State v. Blaurock
| Decision Date | 10 August 1976 |
| Citation | 143 N.J.Super. 476,363 A.2d 909 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Burton BLAUROCK, and Ruby Blaurock, Defendants-Respondents. |
| Court | New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division |
C. Judson Hamlin, Middlesex County Prosecutor, for plaintiff-appellant. (Richard A. Feldman, Asst. Prosecutor, on the brief).
Mayo & Shihar, New Brunswick, for defendants-respondents.
Before Judges FRITZ, SEIDMAN and MILMED.
The State appeals, upon leave granted, from an order suppressing evidence obtained on a search authorized by warrant.
The affidavit upon which the warrant issued was sworn and subscribed by a police officer. It was dated February 20, 1975. It catalogued as sources of the information related therein: (a) other patrolmen of the police department of the same municipality, (b) a records bureau of the police department of a neighboring municipality and (c) an investigation and surveillance directed by the affiant. The information contained in the affidavit, and particularly the surveillances, clearly permitted an entirely reasonable inference that at least upon some of the days of the reported surveillance defendants, lessees of Apartment E7A of the Pinetree Apartments, were participating in the illegal possession and distribution of marijuana in and from that apartment. We commence by saying that were it not for the question of 'staleness,' which troubled the judge below and determined his decision, there would have been no doubt about the propriety of the warrant.
However, the last reported surveillance was on February 2, 1975 and the affidavit and warrant followed by 18 days. This prompted the judge below to deny the legality of the warrant, and to say in a brief written opinion:
In the case at bar there was no attempt in the affidavit to set forth facts upon which the issuing judge could have determined at the time of the authorization of the search warrant that there was probably (sic) cause.
Conjecture that the surveillance continued down to the date of the application for the search warrant and disclosed sufficient reasons for issuing the search warrant is not sufficient.
We disagree and reverse.
Nobody questions the proposition that probable cause to justify the issuance of a search warrant must exists at the time the warrant is issued. Sgro v. United States, 287 U.S. 206, 53 S.Ct. 138, 77 L.Ed. 260 (1932). But, as is pointed out in United States v. Harris, 482 F.2d 1115 (3 Cir. 1973),
* * * The question of the staleness of probable cause depends more on the nature of the unlawful activity alleged in the affidavit than the dates and times specified therein. * * * (at 1119)
With respect to the issue of staleness, the question which the judge must answer on the motion to suppress is no different from that which confronts the issuing officer: do all the circumstances exhibited to him reasonably conduce to a belief that the law was being violated at the time the warrant...
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State v. Novembrino
...The affidavit at issue in this case is substantially less specific as to time than the affidavit construed in State v. Blaurock, 143 N.J.Super. 476, 363 A.2d 909 (App.Div.1976). In that case the Appellate Division refused to suppress evidence where the affidavit was challenged on "staleness......
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Allen v. Passaic County
...become stale, it has become so because of this litigation and not by any actions of the defendants. See State v. Blaurock, 143 N.J.Super. 476, 479-480, 363 A.2d 909 (App.Div.1976). Moreover, the Sheriff has a continuing accountability to insure that employees charged with the responsibility......
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State v. Novembrino
...dealing drugs from the gas station without giving any indication of whether the information was stale, State v. Blaurock, 143 N.J.Super. 476, 479, 363 A.2d 909 (App.Div.1976), or just how he concluded defendant was dealing drugs. State v. Fariello, 71 N.J. 552, 366 A.2d 1313 (1976). That in......
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Cardozo v. State
...stated: The core question when staleness is raised in an attack upon a search warrant was simply stated in State v. Blaurock, 143 N.J.Super. 476, 363 A.2d 909, 910 (App.Div.1976), as follows: '... do all the circumstances exhibited ... reasonably conduce to a belief that the law was being v......