Opinion
DOCKET NO. A-3674-11T4
01-29-2014
STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. WALTER M. HARRISON, Defendant-Appellant.
Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (Laura B. Lasota, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, of counsel and on the brief). Joseph L. Bocchini, Jr., Mercer County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (William A. Haumann, Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief).
NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE
APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION
Before Judges Fisher, Koblitz and O'Connor.
On appeal from Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Mercer County, Indictment No. 09-10-1041.
Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (Laura B. Lasota, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, of counsel and on the brief).
Joseph L. Bocchini, Jr., Mercer County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (William A. Haumann, Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief). PER CURIAM
After his motion to suppress the cocaine found in his pocket was denied, defendant Walter M. Harrison pleaded guilty to third-degree possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute within 1000 feet of school property, N.J.S.A. 2C:35- 7. He was sentenced to five-and-one-half years in prison with a thirty-one month period of parole disqualification. He appeals the denial of his motion to suppress. For the reasons expressed in Judge Robert C. Billmeier's thorough written opinion of February 25, 2011, we affirm.
Two officers from the Trenton Police Department, Detectives Jason Astbury and Ryan Woodhead, and defendant testified at the hearing. We discern the following facts from the police testimony. The two officers and two others, all members of the Trenton Anti-Crime Unit, responded to an apartment building on Beechwood Avenue shortly after ten p.m. after receiving several tips from neighbors complaining about drug activity taking place in the open inside the building at that location. They looked into the vestibule of the building and saw defendant display an item in the palm of his hand to another man. They walked toward the two men to investigate what appeared to them to be a drug transaction, whereupon the men walked off in different directions. As defendant was stopped by the police, they saw him put an object into his right front pocket. They directed defendant to stop and "place his hands in the air" and asked him what was in his pocket. Defendant responded "just a little rock." The officers then retrieved the cocaine from defendant's pocket.
Defendant testified to the contrary, that the police searched him twice finding no incriminating evidence and ultimately found cocaine in a mailbox. The judge found the officers more credible than defendant and found the police justified in their investigatory stop and subsequent arrest of defendant.
On appeal defendant raises one issue:
THE TRIAL COURT ERRED IN DENYING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS BECAUSE THE DETECTIVES DID NOT HAVE THE REQUISITE REASONABLE SUSPICION TO CONDUCT AN INVESTIGATORY STOP OF DEFENDANT. THEREFORE, THE DRUGS SEIZED MUST BE SUPPRESSED.
"Our standard of review requires that we defer to the trial court's factual findings on a motion to suppress." State v. Vargas, 213 N.J. 301, 326 (2013). As Judge Billmeier noted in his opinion, the police were engaged in an investigatory stop when they told defendant to stop and raise his hands. Such a stop requires specific articulable facts that support a reasonable suspicion that defendant was engaged in criminal activity. The report of recent drug activity in the exact location where defendant and the other man were huddled inspecting a small object in the palm of defendant's hand, coupled with their departure upon the approach of the police, provided these detectives who had extensive narcotics experience with sufficient reasonable suspicion to justify the investigatory stop. See State v Pineiro, 181 N.J. 13, 25 (2004) (finding reasonable suspicion existed for an investigatory stop based on a police officer observing a cigarette pack exchanging hands in an area where drugs were known to be sold).
Defendant relies on State v. Kuhn, 213 N.J. Super. 275 (App. Div. 1986). In Kuhn, however, the police only observed two individuals standing outside a car with another person in the front passenger seat in the parking lot of a bar. Id. at 277. The car was diagonally parked across two straight-line parking spaces in a high-crime area. Ibid. The police maintained this configuration alone resembled a drug transaction. Ibid. We explained that there was no observation of drugs or weapons, no object changed hands, no recent crimes were committed in the area and the police did not receive an informant's tip that a drug sale was going to occur in that area. Id. at 280-81. Here, however, as Judge Billmeier noted, the officers saw a small object being shown by one man to another and had received complaints that people were selling drugs in the exact spot where defendant was observed engaging in what the officers reasonably suspected was a drug transaction.
Affirmed.
I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy of the original on file in my office.
CLERK OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION