NJ: No violation of “neutral and detached magistrate” requirement where issuing magistrate didn’t remember prior prosecution of one defendant when an ADA

The judge issuing the search warrant here had, over six years earlier, as an ADA prosecuted one of the eight defendants in this case. He didn’t remember the case. When it was brought to his attention, he recused from the entire case. All the defendants moved to suppress and dismiss based on the “bright line” rule in State v. McCann, 391 N.J. Super. 542, 919 A.2d 136 (2007), a violation of judicial ethics can lead to that result. The defendants waited a year to raise the issue for strategic reasons, and there was no dispute that there was probable cause and, more notably, there was no allegation of actual bias by the judge because everybody agreed he didn’t remember the defendant. Noting “[t]he ‘overarching objective of the Code of Judicial Conduct is to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary,’” judicial conflicts of interest harm the public perception of the judiciary, the conflict here didn’t warrant suppression because of no memory of the one defendant. Under these facts, the “neutral and detached magistrate requirement” of the Fourth Amendment wasn’t violated, and the McCann “bright line” rule doesn’t govern this type of case. Also, no interests of the exclusionary rule would be served by suppression here. State v. Presley, 2014 N.J. Super. LEXIS 101 (July 17, 2014).