State v. Cohen

• Decision Date: 19 May 1977
• Citation: 375 A.2d 259,73 N.J. 331
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Corey A. COHEN, Robert M. Pate and Eric Cooperman, Defendants-Respondents.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Page 331

73 N.J. 331

375 A.2d 259

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Corey A. COHEN, Robert M. Pate and Eric Cooperman Defendants-Respondents.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued Jan. 25, 1977.

Decided May 19, 1977.

Willard E. Byer, Jr., Asst. Prosecutor, Hackensack, for plaintiff-appellant (Joseph C. Woodcock, Jr., Bergen County Prosecutor, Hackensack, attorney).

Francis A. Mulhern, Jersey City, for amicus curiae The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (Herbert Ouida, Jersey City, on the brief).

Thomas Pisarri, Hackensack, for defendants-respondents (Lucianna, Bierman & Stillman, Hackensack, attorneys).

The opinion of the court was delivered by

HUGHES, C. J.

On the petition of the State we certified this case, 71 N.J. 344, 364 A.2d 1076 (1976), primarily because we were concerned with the basis on which the Appellate Division had affirmed (139 N.J.Super. 561, 354 A.2d 677 (1976)) a Law Division order suppressing evidence seized on a warrantless search of a motor vehicle. The Appellate Division, setting aside all other issues, approved the invalidation of the search upon the single ground that those police officers who conducted it were police of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and had no legal or jurisdictional authority to arrest at the particular place where it occurred. The former Port of New York Authority, now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, N.J.S.A. 32:1-4, L.1972, c. 69, § 1 (hereafter "Authority"), was admitted as amicus curiae. It challenges the determination of the Appellate Division that the port authority police lacked territorial jurisdictional authority in the present case, because of limitations in the statute conferring jurisdiction. ¹

While the gravamen of the questioned rulings concerns the jurisdictional matter, the intrinsic validity of the search and seizure, territorial jurisdiction apart, is also challenged.

On March 20, 1974, Corey Cohen was arrested while driving his van on the George Washington Bridge, an Authority facility. The arresting officer was Authority police officer Richard Murphy, who charged Cohen with two offenses, possession of more than 25 grams of marijuana in violation of N.J.S.A. 24:21-20 subd. a(4), and operating his van while his license was revoked, in violation of the motor vehicle statutes. Cohen was released on bail and his vehicle was impounded. It remained briefly on Authority property and was later removed for storage to a garage in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Fort Lee is outside the "bridge" area of the Authority but is wholly within the "Port District" delineated by N.J.S.A. 32:1-3, which includes all or part of nine New Jersey counties, as well as all or part of several counties in New York. The garage proprietor was advised to notify the Authority police when Cohen sought to retrieve his van.

A Bergen County Grand Jury promptly indicted Cohen and he was haled to court on April 26, 1974, but did not appear. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest, but upon his appearance for arraignment on May 31, 1974, the court withdrew or "cancelled" the warrant and restored him to bail. ²

On June 11, 1974, Cohen called the garage owner to arrange to retrieve his vehicle, and the owner advised Officer Murphy, requesting instruction as to whether to release the van. Murphy reviewed his "arrest file" which did not show the intervening invalidation of the bench warrant. Believing it still in effect, he consulted his superiors and was ordered, along with a fellow officer, Sergeant Garcia, to apprehend Cohen at the Fort Lee garage.

On arrival there he learned from a phone call which Cohen made while en route to the garage that Cohen was preparing to depart the state as soon as he obtained his van. Cohen eventually arrived at the garage, as a passenger in another vehicle occupied by two companions, Pate and Cooperman, Pate being the driver. Cohen entered the garage office and was arrested because he was unable to convince the officers that the bench warrant had been withdrawn.

After a few minutes Cooperman entered the garage office and he too was detained. Pate had remained in the driver's seat of the vehicle, and Garcia and Murphy approached it warily from opposite sides. After a sequence of events about which there is sharp factual dispute, the officers, noting the odor of marijuana fumes, searched the vehicle. They discovered a tin containing marijuana and a pipe filled with marijuana, still smoking, in the ash tray. The officers then placed Pate, Cooperman and Cohen under arrest for possession of that marijuana.

