The New Jersey Appellate Division issued a crucial ruling on the police’s authority to question a passenger during a vehicle stop. Along the way, the Court admonished the parties for using “a too casual approach to the handling of evidence on a suppression motion.” Police pulled over a car in which the defendant rode as a passenger. At the suppression hearing, the parties stipulated that the body-worn camera footage corroborated an officer’s testimony. During his testimony at the suppression hearing, the officer stated that he usually asked for a passenger’s license because, if he intended to arrest the driver, he’d know if the passenger could drive the car. Here, the officer could not remember but assumed that’s why he asked for the defendant-passenger’s license. The officer ran the defendant’s information and found a warrant. Incident to arrest, the police recovered drugs from the defendant. The trial court denied the motion to suppress. At trial, the body camera, which was not played at the suppression hearing, showed that the defendant told the officer he had a state ID, not a driver’s license. The Appellate Division reversed and held that the officers’ demand for the defendant’s identification after he told them he did not possess a driver’s license exceeded the scope of this routine traffic stop.
