{"id":61564,"date":"2025-07-30T15:30:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T20:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61564"},"modified":"2025-07-30T15:41:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T20:41:52","slug":"nj-state-const-requires-sw-for-car-parked-at-state-police-barracks-after-dui-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=61564","title":{"rendered":"NJ: State const. requires SW for car parked at state police barracks after DUI arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Under the New Jersey Constitution, a car impounded after a DUI arrest and parked at the State Police barracks is not subject to the automobile exception. A warrant is required. State v. Fenimore<\/a>, 2025 N.J. LEXIS 747 (July 30, 2025). From the syllabus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The automobile exception to the warrant requirement under the New Jersey Constitution is significantly more protective of motorists\u2019 privacy interests than its federal counterpart. The Court has identified several rationales that support New Jersey\u2019s automobile exception, including (1) the risk of the loss or destruction of evidence; (2) the unacceptable risk of serious bodily injury and death to officers, drivers, and passengers from prolonged encounters on the shoulder of a crowded highway; (3) the risk that motorists may feel compelled to consent to warrantless searches of their vehicles, which may be made on less than probable cause; (4) the recognition that, in certain circumstances, the privacy intrusion occasioned by a prompt search based on probable cause is not necessarily greater than a prolonged detention of the vehicle and its occupants while the police secure a warrant; and (5) the undue burden and impracticability of requiring police to post a special police detail to guard the immobilized automobile while pursuing a warrant. (pp. 10-14)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Under \u201cJohn\u2019s Law,\u201d when a person has been arrested for DWI, law enforcement \u201cshall impound the vehicle that the person was operating at the time of arrest\u201d \u201cfor a period of 12 hours after the time of arrest.\u201d N.J.S.A. 39:4-50.23. (pp. 14-15)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. In State v. Witt, the Court explicitly \u201cpart[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.\u201d 223 N.J. 409, 448 (2015). It expressly noted that \u201c[w]hatever inherent exigency justifies a warrantless search at the scene \u2026 certainly cannot justify the failure to secure a warrant after towing and impounding the car at headquarters when it is practicable to do so.\u201d Id. at 448-49. And it specifically concluded that, going forward, New Jersey\u2019s \u201cautomobile exception\u201d would be limited \u201cto on-scene warrantless searches.\u201d Id. at 449. Here, there was no \u201con-scene search\u201d: the car was searched in a police barracks parking lot, not on the scene of a motor vehicle stop or any other incident. And the facts make clear there was no other \u201cinherent exigency\u201d to \u201cjustif[y] a warrantless search \u2026 under the automobile exception.\u201d Id. at 448-49. Further, none of the rationales the Court has identified to support New Jersey\u2019s more limited automobile exception apply to the factual setting of this case. Therefore, the warrant requirement established by the State Constitution remained. (pp. 15-20)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Under the New Jersey Constitution, a car impounded after a DUI arrest and parked at the State Police barracks is not subject to the automobile exception. A warrant is required. State v. Fenimore, 2025 N.J. LEXIS 747 (July 30, 2025). … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automobile-exception","category-state-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61568,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61564\/revisions\/61568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}