine whether officers objectively possessed reasonable and articulable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop. (pp. 23-27)3. Applying those principles, the Court does not find that the information Sergeant Horan possessed at the time of the motor-vehicle stop constituted reasonable and articulable suspicion. Certainly, race and sex -- when taken together with other, discrete factors -- can support reasonable and articulable suspicion. But here, the initial description did not provide any additional physical descriptions that would differentiate the two Black male suspects from any other Black men in New Jersey. And the radio dispatch indicated that the store was robbed by two Black men. Sergeant Horan testified that upon seeing three Black males in the vehicle, he inferred that the third was the getaway driver. While Sergeant Horan’s inference was reasonable, the reality is that the ambiguous nature of the description could have resulted in Black men in any configuration and using any mode of transportation being stopped because the only descriptors of the suspects were race and sex. Sergeant Horan saw the clothing and learned the car had been reported stolen after the stop, but information acquired after a stop cannot retroactively serve as the basis for the stop. Defendants’ non-reaction to the spotlight -- like nervous behavior that courts have reasonably found not to support reasonable suspicion -- did not justify the stop. And even considering the closeness of Sergeant Horan’s encounter with defendants in terms of spatial and temporal proximity to the robbery does not add significantly to the analysis of whether the stop was lawful because the 7-Eleven was located on a roadway close to a major interstate highway and the record is unclear as to when the robbery actually occurred. The non-specific and non-individualized factors asserted here do not add up to a totality of circumstances analysis upon which reasonable suspicion can be found. Zero plus zero will always equal zero. (pp. 28-33) AFFIRMED in Nyema; REVERSED and REMANDED in Myers.CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES ALBIN, PATTERSON, FERNANDEZ- VINA, and SOLOMON join in JUSTICE PIERRE-LOUIS’s opinion. 3 SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY A- 39 September Term 2020 A- 40 September Term 2020 085146 and 082858 State of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Peter Nyema, a/k/a Pete Dinah, Kareem T. Jeffries, Hne Nyema, and Pete Nyme, Defendant-Respondent. State of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Jamar J. Myers, Defendant-Appellant. State v. Peter Nyema (A-39-20): On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division, whose opinion is reported at 465 N.J. Super. 181 (App. Div. 2020). State v. Jamar J. Myers (A-40-20): On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. 1 Argued Decided October 25, 2021 January 25, 2022Michael D. Grillo, Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for appellant in State v. Nyema (A-39-20) and respondent in State v. Myers (A-40-20) (Angelo J. Onofri, Mercer County Prosecutor, attorney; Randolph E. Mershon, III, Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the briefs, and Laura Sunyak, Assistant Prosecutor, on the briefs).Alyssa Aiello, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for respondent in State v. Nyema (A-39-20) (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; Alyssa Aiello, of counsel and on the briefs).Tamar Y. Lerer, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant in State v. Myers (A-40- 20) (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; Tamar Y. Lerer, of counsel and on the briefs).Steven A. Yomtov, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae Attorney General of New Jersey in State v. Nyema (A-39-20) and in State v. Myers (A-40- 20) (Andrew J. Bruck, Acting Attorney General, attorney; Carol M. Henderson, Assistant Attorney General, of counsel, and Steven A. Yomtov, of counsel and on the briefs).Alexander Shalom argued the case for amicus curiae 66 Black ministers and other clergy members in State v. Nyema (A-39-20) and in State v. Myers (A-40-20) (American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Foundation, attorneys; Alexander Shalom, Jeanne LoCicero, and Karen Thompson, on the briefs).Raymond Brown argued the cause for amici curiae Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey and National Coalition of Latino Officers in State v. Nyema (A-39-20) and State v. Myers (A-40-20) (Pashman Stein Walder 2 Hayden, attorneys; CJ Griffin and Darcy Baboulis- Gyscek, on the briefs). Robert J. DeGroot argued the cause for amicus curiae Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey in State v. Nyema (A-39-20) and State v. Myers (A-40- 20) (Oleg Nekritin, on the briefs). Joseph M. Mazraani submitted a brief on behalf of amicus curiae Kristin Henning of the Georgetown Law Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative in State v. Nyema (A- 39-20) and State v. Myers (A-40-20) (Mazraani & Liguori, and Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative, attorneys; Joseph M. Mazraani, and Kristin Henning, of the District of Columbia bar, admitted pro hac vice, on the briefs). Jonathan Romberg submitted a brief on behalf of amicus curiae Seton Hall University School of Law Center for Social Justice in State v. Myers (A-40-20) (Seton Hall University Scott of Law Center for Social Justice, attorneys; Jonathan Romberg, of counsel and on the brief). JUSTICE PIERRE-LOUIS delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case, we must determine whether reasonable and articulablesuspicion existed when a police officer conducted an investigatory stop of thevehicle in which defendants were riding. After the robbery of a 7-Eleven storein Hamilton, police dispatch alerted officers that the suspects were two Blackmales, one armed with a gun. Sergeant Mark Horan