TRENTON — New Jersey’s highest court on Tuesday upheld a state standard restricting police authority to remove passengers from vehicles during motor vehicle stops.
In a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court declined a request from the state’s attorney general to move toward a looser federal standard giving police automatic authority over passengers during traffic stops.
The court, however, reinstated a drug defendant’s conviction based on a motor vehicle stop.
The case involved the 2011 traffic stop of Tawian Bacome and an unidentified passenger. According to court records, the two were known to Woodbridge police, who suspected them of possessing drugs but pulled them over because they observed the passenger not wearing his seatbelt.
What are your rights when stopped by police?
During the stop, one detective claimed he saw Bacome “lean forward as if he were reaching under his seat.” The detective ordered Bacome out of the vehicle as a second detective ordered the passenger out.
The pair were separated and police said they gave conflicting stories. After a consent search of the car, they found crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia, Tipobet the records show.
At trial, Bacome tried unsuccessfully to have the drug evidence suppressed. An appeals court later found in a split decision that police had not met the standard for removing a passenger from a vehicle set in a state Supreme Court decision known as State v. Smith.
Under federal law, police have wide discretion to order both drivers and their passengers out of the vehicle because of a 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision. But New Jersey maintains a stricter standard of “heightened caution” which requires police have a reasonable safety reason for ordering a passenger out.
Prosecutors argued the state should adopt the federal standard and reverse the appeals court decision vacating Bacome’s conviction. Instead, the court upheld the Smith rule but found Bacome’s “furtive movements inside a recently stopped vehicle provided an objectively reasonable basis for officers’ exercising heightened caution, justifying removal of the passenger.”
Michele E. Friedman, Bacome’s public defender, told NJ Advance Media she was “disappointed that my client’s conviction was reinstated.”
“But for statewide purposes, I am satisfied that the Supreme Court reaffirmed Smith on the whole,” she said.
Deputy Attorney General Frank Muroski said in a statement he was “pleased” that the conviction was upheld, but “disappointed that the Court did not adopt the clear federal standard, which affords police the automatic authority to remove a passenger from a car during a lawful traffic stop in the interest of officer safety.”
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.