The motion to suppress evidence was brought before the court pending the presentation of this alleged later offense to the grand jury.

With regard to the dispute over what occurred immediately before the search, the motion judge accepted the version of the police officers as true, as shall we (with one important exception which we shall discuss after examining the jurisdictional question involved):

(W)hen Cohen entered the office, he was placed under arrest and when one of the officers walked over to the van, a door was open; marijuana was smelled and a quantity of marijuana was found concealed in the van. The officer testified that upon smelling the marijuana he placed the other two defendants under arrest and made a search incident to such arrest.

THE SCOPE OF JURISDICTION

It would seem appropriate to deal first with the principal basis upon which both decisions below were predicated, namely, that under the statute footnoted above the powers of Authority police officers, no matter their inherent scope, may be exercised only within the narrow geographical ambit of the "bridge," "tunnel," "plaza," or "approach" facilities mentioned therein.

One would be inclined to pause at the threshold to question this narrow supposition for several reasons, not the least being the broad scope of the statutory language itself:

In addition, the members of such police force shall have all the powers conferred by law on police officers or constables in the enforcement of laws of this state and the apprehension of violators thereof. (N.J.S.A. 32:2-25).

But the courts whose actions we review sensed a relationship between this clause and the sentence which preceded it. The motion judge held:

The Port Authority police had absolutely no authority to pursue the course of conduct that was followed by them on June 11, 1974. N.J.S.A. 32:2-25 * * * states the ambit of the Port Authority police's power. The legislature gave the police express authority to act in the same capacity as any other police force but only within Port Authority territory, i. e. bridges and tunnels * * *.

By the same token the Appellate Division determined that:

This legislative authority limits the geographical area within which Port Authority police may exercise police powers to "any bridge or in any tunnel owned or operated by (the Port Authority) or under its jurisdiction or control or on any of the entrance or exit plazas or approaches adjacent or appurtenant thereto." Concededly, the ABC Towing Garage premises in Fort Lee were beyond the perimeter of this jurisdictional limitation. We do not consider that the last sentence of the statute which equates the extent of the powers of Port Authority police with that of all police officers in any way expands the jurisdictional limits within which Port Authority officers may exercise such powers. (139 N.J.Super. at 564, 354 A.2d at 678).

However, the language of the first sentence of the statute does not expressly limit the arrest jurisdiction of the police to any particular area. The reference to bridges and tunnels are not specifications of the exclusive locale of any arrest, but only part of the substantive description of the offense for which an arrest may be made. And, of most significance, the last sentence of the statute bespeaks law enforcement powers within the full authority of police officers, not merely Authority police, and therefore not limited by implication to those places only where may occur routine traffic or tolls offenses in violation of Port Authority "order, rule or regulation."

Legislative history, as well as Authority expansion over the past half century, would seem to place severe strain upon the validity of the thesis of the motion judge and Appellate Division, not to speak of the different categories of enforcement objectives contemplated by the statutory grant of power itself. The more limited scope of the first sentence deals with violation of "any order, rule or regulation of the port authority for the regulation and control of highway traffic on any bridge or in any tunnel * * * ", factors which become irrelevant once those confines are left behind. Manifestly, traffic regulation applicable to bridge or tunnel passage is not germane to events which might occur after that passage has ended, and the traveler has emerged from such tunnel or bridge to rejoin the non-Authority community. Such a person in the general community remains subject of course to "the laws of this state" whose enforcement by Authority police is contemplated under the specific terms of the second sentence of the statute.

The narrow limitation in the first statutory provision to offenses occurring within tunnels, bridges, plazas and approaches is understandable since at the time of its enactment these were the only transportation facilities operated by the Authority. See N.J.S.A. 32:1-119. But the years have broadened the functional scope of the Authority. By compact between New York and New Jersey with consent of Congress (N.J.S.A. 32:1-1 et seq.; N.Y.Unconsol.Laws § 6401 et seq. (McKinney 1961); H.R.J.Res. 337, 67th Cong., 2d Sess., 42 Stat. 822 (1922); S.J.Res. 88, 67th Cong., 1st Sess., 42 Stat. 174 (1921)) the Authority serves not only the citizens of those states, but the nation itself. Since the birth of the Authority in 1921 and since the enactment of N.J.S.A. 32:2-25 in 1932, the...