heard the radiotransmission and made his way to the scene. While en route, Sergeant Horan 3 used the mounted spotlight on his marked police car to illuminate the interiorof passing vehicles in order to search for the robbery suspects. In the firstvehicle Horan encountered, a man and a woman reacted with annoyance andalarm when Horan shone the spotlight into their car. When Horan came acrossa second vehicle, approximately three-quarters of a mile from the store, heilluminated the interior of the car with the spotlight and saw three Black malesinside. According to Horan, the men did not react to the spotlight at all.Horan viewed that non-reaction as “odd” considering the reaction of thepassengers in the first car. At that point, the only information Horan had aboutthe robbery was that the suspects were two Black males, one with a gun, whofled the robbery on foot. Dispatch had not provided any additional identifiers. Based on the race and sex of the occupants and their non-reaction to thespotlight, Sergeant Horan executed a motor vehicle stop of the car. Afterstopping the car, Horan learned that the vehicle had been reported stolen sodefendants were placed under arrest. A search of the car revealed darkclothing -- clothes matching what the suspects were wearing during therobbery -- and a handgun hidden under the hood of the car. Defendants Peter Nyema, Jamar Myers, and a third co-defendant werecharged with a host of offenses related to the 7-Eleven robbery. Nyema andMyers jointly moved to suppress the items seized during the search of the 4 vehicle, arguing that the stop was unlawful because it was not based onreasonable suspicion. The trial court denied the motion to suppress and bothMyers and Nyema eventually pled guilty to first-degree robbery. In separate appeals, both men challenged the denial of the motion tosuppress, resulting in opposite Appellate Division outcomes. In Myers’sappeal, an Appellate Division panel affirmed the trial court’s denial of themotion to suppress, ruling that the stop was supported by reasonable suspicion.In Nyema’s appeal, a different Appellate Division panel reversed the trial courtand vacated Nyema’s conviction and sentence, finding that Sergeant Horan didnot have reasonable suspicion to conduct the stop of the car. We granted both defendants’ petitions for certification on the question ofwhether reasonable and articulable suspicion existed to stop the car. We nowreverse the Myers decision and affirm in Nyema. The only information theofficer possessed at the time of the stop was the race and sex of the suspects,with no further descriptors. That information, which effectively placed everysingle Black male in the area under the veil of suspicion, was insufficient tojustify the stop of the vehicle and therefore does not withstand constitutionalscrutiny. 5 I. We rely on the testimony developed at the evidentiary hearing ondefendants’ motion to suppress for the following summary. Around midnight on May 7, 2011, a 7-Eleven in Hamilton, New Jerseywas robbed. At approximately 12:15 a.m., Sergeant Mark Horan of theHamilton Township Police Department received a transmission about thearmed robbery, which “had just occurred.” Horan testified that the dispatchdescribed the suspects “as two Black males, one with a handgun.” Horan activated the lights and sirens on his marked patrol car and drovetowards the 7-Eleven at a “relatively high speed” for one to two minutes,shutting off the lights and sirens as he drew closer. According to SergeantHoran, traffic was light because it was late at night. Approximately three-quarters of a mile from the 7-Eleven, Horan saw a car approaching in theoncoming traffic lane. Using the spotlight mounted to his police vehicle toilluminate the inside of the car, 1 he observed that the occupants were a manand a woman and let them pass. Sergeant Horan testified as follows: I continued on. The second set of headlights approached me, I illuminated the inside of that vehicle and I observed three Black males, you know, that went past me.1 This was not a standard procedure sanctioned by the Hamilton Police Department, but a technique that Horan employed while searching for suspects at night. 6 The description of the suspects was two Black males so at that point I decided to issue a motor vehicle stop on the second vehicle. He would later explain that the man and the woman in the first vehiclereacted to the spotlight with “alarm or annoyance,” and that the “drivershielded his eyes a little bit.” In contrast, the occupants of the second vehicle ,including defendants, showed no reaction and kept looking straight ahead.Horan testified that the occupants of the second vehicle “were all males, Blackmales. And I received no response from any of them that I could observe, noone looked at me, no one turned towards the car. It was as if I wasn’t there.”He explained that this non-reaction “struck [him] as odd.” He further testifiedthat it was his “experience that sometimes people who prefer not to be noticedtend to ignore the spotlight.” Upon witnessing the non-reaction of the vehicle’s occupants, Horanactivated his lights and executed a stop of the second vehicle. Horan testifiedthat at the time of the stop, [t]he sex and race were consistent with that of the description. I had three occupants in the vehicle. The suspects were described at the time of the call as two. So I had, at least, that. I took into consideration the short distance from the scene, as well as the short amount of time from the call and all those things considered is what I took into consideration to effect the stop. 7 Upon stopping the vehicle, Sergeant Horan radioed headquarters with thelicense plate number and a description of the car -- a 2000 silver ToyotaCorolla with Pennsylvania license plates. Two more officers arrived just as Horan was exiting his patrol car. Allthree approached the vehicle with their weapons drawn. Horan ordered thedriver