New Jersey Supreme Court Says Hot Pursuit Warrant Exception Doesn’t Apply To Traffic Offenses

Cops love a good warrant exception. Anything that allows them to bypass the Constitution is considered a pretty good deal (I mean… at least for cops). Good faith? Love it. Plain view? Fantastic. Odor of marijuana? Your car is getting tossed, buddy. Exigent circumstances? Don’t even know what the word means, but let’s get it on!

“Hot pursuit” is another exception. If police are pursuing a suspect wanted for a crime and the suspect flees into a building (possibly even their own residence), cops are not expected to stand around and wait for a warrant to be approved. This makes a certain amount of sense. But, in the case covered here, it does not.

There were plenty of sources for this story but we’re going to go with the New Jersey Monitor, because Dana DiFilippo and Nikita Biryukov did what other sources wouldn’t: posted the ruling, one that could be obtained by anyone with the ability to Google “New Jersey Supreme Court opinions.”

Hot pursuit is still an option, in terms of warrant exceptions. But not in cases like these. This was the outcome of the incident that led to this attempt to suppress evidence. This is the short version provided by the court in its decision [PDF]:

Sometime after 1:00 a.m. on November 2, 2017, State Police officers were deployed to arrest Julian Bell on a four-month-old failure to appear warrant. When the officers arrived at Bell’s home, he was standing outside with defendant Steven Bookman. Bell and Bookman fled into a row house next door to Bell’s residence, and officers pursued Bookman to a second-floor bedroom. After an officer informed Bookman he did not have legal grounds to detain him, Bookman voluntarily told the officer he had a revolver inside his jacket pocket. The officer retrieved the handgun and arrested Bookman.

That summary does not detail the many, many wrinkles that led the NJ Supreme Court to toss this evidence.

First, officers weren’t even looking for Bookman. They were looking for Julian Bell. He was the subject of a “long-term investigation” related to vehicle theft. But the arrest warrant officers possessed had nothing to do with suspected motorcycle and ATV thefts in Camden, New Jersey. Instead, officers were carrying a warrant for a failure to appear in court for driving with a suspended license charges.

Pretextual stop meets pretextual arrest. Law enforcement wanted to question Bell about vehicle thefts but all it had to work with was a warrant for a traffic violation. Because two different objectives were intertwined, a hilarious amount of officers were deployed to handle an arrest related to a traffic offense.

At approximately 1:00 a.m. on November 2, 2017, Rivera “had a briefing” with the seven other officers planning to arrest Bell in connection with this outstanding ATS warrant. The officers’ only mission was to arrest Bell.

One suspended license. Eight officers. New Jersey residents are really getting the most bang for their tax bucks. Both Bell and Bookman fled when the officers announced their presence, fleeing into a row house located “two feet” away from Bell’s address. The officers decided a warrant wasn’t necessary and entered the same row house, where they came across Bookman (who wasn’t the target of the investigation or the failure-to-appear warrant).

The offense used to predicate the arrest was a minor offense, in terms of criminality. Officers could have obtained a search warrant while any of the eight officers kept tabs on the residence but they chose not to, apparently believing the “hot pursuit” exception would excuse their constitutional violations.

The officers were wrong, the court says. “Hot pursuit” is closely aligned with the “exigent circumstances” warrant exception. In these cases, officers aver that fast movement (and a casual rejection of constitutional protections) is warranted because either the subject or the evidence might be destroyed or disappear. But what evidence of driving with a suspended license could possibly be destroyed here? And does the stated reason for the arrest really justify warrantless entry by eight officers, especially an entry that involved a residence not linked to the target of the arrest warrant?

Definitely not. The state argued an arrest warrant allows all of these things, including hot pursuit over traffic violations and the warrantless entry into non-subject’s homes. The court disagrees.

Citing a US Supreme Court ruling (one involving officers following a person into his home over alleged DUI and noise violations), the state Supreme Court says this warrantless entry was not justified. It’s precedent that’s extremely on-point. There’s also plenty of state precedent indicating all criminal offenses are not created equal in terms of warrant exceptions. This entry, stop, and subsequent search (even if voluntary) was unconstitutional.

Against this analytical backdrop, and considering the totality of the circumstances presented here, we now hold the State Police officers were not entitled to enter the 1237 Thurman Street residence under the hot pursuit doctrine. The officers did not act in an objectively reasonable manner when they chose to execute a four-month-old ATS warrant for Bell’s failure to appear in response to a Title 39 violation at 1:00 a.m. Although police officers are permitted to enter the subject of an arrest warrant’s home when they have reason to believe the subject is inside, this rule does not extend to third-party homes.

Moreover, the municipal court that issued the ATS warrant only authorized Bell’s arrest and the entry of his home, if necessary. The warrant did not authorize officers to pursue Bookman into 1237 Thurman Street. Because the State Police did not have any information that Bookman was involved in any criminal activity, Bookman’s decision to run from the scene did not constitute grounds to invoke the hot pursuit doctrine.

In this case, the officers knew that the ATS warrant was for a minor traffic offense and had no reason to suspect there was any risk of danger or destruction of evidence relevant to that warrant that may have justified a hot pursuit.

If there were any “exigent circumstances,” the officers (all eight of them) created them by (1) assembling eight officers, (2) leveraging a minor traffic offense in an attempt to investigate a far more serious crime, and (3) deciding 1 a.m. was the best time to confront a suspect officers conceivably could have arrested at any time. Most of this was constitutionally unreasonable, the court says, and that means the evidence obtained from the non-target of this warrant must be suppressed.

These distinctions highlight the fact that any exigency here was a direct result of the officers’ decision to unreasonably execute the ATS warrant. It is well established that officers may not rely on exigencies they create — i.e., that would not have existed but for the officers’ unreasonable time, place, and manner of a warrant’s execution — to bootstrap an otherwise unconstitutional action.

The officers had plenty of time to choose a different plan of action and/or seek a warrant more specific to the crimes they actually wanted to investigate. This last minute, late night bullshit won’t stand.

Four months appear to have passed with no action taken to make the arrest authorized by the warrant. Yet the record shows the tactical approach the police deployed was akin to the execution of a high-risk, no-knock warrant.

If you, a law enforcement officer, want to be perceived as “reasonable” by a court, you can’t do stuff like this. The evidence is suppressed and the state police lose an arrest and a prosecution. The state Supreme Court, however, declines to provide a bright line ruling that would make traffic offenses off-limits for hot pursuit/exigent circumstances exceptions, but it does at least affirm what these officers should have known: this was an unreasonable search that required the acquisition of a warrant.