State v. Fenimore, ___ N.J. ___ (2025). Both the United States and New Jersey Constitutions protect the people against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and prohibit the issuance of search warrants without “probable cause.” Both federal and New Jersey law, however, recognize an “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement. But New Jersey’s automobile exception is narrower than the federal exception, as the Supreme Court stated in State v. Witt, 223 N.J. 409 (2015). Today, the Supreme Court ruled that the Appellate Division in this case had interpreted Witt too broadly in reversing a Law Division decision to exclude evidence from a warrantless search. The Supreme Court reversed and excluded the evidence.

In her opinion for a unanimous Court, Justice Wainer Apter summarized the essence of the appeal in a concise opening paragraph. “In this appeal, we consider whether law enforcement’s warrantless search of a car was consistent with our State Constitution when the car was parked in a State Police barracks parking lot; police had arrested the driver, removed the passenger, and obtained the keys; and the car was subject to imminent, mandatory impoundment. We hold that under those circumstances, the automobile exception to the warrant requirement did not apply and the police were required to obtain a warrant before searching the car. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division.”

As part of a State Trooper’s investigation of a harassment complaint against defendant, the Trooper asked defendant to give a statement at the Woodstown police barracks. Thought offered a ride, defendant drove himself to the barracks. Based on a number of things that the Trooper observed once defendant had arrived, the Trooper suspected defendant was intoxicated. The Trooper gave defendant three sobriety tests, two of which defendant failed. The Trooper then arrested him for driving while intoxicated, and “secured defendant to a holding cell bench and required defendant to remove his shoes. He then advised defendant that Troopers would search the car defendant had driven to the station for intoxicants.”

The search turned up heroin, a hypodermic needle, a gun loaded with a high-capacity magazine, bolt cutters, a hammer, and four sets of car keys for other cars, among other things. Defendant was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a controlled dangerous substance, and possession of a prohibited device. He moved to suppress the evidence. The Law Division denied that motion. On appeal, the Appellate Division affirmed.

That court recognized Witt, quoting it as saying that it prohibited an officer from conducting “a warrantless search at headquarters merely because he could have done so on the side of the road.” But the panel, Justice Wainer Apter said, viewed Witt’s reference to “headquarters” to mean “a police impound lot, rather than the parking lot of a police station,” because “when a vehicle is towed and impounded, it is no longer mobile and the inherent exigencies supporting an on-scene search dissipate.” For that and other reasons, the Appellate Division held that the warrantless search “fell squarely within the parameters articulated in Witt.”

The Supreme Court disagreed. Justice Wainer Apter noted that the Law Division’s factual findings were to be upheld if supported by “sufficient credible evidence in the record, but that no deference was owed to the Law Division’s conclusions of law, and de novo review governed the Law Division’s application of law to the facts.

Under John’s Law, N.J.S.A. 39:4-50.23, Troopers were required to impound defendant’s car after his arrest for DWI, so that, as the Trooper testified at the suppression hearing, “this car wasn’t going anywhere . . . for at least twelve hours.” Justice Wainer Apter observed that John’s Law said nothing about searches.

Witt was dispositive. “Witt explicitly ‘part[ed] from federal jurisprudence that allows a police officer to conduct a warrantless search at headquarters merely because he could have done so on the side of the road.’ It expressly noted that ‘[w]hatever inherent exigency justifies a warrantless search at the scene under the automobile exception certainly cannot justify the failure to secure a warrant after towing and impounding the car at headquarters when it is practicable to do so.’ And it specifically concluded that, going forward, New Jersey’s ‘automobile exception’ would be limited ‘to on-scene warrantless searches.’”

The Appellate Division, Justice Wainer Apter said, “interpreted that language to mean that police must get a warrant to search if they tow a car to an impound lot but not if they search a car in a police station parking lot. But Witt does not say that. Instead, Witt uses the term ‘headquarters,’ which could clearly encompass a State Police barracks parking lot.”

There was no “on-scene” search, as “the car was searched in a police barracks parking lot, not on the scene of a motor vehicle stop or any other incident.” And there were no exigent circumstances. The car was under a 12-hour impoundment mandated by John’s Law, as the Trooper had acknowledged. “Moreover, before the search began, defendant had been arrested for DWI and secured, barefoot, to a holding cell bench. The car was in the police barracks parking lot. Police had the keys. [The passenger], although not detained, had been escorted by a State Trooper into the police barracks.”

There was no risk that the car or evidence within it could have been moved, damaged, or destroyed, and no risk of injury to the police, defendant, his passenger, or anyone else, factors that can support the automobile exception. “In short, neither the language and reasoning of Witt, nor the rationales we have previously used to explain our State’s limited automobile exception, justif[ied] the failure to obtain a warrant in this case.”