to turn off the engine and told all occupants to place their hands on theroof. Before he approached the vehicle, Horan learned from one of the otherofficers that the robbery suspects had been wearing dark or black clothing orjackets. As he approached, Horan observed “some dark jackets” on theunoccupied rear passenger seat and on the floor of the vehicle. Horan spoke with the driver, who was later identified as co-defendantTyrone Miller, a/k/a Ajene Drew. Nyema was sitting in the passenger seat andMyers was in the rear passenger-side seat. The dispatcher asked Horan toconfirm the license plate number and when he did, the dispatcher advisedHoran that the vehicle had been reported stolen. All three occupants were thenremoved from the vehicle and placed under arrest. More officers arrived on the scene, and while several officers securedthe arrestees, others assisted Horan in searching for a weapon. First, Horanretrieved the clothing he had observed from the backseat of the vehicle. Then,he and the other officers searched other parts of the vehicle, locating additional 8 clothing in the trunk and a black semi-automatic handgun wrapped in a redbandana under the hood. Searches of the men themselves yielded just under$600 cash. Approximately $600 was reported stolen from the 7-Elevenrobbery. The vehicle was then impounded, and police transported the threemen to the police station. II. On August 23, 2011, a Mercer County grand jury charged Nyema,Myers, and Miller in a multiple count indictment. All three men were charged with first-degree robbery, as well as theft,aggravated assault, terroristic threats, several weapons offenses, and theft byreceiving stolen property. They were each also charged with conduct-specificcounts related to the theft of the car or the arrest, and Miller was charged withpossession of a firearm as a felon. Miller pled guilty to two second-degree weapons offenses and agreed totestify against Nyema and Myers. A. Nyema and Myers jointly moved to suppress the physical evidenceseized from the stop. During a three-day evidentiary hearing, the trial courtheard testimony from Sergeant Horan; Nyema’s father, who owned the vehicleand who testified that it had not been reported stolen; and Detective William 9 Mulryne, who testified that he had personally taken the stolen vehicle reportfrom Nyema’s father several days before the car stop. The trial court granted the motion in part and denied it in part,suppressing the handgun found under the hood of the car but ruling that theclothing and money had been lawfully seized. The court reasoned that becausethe initial stop was supported by reasonable and articulable suspicion, theretrieval of the clothing from the interior of the vehicle was permitted underthe plain view exception to the warrant requirement and the money waslawfully seized incident to defendants’ arrest. However, the trial court foundthat the full warrantless search of the vehicle, including the trunk and hood,which yielded the handgun, could not be justified by exigent circumstancesbecause the vehicle’s occupants were already securely in custody and thevehicle was located in a residential neighborhood shortly after midnight. Although the court found that defendants did not have a reasonableexpectation of privacy in the vehicle because it had been reported stolen, thecourt explained that a lack of privacy interest was not a valid substitute forprobable cause; rather, it was only one factor in determining whether exigentcircumstances justified a warrantless search. The court concluded that theofficers could have simply impounded the vehicle and searched it back at thepolice precinct or applied for a warrant while at the scene. 10 In upholding Horan’s reasonable suspicion for the initial car stop, thecourt noted that the stop occurred close to the robbery in terms of both timeand space; that Horan observed the vehicle approaching from the direction ofthe crime scene; that the vehicle’s occupants “gave no response whatsoever tothe lights shone on them, made no eye contact whatsoever”; and “[a]lso, to bequite honest, the racial makeup of the occupants of the vehicle, three Blackmales traveling away from the scene.” B. Myers -- Guilty Plea and Sentencing On November 29, 2016, Myers pled guilty to first-degree robbery of the7-Eleven, reserving his right to appeal several evidentiary rulings, includingthe denial of his motion to suppress based on the stop. Myers also pled guiltyto first-degree felony murder on an unrelated indictment 2 and entered guiltypleas to three violations of probation. On July 7, 2017, Myers was sentenced to a term of thirty years for theunrelated felony murder, with no possibility of parole, and a concurrent termof twelve years, subject to the No Early Release Act (NERA), for the armed 2 In February 2014, Myers was charged in a second indictment related to two offenses that occurred in Trenton on April 29, 2011 -- an attempted robbery of one pharmacy and the completed robbery of another pharmacy, during which the pharmacist was shot and killed. 11 robbery of the 7-Eleven. For the probation violations, Myers was sentenced tofive years. Myers appealed, arguing, among other things, that the joint motion tosuppress should have been granted in its entirety because the initial stop wasnot based on reasonable suspicion and, furthermore, that the plain viewexception to the warrant requirement did not justify the officers’ entry into thevehicle. The Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s rulings and Myers’sconviction. Regarding the motion to suppress, the court noted that the trialcourt had specifically rejected Myers’s argument that the stop was based solelyon defendants’ race and sex. Rather, the Appellate Division found that the trial court pointed out that the suspects were reported to be African-American and, therefore, there was a reasonable and particularized suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop of a vehicle with African- American men inside when that vehicle was seen a short distance from the 7-Eleven in the early morning when there were few other cars on the road. The Appellate Division concluded that “those factual findings aresupported by the evidence in the record” and that there was therefore no basisfor reversal. The court also affirmed the trial court’s ruling that seizure of theclothing from the backseat of the vehicle was justified by the plain viewexception to the warrant requirement. This Court denied Myers’s petition for 12 certification seeking review of the denial of his motion to suppress. 