By Kevin Shea
nj.com
NEWARK, N.J. — A man who left behind a suitcase when he fled arresting officers outside Newark’s Penn Station can’t legally object to cops opening the abandoned luggage without a warrant, the N.J. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
Moments after they caught the suspect, Curtis Gartrell, New Jersey Transit officers opened the blue rolling suitcase and found two handguns, drugs and cash, according to court papers. Police then charged him with several related crimes.
The cops had pulled aside Gartrell in November 2019 due to an incident on a train and were moving to arrest him because he had an unrelated warrant.
During his trial in Essex County, Gartrell’s lawyers challenged the officers’ right to open the luggage without a warrant, arguing the evidence inside should be suppressed. The trial judge agreed, finding Gartrell did not abandon the luggage because he wanted to get rid of the suitcase — he ran because he did not want to get arrested.
The trial judge rejected prosecutors’ argument that officers could open the suitcase because the incident qualified as one of the exceptions to the warrant rule.
Prosecutors went to the Appellate Division, which overturned the trial judge’s ruling, and found Gartrell abandoned the luggage and effectively gave up his rights to legally challenge what police said they found inside.
Gartrell’s lawyers in the Office of the Public Defender successfully petitioned the state Supreme Court to hear the case, and his criminal case was put on hold.
On Wednesday, the court backed the appellate court, ruling 6-1 that Gartrell legally abandoned the suitcase.
“The act of fleeing to avoid a lawful arrest in a public place demonstrates defendant’s intent to place as much distance as possible between himself and the property left behind,” the high court wrote. “When defendant ran from police in the heavily trafficked area on the sidewalk outside of Penn Station, without any indication that he intended to return, he abandoned the suitcase in a public place.”
Because the court ruled the luggage abandoned, the justices did not consider whether the incident qualified as an exception to warrant rules or if the officers violated the Constitution when they searched the bag.
Frank J. Ducoat, director of appeals at the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, said the decision was a “step forward” for the state’s justice system.
“The Court reaffirmed the longstanding principle that arrestees who flee police in a public place not only put the lives of law enforcement officers and citizens alike in danger, but also abandon for constitutional purposes their interest in any property they leave behind,” he said in a statement.
The dissenting state Supreme Court justice, Michael Noriega, called it a “step backward” for New Jersey.
Noriega said his colleagues needlessly broadened the previously narrow legal definition of abandonment. This will only allow police a “shortcut to violate a suspect’s constitutional protections,” he wrote in his dissenting decision.
If officers had followed proper methods under the Constitution to open Gartrell’s suitcase, they would have achieved the same result, Noriega wrote in the decision.
Gartrell ran because he was trying to evade police, not give up his luggage, wrote Noriega, the state Supreme Court’s newest justice. And the Supreme Court’s decision now draws a bright line that says the moment people run from the police, they give up their ownership of property.
“A defendant’s criminal behavior is not an automatic license to short circuit the Constitution,” Noriega wrote.
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