State v. Williams

• Citation: 461 N.J.Super. 1,218 A.3d 309
• Decision Date: 19 August 2019
• Docket Number: DOCKET NO. A-2490-17T4
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Louis V. WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court – Appellate Division

461 N.J.Super. 1

218 A.3d 309

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.Louis V. WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant.

DOCKET NO. A-2490-17T4

Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.

Submitted January 15, 2019

Decided August 19, 2019

Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (Michele Erica Friedman, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, of counsel and on the brief).

Gurbir S. Grewal, Attorney General, attorney for respondent (Valeria Dominguez, Deputy Attorney General, of counsel and on the brief).

Before Judges Rothstadt, Gilson and Natali.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

NATALI, J.S.C. (temporarily assigned).

The central issue in this appeal is whether a resident of a boarding or rooming house has a reasonable expectation of privacy in areas beyond his or her bedroom door. Following an unsuccessful motion to suppress marijuana and a firearm seized from his room, defendant Louis V. Williams pled guilty to second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun, N.J.S.A. 2C:39-5(b)(1). Related possessory weapons charges and a disorderly-persons charge of possessing less than fifty grams of marijuana, N.J.S.A. 2C:35-10(a)(4), were dismissed.¹ Defendant was sentenced to five years of imprisonment with forty-two months of parole ineligibility, and now appeals from the order denying his motion to suppress. Based on the proofs elicited at the suppression hearing, we conclude defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of his residence, and it was unreasonable for the police to enter the premises repeatedly without a warrant, exigent circumstances, or a lawful right of entry. Accordingly, we reverse.

I.

The following facts are gleaned from the suppression hearing, where a single witness, Detective Carlos Estevez of the New Jersey State Police, testified. The motion judge found that Estevez "portrayed candor," "bore an honest demeanor," and that his testimony was "credible."

At around 9:30 a.m. on March 19, 2016, Estevez was in his office in Trenton when he heard gunshots from a nearby neighborhood. After checking the immediate vicinity on foot, he entered a police vehicle with his superior, Sergeant Sansone.² Dispatch reports from the Trenton Police Department indicated that the gunshots were fired at a nearby bar, and that the suspected shooter was an African-American male named "Louis" with an alias of "Big" who was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and who had fled to, and lived at, a dwelling on Spring Street.

The officers drove to the Spring Street dwelling, where they met a Trenton Police Department officer outside. Estevez testified that from the vantage point of the sidewalk, the structure appeared to be an "attached row home" that "could be" a "normal single family home" or a "multi" family home because "[t]here [were] two floors." Estevez could not "tell [if it was] a boarding house" from the sidewalk, but testified that "other boarding houses" he observed in Trenton had similar external appearances. According to Estevez, the front door was equipped with a lock, but the door was unlocked at that time and "wasn't secured at all, not by [a] latch, not by [a] doorknob, not by [a] lock," and it simply "swung open" when he knocked on it.³

When the door opened, the three officers "converged" into what Estevez described as a long hallway with a stairway leading to the second floor directly in front of him. Estevez noticed multiple doors to his left, all of which had padlocks on them, which led him to believe the building was being used as "a boarding house because usually boarding houses are multi-apartment dwellings." The officers then "cleared the common area[s]" for weapons and to "make sure" that the suspect was not "hiding ... in that house unlawfully." The "common areas" the officers searched included the downstairs hallway, "a common bathroom" upstairs, and "a short hallway" by the bathroom.

After clearing the common areas, Estevez and Sansone left the building and returned to their vehicle to search for the suspect in the surrounding area. During that "loop" around the area, the Trenton Police Department officer left the building, and Estevez and Sansone received a police dispatch report indicating that a crime scene was established at the bar and that "spent shell cases" were recovered, which Estevez interpreted as confirming his belief that "a gun was discharged" and "there was an actual shooting." Estevez also testified that he believed he was involved in an "active shooting" investigation.

Estevez and Sansone returned to Spring Street and re-entered the building. Estevez proceeded to knock on two interior doors, one on the first floor and one on the second floor, both of which were answered by female residents who denied having any male roommates. Estevez then went to the second floor's "middle room door."