240 N.J. 22 (2019). C. Nyema -- Trial, Guilty Plea and Sentencing On September 20, 2017, a jury trial proceeded in Nyema’s case. Afterthe State rested, Nyema entered an open guilty plea to first-degree robbery.Nyema’s sentencing took place almost a year later on September 6, 2018,immediately after an unsuccessful motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Thecourt sentenced Nyema to a custodial term of fifteen years, subject to NERA. Like Myers, Nyema appealed the partial denial of the joint motion tosuppress, arguing that police lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct the initialstop and that, even if the stop had been lawful, the officers’ warrantless entryinto the vehicle to seize clothing from the backseat was not justified by theplain view exception. The Appellate Division held that the stop was not based on reasonableand articulable suspicion. State v. Nyema, 465 N.J. Super. 181, 185 (App.Div. 2020). Accordingly, Nyema’s conviction was reversed, his sentencevacated, and the matter remanded for further proceedings. Ibid. The Appellate Division rejected the trial court’s conclusion that Nyemalacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the vehicle because it had been 13 reported stolen. Id. at 189. In the court’s view, although evidence had beenpresented to indicate that the vehicle had been reported stolen, no testimonyindicated that the vehicle actually was stolen and, therefore, Nyema retained areasonable expectation of privacy in his father’s car. Id. at 189-90. The courtthen considered whether the stop was based on a reasonable and articulablesuspicion. Id. at 190. The court summarized Sergeant Horan’s testimony onwhy he stopped the vehicle as: “(1) a store had been robbed by two Blackmen; (2) the car was within three quarters of a mile from the store, travelingaway from it; and (3) the three Black men in the car did not react to thespotlight he pointed into their vehicle.” Id. at 191. The court explained that “[t]he men’s non-reaction to the light does notadd much to a reasonable articulable suspicion” because Horan only observedthem for a second or two as they drove by. Ibid. Furthermore, the court notedthat the record “does not establish how much time passed between when therobbery occurred and the car was stopped”; therefore, it was unclear “whetherHoran had a reasonable basis to assume the perpetrators were still in the area.”Id. at 192. The court found that “[k]nowledge of the race and gender of criminalsuspects, without more, is insufficient suspicion to effectuate a seizure.” Ibid.Because Horan’s information amounted to little more than the race and sex of 14 the criminal suspects, it amounted only to a hunch, not to reasonable suspicion.Ibid. To hold otherwise “would mean that the police could have stopped allcars with two or more Black men within a three-quarters-of-a-mile radius ofthe 7-Eleven store.” Ibid. The State petitioned this Court for certification, arguing that the Nyemadecision directly conflicted with Myers and improperly focused “solely uponthe suspect’s description.” This Court granted the State’s petition for certification. 245 N.J. 256(2021). Because the Appellate Division’s published opinion in Nyema’s caseheld that Horan did not have reasonable suspicion to stop the car based on thesame exact set of facts in Myers’s case, Myers filed a motion forreconsideration of his petition for certification. This Court granted Myers’smotion for reconsideration, “limited to the issue of whether the police officerhad reasonable articulable suspicion to stop the car.” 245 N.J. 250, 251(2021). III. A. With regard to Myers, the State contends that the Appellate Divisioncorrectly upheld the trial court’s finding that there was reasonable and 15 articulable suspicion to stop the vehicle based on the evidence in the record.The State urges this Court to affirm that holding. Regarding Nyema, the State argues that the Appellate Division decisionshould be reversed and Nyema’s conviction reinstated. The State contendsthat, in addition to the defendants’ race and sex, the motion court foundreasonable suspicion based on (1) the short duration between the initialrobbery report and the stop; (2) the location and direction of the vehicle inrelation to the 7-Eleven; (3) the presence of three individuals in the car, givingrise to the inference that the two robbers had been joined by a getaway driver;and (4) the occupants’ non-reaction to the spotlight. As for the time, the State argues that the Nyema decision was incorrectin finding that the State failed to present evidence establishing how much timeelapsed between the robbery and the stop. To the contrary, the State notes thatSergeant Horan testified that he saw the defendants’ vehicle about two or threeminutes after receiving the report that a robbery had “just occurred.”Regarding defendants’ behavior when Sergeant Horan used the spotlight on thesecond vehicle, the State argues that Nyema erred by discounting thedefendants’ non-reaction to the spotlight, particularly because that responsecontrasted so starkly with the reaction of the occupants of the previous vehicle. 