State v. MooreState v. Moore
The State appeals, by leave granted, R. 2:2-3(b), from an order suppressing evidence secured as a result of defendant‘s arrest on a bench warrant issued for failure to appear in municipal court. After making the arrest and search, the policе discovered that defendant had posted bail on the bench warrant
While the officer who made the arrest no doubt did so blamelessly and in good faith reliance on the records available to him at police headquarters, the arrest was without legal authority. We agree that the evidence seized in the course of this good faith but illegal arrest must be suppressed. We affirm.
I
These are the facts as established by Judge Sachar‘s findings at the hearing on the suppression motion. On February 14, 1987 dеfendant Alvae Moore wrote a bad check for $315. Her victim swore a municipal complaint on February 24, 1987 in the Plainfield Municipal Court. On May 22, 1989 the court issued a bench warrant for defendant‘s failure to appear for a plea on the bad check charge. The warrant stated, in standard language, that “defendant may be held to bail before an authorized official if the amount of the bail is shown above.” The bail amount recorded on the warrant was $250.
On May 23, 1989 the warrant was faxed as a detainer by the Plainfield Police Department to the Somerset County Jail where defendant was then held on unrelated charges from Watchung Borough and eventually was sentenced to serve a county jail term. On October 10, 1989 defendant‘s family posted the $250 bail with the Plainfield Municipal Court. On October 13, 1989 the Somerset County Jail received a bail receipt from the Plainfield Municipal Court and released defendant, effectively lifting the bench warrant detainer. On October 25, 1989 defendant appeared in the Plainfield Municipal Court and pled guilty to the bad check charge. The bench warrant then was marked: “recalled, summons returned” by Plainfield court personnel.
The State contends that the Plainfield Municipal Court neither notified the Plainfield Police Department when bail was postеd on the bench warrant detainer nor gave notice of the later recall of the warrant by the court. The State claims that since the Plainfield police were not at fault, the arrest should stand. The defendant disputes the Police Department‘s claim of lack оf fault. Defendant also claims that the arrest was invalid no matter where the administrative fault may reside because the warrant twice had been rescinded or vacated, once by posting bail and once by court order.
There is no dispute that the arresting officer acted in good faith in executing what he thought was a valid warrant extant on the log book of his department. He knew defendant by sight, from school and the neighborhood. He had remembered that an active warrant for her was outstanding on the police log. He personally vеrified the active warrant, allegedly “physically lodged at the police station,” by radio dispatch before he made the arrest and search on the streets of Plainfield.
At the suppression hearing, considerable murky testimony was devoted to whether the error was the fault of the police department, the municipal court staff, or the county sheriff‘s personnel. In our view, the evidence does not clearly or conclusively establish exactly who was at fault or to what extent in the circumstance. Judge Sachar found that the Police Department at least shared administrative culpability with the municipal court staff and probably with the sheriff‘s office as well. The evidence fairly supports his view. As to the overall administrative situation, the judge found that: “In any event, comparing
But our decision here does not turn on who precisely was at fault or on the comparative rectitude of the several actors from the law enforcement and court administration communities. The record before us amply demonstrates just how futile inquiry into “systemic bureaucratic failures” can be. The inescapable consequence, after the finger-pointing is over, is that defendant was arrested illegally. We hold that the fruits of such an unlawful arrest are not available to the State for her prosecution even though the particular arresting officer acted in good faith and without culpability.
II
The State‘s contention for reversal here is no more than a plea for a “good faith” exception to the exclusionary rule. Our Supreme Court already has rejected such an exception on State constitutional grounds in State v. Novembrino, 105 N.J. 95, 157-58, 519 A.2d 820 (1987), where a search warrant had issued
The exclusionary rule, by virtue of its consistent application over the past twenty-five years, has become an integral element of our state-constitutional guarantee that search warrants will not issue without probable cause. Its function is not merely to deter police misconduct. The rule also serves as the indispensable mechanism for vindicating the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches. Because we believe that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule adopted in [United States v.] Leon, [468 U.S. 897, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984)] would tend to undermine the constitutionally-guaranteed standard of probable cause, and in the process disrupt the highly effective procedures employed by our criminal justice system to accommodate that constitutional guarantee without impairing law enforcement, we decline to recognize a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
The State urges that we should consider this mistaken arrest situation as different from the issuance of a bad search warrant in Novembrino. We see no justifiable distinction between a judicial errоr on the existence of probable cause which causes a bad search warrant to issue, and the administrative errors committed here; whether the errors, resulting in a bad arrest, are attributable to law enforcement, judicial administration, or a combination of bоth does not matter.
We hope that the invocation of the exclusionary rule in this rare but appropriate case operates as an incentive for efficient, constitutionally-acceptable record keeping in the criminal justice system, just as we hope that the exclusionary rule motivates adherence to the probable cause standard for search warrants. “In New Jersey, we have viewed the exclusionary rule as serving both to deter unlawful conduct and to vindicate fundamental guarantees.” State v. Minter, 116 N.J. 269, 280, 561 A.2d 570 (1989). We also recall Justice Murphy‘s statement in dissent, cited with approval in Novembrino, 105 N.J. at 157, n. 39, 519 A.2d 820, in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 41, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1369, 93 L.Ed. 1782, 1793 (1949), that “there is but one alternative to the rule of exclusion. That is no sanction at all.”
