BoR 1: Pigs 0
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/05/vehicle.searches.ap/index.html
New Jersey Supreme Court limits vehicle searches
TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- Police cannot ask to
search a vehicle
they have stopped unless there is reasonable suspicion
that criminal
activity has occurred, the state Supreme Court ruled.
In a 5-0 decision issued Monday, the court said
motorists need protection
because of "widespread abuses" by police and the
state's 1999 admission that
troopers had practiced racial profiling.
Such protection will prevent police from "turning
routine traffic stops into a
fishing expedition for criminal activity unrelated to
the lawful stop," Justice
James Coleman wrote.
The court said the state constitution protects
motorists from consent searches, in which police
ask motorists to sign a waiver that allows them to
search their car without a warrant.
The court stressed that its ruling applies only to
traffic stops of individual motorists, and not to
traffic checkpoints or roadblocks, such as those
used to catch drunken drivers.
The ruling upheld a June 2000 state appellate
court decision that reversed the 1998 conviction of
Steven Carty, who was found guilty of drug possession
after state police found
cocaine in his shirt during a 1997 traffic stop.
Roger Shatzkin, a spokesman for the state Attorney
General's office, said the
ruling "should really have no effect on the State
Police" because their internal
rules already require them to have reasonable
suspicion in order to conduct a
consent search.
The Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive director of the
state Black Ministers
Council, said he hoped the ruling will encourage the
state Legislature to ban
consent searches entirely.