16 According to the State, “[t]he defendants’ abnormal non-reaction suggested acalculated effort on the part of all three defendants to avoid detection.” B. The Attorney General, appearing as amicus curiae, takes no positionregarding whether the investigatory stop in this case should be upheld. TheAttorney General appears for the limited purpose of reiterating that racialprofiling, in all its forms, must be eliminated from policing decision s. TheAttorney General asserts that consideration of a person’s race or ethnicity -- indrawing an inference that an individual may be involved in criminal activity orin exercising police discretion with respect to how the officer will deal withthat person -- will not be tolerated and is prohibited by Attorney General LawEnforcement Directive No. 2005-1, which established a statewide policyprohibiting the practice of “Racially-Influenced Policing.” The AttorneyGeneral notes, however, that under Directive No. 2005-1, when race is adescriptive factor in connection with a “Be-On-The-Lookout” announcement,or a pre-existing investigation into a specific criminal activity, it may bedeemed an objective identifier. The Attorney General emphasizes that thecorrect legal standard for adjudicating whether reasonable suspicion exists isthe totality-of-the-circumstances test. 17 C. Because defendants’ arguments are substantially similar, we considerthem together. Myers argues that the stop was not supported by reasonable suspicionbecause “[t]he only similarities between the description of the suspects and themen are their race and gender.” He emphasizes that the officer stopped a caroccupied by three Black men based only on a report that two Black men hadfled on foot after a nearby robbery. Myers argues that “there was nodescription of the suspects other than their race,” and that “accept[ing] thismeager description as constituting reasonable suspicion” would allow police tohave stopped any number of Black men, whether in a car or on foot, within athree-quarter-mile radius of the crime scene. Nyema takes the same position as Myers. Nyema argues that theAppellate Division decision in his case correctly concluded that reasonablesuspicion did not exist. Analyzing the stop based on the totality of thecircumstances, Nyema contends that both the proximity to the 7-Eleven andthe defendants’ non-reaction to the spotlight “provided zero basis forreasonable suspicion,” leaving only a description of the two Black men fleeingon foot to establish reasonable suspicion for the stop. 18 D. Several amici support defendants’ positions. Black Ministers and Other Clergy Members (collectively, Clergymembers) argue that the other factors in this case -- proximity to the crimescene and the non-reaction to the spotlight -- fail to create reasonable andarticulable suspicion. The Clergy members also contend that race-based stopscause tremendous harm and are unreasonable because they fail to meaningfullylimit the number of people subjected to them. Furthermore, such stops involvean aggravated or uncomfortable response from Black motorists, which mayresult from a legitimate fear of potential violence from law enforcement. TheClergy members recommend that this Court create a prophylactic rulepreventing police officers from effectuating stops where the only orpredominant basis for the stop is that the stopped individuals match the raceand gender of the suspects. The Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL)argues that this Court must affirm in Nyema and reverse in Myers because lawenforcement impermissibly stopped the defendants on the basis of race. TheACDL reasons that racial profiling has been a historically pervasive problemand that investigative stops based on race are unconstitutional. 19 Amicus the Seton Hall University School of Law Center for SocialJustice (the Center) argues that the suspects’ non-reaction, location, anddescription provided no individualized basis for reasonable suspicion .Regarding location, the Center reasons that defendants’ location provided nobasis for individualized suspicion because the suspects could have driven inany direction away from the 7-Eleven and been anywhere within a fifty-mileradius of the store. The Center argues that the suspects’ description providedno basis for reasonable suspicion other than identifying Black males, whichwas an impermissible basis for an investigatory stop. In their joint amicus brief, the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey(LLANJ) and the National Coalition of Latino Officers (NCLO) argue that theState failed to prove that police had reasonable suspicion to conduct aninvestigatory stop of the vehicle based on specific and articulable facts.Further, the LLANJ and NCLO contend that racial profiling significantlyundermines trust in the criminal justice system and makes the state less safefor everyone. Amicus Kristin Henning, Director of the Georgetown Law JuvenileJustice Clinic & Initiative, argues that there was no rational basis to believethat the men’s non-reaction to the officer shining the light into the car had anybearing on suspicion. Furthermore, Henning contends that implicit racial bias 20 thrives when officers rely on vague, race-based descriptions. In this case, thedescription relied solely on race and sex, which is insufficient to constitutereasonable and articulable suspicion. Henning argues that race-based over-policing weakens constitutional protections and harms individuals,communities, and public safety. IV. A. Our standard of review on a motion to suppress is deferential -- we must“uphold the factual findings underlying the trial court’s decision so long asthose findings are 'supported by sufficient credible evidence in the record.’”State v. Ahmad, 246 N.J. 592, 609 (2021) (quoting State v. Elders, 192 N.J. 224, 243 (2007)). This Court defers to those findings in recognition of the trialcourt’s “opportunity to hear and see the witnesses and to have the 'feel’ of thecase, which a reviewing court cannot enjoy.” Elders, 192 N.J. at 244 (quotingState v. Johnson, 42 N.J. 146, 161 (1964)). A trial