As he approached that room, Estevez heard movement and smelled marijuana through the door, which he did not notice the first time he entered the dwelling. Estevez knocked on the door, announced that he was a police officer, and "told the individual to go ahead and answer the door."

Defendant, who was unknown to Estevez at the time, opened the door shirtless but wearing pants. The door swung inward toward a room that Estevez stated was approximately eight feet by eight feet. According to Estevez, the smell of marijuana "drastically increased" when defendant opened the door, and defendant was sweating and breathing heavily as if "he just did some type of exercise." Estevez also stated that, based on his experience in shooting investigations, he knew that individuals tend to remove their shirts to avoid identification, and that his suspicions were heightened because:

[Defendant was] sweating. It's ... early in the morning in March, still cold out. That didn't make sense to me. And then he was ... breathing heavy. So at this point I asked him why and he told me he just woke up. So, again, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, something's not right, something's not fitting here. And not to mention, the odor of the burnt ember marijuana at this point is coming out of the room.

Estevez stated that while he was standing in "the doorway," which he clarified to mean "the common hallway area," he looked into defendant's "single bedroom" and observed "a mattress on the floor," a "window on the rear wall," a "dresser" by the window, and "objects scattered around." Estevez informed defendant that he was conducting an investigation and asked defendant to provide identification. Defendant responded by stating that he "had to go get his wallet." As Estevez explained:

[Defendant] then walked towards the dresser on the left side of the room, [and] went to grab the wallet. And at that point, -- now, again, this is a shooting investigation. I'm all over his hands. I'm watching his hands closely, you know, for officer safety. It's small quarters. He goes to the back of the room. I'm watching his hands as he grabs his wallet. I see this small bag of marijuana right next to his wallet.

Estevez testified that from his vantage point the marijuana was "in front of the wallet" on the dresser, and that once he saw the marijuana, he knew that defendant was "going to be under arrest."

As defendant grabbed his wallet and "turn[ed] around to provide ... the identification," Estevez simultaneously "stepp[ed] into the apartment ... to effectuate the arrest." According to Estevez, he and defendant:

met right there in the room. [It was] a matter of a couple of steps and, again, it's close quarters, close proximity. I want to make sure I have control for my safety, for his safety, [and] the safety of the other officer.

Defendant handed his wallet and driver's license to Estevez, who noticed defendant's name was Louis Williams. Estevez testified that at that point, "everything[ ] [was] starting to match up."

He then placed defendant under arrest for possession of marijuana, conducted a protective sweep of the bedroom, and applied for a warrant to search defendant's room for drugs, weapons, and other items. After obtaining the warrant, other police officers searched defendant's bedroom and seized a bag of marijuana and a "Lorcin .25 caliber semi-automatic handgun with a defaced serial number."

The court reserved decision at the conclusion of the suppression hearing. In its subsequent oral opinion, the court explained that it accepted Estevez's testimony "as fact." Based on that testimony, the court found that "the exterior door" of the Spring Street dwelling "was not secured," that when Estevez knocked on it, "it swung open," and that the dwelling was being used as a boarding house.⁴ The court determined that the constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures "only extend to such areas ... in which an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy," and that those safeguards did not extend to "the building in general" or "the common areas" because "those areas are accessible and used by other occupants."

After finding "defendant did not have any privacy right to that common hallway of the boarding house," the court concluded that the officers' actions "were objectively reasonable as they had a lawful right to be at that location where they saw contraband in plain view," and Estevez inadvertently observed the marijuana. Therefore, the court held that "there was no unlawful search or seizure prior to the application for a search warrant," and that "all of the information obtained provided a legitimate basis for Estevez to apply for and obtain a search warrant for the premises." Accordingly, the court denied defendant's motion to suppress.

Defendant raises the following issue on appeal:

POINT I

THE OFFICERS' WARRANTLESS ENTRY INTO THE BUILDING WITH A LOCK ON ITS FRONT DOOR WAS OBJECTIVELY UNREASONABLE.

II.

"An appellate court reviewing a motion to suppress evidence ... must uphold the factual findings underlying the trial court's decision, provided that those findings are ...