In Novembrino, the Supreme Court also said: “We see no need in New Jersey to experiment with the fundamental right protected by the fourth-amendment counterpart of our State
In the case before us the judge found “error in the record keeping of the police.” He justifiably found that “whatever the mistakes of the municipal court [in not telling the police of the vacation of the warrant on October 25], they were all subsequent to when the police detached the active warrant from the index card it was stapled to so it could be faxed to the Somerset County Jail.” The police never returned the warrant itself to their active file, but nonetheless the police failed to remove the warrant “from the active warrant book and computers.” The judge observed:
As a result of the warrant being served by the Plainfield police on the Somerset County Jail, defendant was confined to jail until bail was paid. After bail was paid she was let out on the street, but remained subject to the inevitability of eventual arrest. It did not matter to defendant which of the law enforcement authorities, the Plainfield police or the Somerset Cоunty Sheriff‘s Office, failed to assure that police records were kept current.
Professor LaFave discusses this concern about “police records and the problem of updating” in 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 3.5(d) at 19-24 (2d ed. 1987 and 1992 Supp), where he has collected the pertinent cases. He concludes that “the point is that the police may not rely upon incorrect or incomplete information when they are at fault in permitting the records to remain uncorrected.” Id. at 21-22, n. 75 (citing Carter v. State, 18 Md. App. 150, 305 A.2d 856 (1973) (police failed to rescind or cancel stolen car report)); People v. Ramirez, 34 Cal.3d 541, 194 Cal. Rptr. 454, 668 P.2d 761 (1983) (bench warrant had been recalled six months earlier); People v. Mitchell, 678 P.2d 990 (Colo. 1984) (warrant issued in error after fine paid); People v. Lawson, 119 Ill. App.3d 42, 74 Ill.Dec. 668, 456 N.E.2d 170 (1983) (warrant had been executed over a month
As LaFave stresses: “The fundamental point is that it is not merely a matter of whether the arresting officer was at fault.” Id. at 24. He agrees with the conclusion of the New York Court of Appeals that “an arrest is invalid when the arresting officer acts upon information in criminal justice system records which, though correct when put into the records, no longer applies, and which, through fault of the system, has been retained in its records after it became inapplicable.” Id. at 24 n. 81 (quoting People v. Jennings, 54 N.Y.2d 518, 446 N.Y.S.2d 229, 230, 430 N.E.2d 1282, 1283 (1981)). In Jennings, defendant was arrested after a traffic stop on an old parole warrant which had been vacated four months earlier upon execution. 446 N.Y.S.2d at 230, 430 N.E.2d at 1283. The New York Court of Appeals emphasized in Jennings that “the good faith of the enforcement authorities cannot validate an arrest” on a stale, vacated warrant. Id. 446 N.Y.S.2d at 232, 430 N.E.2d at 1285. Accord, Pesci v. State, 420 So.2d 380 (Fla.App. 1982) (alias capias had been quashed and criminal justice system records were incorrect.); People v. Fields, 785 P.2d 611 (Colo. 1990) (arrest pursuant to incorrect computer information invalid); People v. McElhaney, 146 Misc.2d 748, 552 N.Y.S.2d 825 (Sup. Ct. 1990) (arrest based on incorrect computer-generated police stolen vehicle report invalid and evidence suppressed). See also State v. Lanoue, 156 Vt. 35, 587 A.2d 405, 408-09 (1991) (dissenting opinion), which discusses the question of limiting “the system” to law enforcement agencies only or including administrative agencies, like the Division of Motor Vehiсles.
LaFave also rejects as “bizarre” our pre-Novembrino “good faith” decision on this point in State v. Cross, 164 N.J. Super. 368, 396 A.2d 604 (App.Div. 1978), relied upon by the State here,
Finally, we rеcognize that some delay in updating information is inherent and must be countenanced. “Courts are understandably not inclined to infer police misconduct when the records lack currency by just a few days.” LaFave, supra § 3.5(d) at 23 n. 79 (citing Commonwealth v. Riley, 284 Pa.Super. 280, 425 A.2d 813 (1981) (four-day interval acceptable); Childress v. United States, 381 A.2d 614 (D.C.App. 1977) (again four-day delay acceptable)); see State v. Scott, 231 N.J. Super. 258, 555 A.2d 667 (App.Div. 1989), rev‘d on dissenting opinion, 118 N.J. 406, 571 A.2d 1304 (1990) (court had vacated temporary restraining order in domеstic violence case just four days before arrest). In general, an officer may make a constitutional arrest based upon usually reliable warrant records. We hold, however, that where those records are demonstrably incorrect because the warrant has been vacated, the State must carry the burden to establish justification for any administrative delay in their update. Quite clearly, the factual findings of the motion judge in this case are not consistent with any such justification.
In the case before us, the bench warrant was first lodged as a detainer on May 23, bail was posted on October 10, and defendant was released on October 13. She pled guilty to the charge on October 25. None of this information reached the proper data bank before her arrest on November 21. This is too much “administrative lag” for acceptable constitutional tolerances. Constitutional rights cannot bow to bureaucratic inefficiency.
We affirm.