court’s legal conclusions,however, and its view of “the consequences that flow from established facts,”are reviewed de novo. State v. Hubbard, 222 N.J. 249, 263 (2015). B. The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I,Paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution, in almost identical language, 21 protect against unreasonable searches and seizures. Under both Constitutions,“searches and seizures conducted without warrants issued upon probable causeare presumptively unreasonable and therefore invalid.” Elders, 192 N.J. at 246(citations omitted). Consequently, “the State bears the burden of proving by apreponderance of the evidence that [the] warrantless search or seizure 'fellwithin one of the few well-delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement.’”Ibid. (quoting State v. Pineiro, 181 N.J. 13, 19-20 (2004)). The exception at issue in this case is an investigative stop, a procedurethat involves a relatively brief detention by police during which a person’smovement is restricted. See State v. Rosario, 229 N.J. 263, 272 (2017)(describing an investigative stop as a police encounter during which anobjectively reasonable person would not feel free to leave). When police stopa motor vehicle, the stop constitutes a seizure of persons, no matter how brie for limited. State v. Scriven, 226 N.J. 20, 33 (2016). An investigative stop ordetention, however, does not offend the Federal or State Constitution, and nowarrant is needed, “if it is based on 'specific and articulable facts which, takentogether with rational inferences from those facts,’ give rise to a reasonablesuspicion of criminal activity.” State v. Rodriguez, 172 N.J. 117, 126 (2002)(quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 , 21 (1968)). 22 Although reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard thanprobable cause, “[n]either 'inarticulate hunches’ nor an arresting officer’ssubjective good faith can justify infringement of a citizen’s constitutionallyguaranteed rights.” State v. Stovall, 170 N.J. 346, 372 (2002) (Coleman, J.,concurring in part and dissenting in part) (quoting State v. Arthur, 149 N.J. 1,7-8 (1997)); accord State v. Alessi, 240 N.J. 501, 518 (2020). Determiningwhether reasonable and articulable suspicion exists for an investigatory stop isa highly fact-intensive inquiry that demands evaluation of “the totality ofcircumstances surrounding the police-citizen encounter, balancing the State’sinterest in effective law enforcement against the individual’s right to beprotected from unwarranted and/or overbearing police intrusions.” State v.Privott, 203 N.J. 16, 25-26 (2010) (quoting State v. Davis, 104 N.J. 490, 504(1986)). In many cases, the reasonable suspicion inquiry begins with thedescription police obtained regarding a person involved in criminal activityand whether that information was sufficient to initiate an investigatorydetention. In State v. Shaw, this Court determined that the police lackedreasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop when law enforcementarrived at a multi-unit apartment building to execute an arrest warrant for aBlack, male fugitive. 213 N.J. 398, 401, 403 (2012). There, the police saw the 23 defendant, also a Black male, exit the building with a friend and immediatelyseparate, seemingly because he saw the officers. Id. at 403. “[T]he onlyfeatures that [the testifying officer] could say that [the defendant] shared incommon with the targeted fugitive were that both were Black and both weremen.” Ibid. That commonality was insufficient to justify the stop, even inconjunction with the officer’s belief that the two men split up to avoid policeattention. See id. at 411-12. In State v. Caldwell, police acting on a tip from an informant conductedan investigatory stop of the defendant based on a description that theindividual sought was a Black man standing in front of a building. 158 N.J. 452, 454-55 (1999). In invalidating the stop, this Court found that the“description of the suspect . . . was clearly inadequate” and explained that“police must have a sufficiently detailed description of the person to be able toidentify that person as the suspect named by the informant.” Id. at 460. TheCourt concluded that “[w]ithout such a requirement, police could theoreticallyconduct wide-ranging seizures on the basis of vague general descriptions.”Ibid. The Court further noted that the tip lacked physical descriptors such as“the individual’s height, weight, or the clothing he was wearing,” and itincluded “no distinguishing characteristics that would have assisted [theofficer] in making a positive identification of the suspect.” Ibid. 24 In his concurring opinion, Justice Handler pointed out that “[r]ace aloneis not a specific and articulable fact sufficient to establish the reasonable,particularized suspicion needed for an investigatory stop of a defendant.Adding gender to race does not augment the description of the suspect so thathe could fairly be picked out by officers intending to investigate.” Id. at 468(Handler, J., concurring). In Justice Handler’s view, the minimal descriptionthat consisted simply of the race and sex of the individual was “descriptive ofnothing” in the constitutional context. Ibid. New Jersey courts, moreover, have noted that even inquiries orinvestigative techniques that do not qualify as searches and seizures andtherefore do not require reasonable and articulable suspicion must still comportwith the Equal Protection Clause. See, e.g., State v. Maryland, 167 N.J. 471,484 (2001) (“[T]he questioning of [a] defendant as part of a field inquiry is notsustainable if the officers approached him and his companions solely becauseof their race and age.”); State v. Segars, 172 N.J. 481, 493 (2002) (“[I]f race isthe sole motivation underlying the use of a M[obile] D[ata] T[erminal] [inchecking the status of a driver’s license], it is illegal . . . .”). Indeed, in 2005, the Attorney General issued Law Enforcement Directive2005-1, which established a statewide policy prohibiting the practice ofracially influenced policing. See Attorney General, Directive Establishing an 25 Official Statewide Policy Defining and Prohibiting the Practice of “Racially -Influenced Policing” (June 28, 2005) (Directive 2005-1). The Directivedictates that law enforcement officers are not to consider a person’s race or ethnicity as a factor in drawing an inference or conclusion that the person may be involved in criminal activity, or as a factor in exercising police discretion as to how to stop or otherwise treat the person, except when responding to a suspect-specific or investigation-specific “Be on the lookout” (B.O.LO.) situation . . . .The Directive further emphasizes that it does not prohibit officers “from takinginto account a person’s race or ethnicity when race or ethnicity is used todescribe physical characteristics that identify a particular individual . . . beingsought by a law enforcement agency in furtherance of a specific investigationor prosecution.” Ibid. In addition to the race and sex of the suspect, our courts have consideredwhether other factors such as nervous behavior, furtive movements, or otheractions form the basis for reasonable and articulable suspicion. Ourjurisprudence is well-settled that seemingly furtive movements, without more,are insufficient to constitute reasonable and articulable suspicion. SeeRosario, 229 N.J. at 277 (“Nervousness and excited movements are commonresponses to unanticipated encounters with police officers on the road . . . .”);State v. Lund, 119 N.J. 35, 47 (1990) (“[M]ere furtive gestures of an occupant 26 of an automobile do not give rise to an articulable suspicion suggestingcriminal activity.” (quoting State v. Schlosser, 774 P.2d 1132 , 1137 (Utah1989))). Similarly, when circumstances are not otherwise suspicious, “[a]person’s failure to make eye contact with the police does not change that.”State v. Stampone, 341 N.J. Super. 247, 252 (App. Div. 2001); see also UnitedStates v. Foster, 824 F.3d 84, 93 (4th Cir. 2016) (noting that lack of eyecontact is an “ambiguous indicator” that “may still contribute to a finding ofreasonable suspicion” but that courts are “hesitant” to weigh heavily “becauseit is no more likely to be an indicator of suspiciousness than a show of respectand an attempt to avoid confrontation.” (quotation omitted)); United States v.Hernandez-Alvarado, 891 F.2d 1414, 1419 n.6 (9th Cir. 1989) (“[A]voidanceof eye contact has been deemed an inappropriate factor to consider unlessspecial circumstances make innocent avoidance of eye contact improbable.”)(alteration and quotation omitted); United States v. Smith, 799 F.2d 704, 707(11th Cir. 1986) (finding the defendant-driver’s failure to look at a patrol carto be “fully consistent with cautious driving” that “in no way gives rise to areasonable suspicion of illegal activity either alone or in combination with theother circumstances surrounding the stop”). 27 In sum, the totality of the circumstances of the encounter must beconsidered in a very fact-sensitive analysis to determine whether officersobjectively possessed reasonable and articulable suspicion to conduct aninvestigatory stop. State v. Gamble, 218 N.J. 412, 431 (2014); Pineiro, 181 N.J. at 22. V. Applying those principles to the present case and taking into account thetotality of the circumstances, we do not find that the information SergeantHoran possessed at the time of the motor-vehicle stop constituted reasonableand articulable suspicion. Sergeant Horan testified that he “believe[d] that the entirety of the initialdispatch” stated that there were “two suspects described as Black males, onewith a handgun.” Certainly, race and sex -- when taken together with other,discrete factors -- can support reasonable and articulable suspicion. But here,the initial description did not provide any additional physical descriptions suchas the suspects’ approximate heights, weights, ages, clothing worn, mode oftransportation, or any other identifying feature that would differentiate the twoBlack male suspects from any other Black men in New Jersey. That vaguedescription, quite frankly, was “descriptive of nothing.” See Caldwell, 158 N.J. at 468 (Handler, J., concurring). If that description alone were sufficient 28 to allow police to conduct an investigatory stop of defendants’ vehicle, thenlaw enforcement officers would have been permitted to stop every Black manwithin a reasonable radius of the robbery. Such a generic description thatencompasses each and every man belonging to a particular race cannot,without more, meet the constitutional threshold of individualized reasonablesuspicion. And the radio dispatch indicated that the store was robbed by two Blackmen. Sergeant Horan testified that upon seeing three Black males in thevehicle, he inferred that the third was the getaway driver. While SergeantHoran’s inference was reasonable, with the dearth of information available atthe time regarding the suspects, it could easily be argued that police wouldhave also been able to stop a single Black man in a car, or on foot, based onthe assumption that the robbery suspects split up after the crime. The reality isthat the ambiguous nature of the description could have resulted in Black menin any configuration and using any mode of transportation being stoppedbecause the only descriptors of the suspects were race and sex. Even Sergeant Horan testified that the only information he couldconfirm based on the initial report was the race and sex of the vehicle’soccupants during the following exchange with the prosecutor: 29 PROSECUTOR: And when you walked up, were you able to confirm any other part of the description in regard to the transmissions that you received from dispatch? SERGEANT HORAN: Other than all three occupants being male, Black and the clothing, there was nothing else to confirm.Although Sergeant Horan mentioned the clothing, he testified that as heapproached the vehicle ---- executing the stop, “[a]n officer at the scene afterrelayed information that the suspects were wearing dark or blackclothing or jackets.” Information acquired after a stop cannotretroactively serve as the basis for the stop. For constitutional purposes,what matters is the information Horan possessed when he activated hisoverhead lights and pulled the car over. At that point, as discussed, hedid not have a description of the clothing worn by the robbery suspects.He also did not know that the car had been reported stolen. All he knewwas that the suspects were Black men. That brings us to the other factors that the State argues contribute to afinding of reasonable suspicion based on the totality of the circumstances.Sergeant Horan testified that when he shined the spotlight on defendants’ carand illuminated the interior, the three men did not react at all. He recalledthat, as he observed defendants for a second or two, “[a]ll three headsremained straight ahead, focused on their path. No squinting, ducking, 30 shielding their eyes, which is, in my experience, uncommon.” The Stateargued that Sergeant Horan’s use of his patrol car’s spotlight and defendants’behavior in response is critical to our analysis. The State even conceded atoral argument that without defendants’ non-reaction to the spotlight, it wouldbe very difficult to argue that reasonable suspicion existed prior to the stop . As this Court and many other courts have recognized, nervous behavioror lack of eye contact with police cannot drive the reasonable suspicionanalysis given the wide range of behavior exhibited by many different peoplefor varying reasons while in the presence of police. See Rosario, 229 N.J. at 277. In some cases, a defendant’s alarmed reaction is asserted as justificationfor a stop, but in other cases, a defendant’s non-reaction is argued to form thebasis for reasonable suspicion. See, e.g., United States v. Escamilla, 560 F.2d 1229, 1233 (5th Cir. 1977) (explaining that the defendants’ decision not to“acknowledge the officers’ presence” cannot play any role in reasonablesuspicion, in part because it would conflict with the court’s previous holdingthat repeated glances at officers were suspicious and “would put the officers ina classic 'heads I win, tails you lose’ position”); cf. United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1 , 13 (1989) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (noting that law enforcementprofiles of drug couriers have a “chameleon-like way of adapting to anyparticular set of observations” (quotation omitted)). In short, whatever 31 individuals may do -- whether they do nothing, something, or anything inbetween -- the behavior can be argued to be suspicious. Thus, as with race and sex, a suspect’s conduct can be a factor, but whenthe conduct in question is an ambiguous indicator of involvement in criminalactivity and subject to many different interpretations, that conduct cannotalone form the basis for reasonable suspicion. Even considering the closeness of Sergeant Horan’s encounter withdefendants in terms of spatial and temporal proximity to the robbery does notadd significantly to the analysis of whether the stop was lawful. Horan wasapproximately three-quarters of a mile from the 7-Eleven when he spotteddefendants’ vehicle traveling away from the store and executed the stop. Therecord is unclear as to precisely when the robbery occurred. Sergeant Horantestified that he heard the radio dispatch regarding the robbery “just aroundmidnight” or “a quarter after midnight” when dispatch indicated that therobbery “just happened.” Horan then testified that he encountered defendants’vehicle approximately three minutes after receiving the dispatch. The State argues that the timing of the robbery is clear because dispatchused the term “just” in describing when the robbery occurred. Certainly, atsome point after the robbery someone in the 7-Eleven called 9-1-1, but we donot know when that was in relation to when the robbery occurred and when 32 dispatch alerted police. In this case, a matter of minutes makes a differencegiven the area in which the suspects could reasonably be expected to be afterthe commission of the robbery. Again, proximity in terms of time and placecan certainly be factors in determining whether reasonable suspicion existed.On this record, however, where the 7-Eleven was located on a roadway closeto a major interstate highway and the record is unclear as to when the robberyactually occurred, the asserted proximity in time and place is not sufficient tosupport the finding of reasonable suspicion. Finally, we note that the non-specific and non-individualized factorsasserted here do not add up to a totality of circumstances analysis upon whichreasonable suspicion can be found. “Zero plus zero will always equal zero.To conclude otherwise is to lend significance to 'circumstances [which]describe a very large category of presumably innocent travelers’ and subjectthem to 'virtually random seizures.’” State v. Morgan, 539 N.W.2d 887, 897(Wis. 1995) (Abrahamson, J., dissenting) (alteration in original) (quoting Reidv. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438 , 441 (1980)). In this case, Sergeant Horan, with his years of experience, had a hunch.That, however, is not the standard. The information Horan possessed did notamount to objectively reasonable and articulable suspicion, so the motion tosuppress should have been granted. 33 VI. For the foregoing reasons, the decision in State v. Nyema is affirmed.The decision in State v. Myers is reversed, Myers’s conviction is vacated, andthe matter is remanded to the trial court for further proceedings consistent withthis opinion. CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES ALBIN, PATTERSON, FERNANDEZ-VINA, and SOLOMON join in JUSTICE PIERRE-LOUIS’s opinion. 34