No warrant needed for search in emergency, says N.J. high court.

A misdialed phone led to a New Jersey man's arrest when police officers responded to the call and found no emergency--but a stash of illegal drugs instead. The state supreme court affirmed the man's conviction in a 5-4 decision, the first to allow a warrantless search under New Jersey's so-called emergency-aid doctrine. (State v. Frankel, 847 A.2d 561 (N.J. 2004).)

In December 1999, Darlene Ecks, the emergency dispatcher in Freehold Township, received a 911 call. She answered it, but nobody was on the line. After trying to call the number back and receiving busy signals, Ecks sent a police car to the address shown on her computer screen. When officer Russell Gelbet arrived, Gary Frankel answered the door and said he hadn't made the call and that no one else was in the house.

Gelber testified in court that Frankel was behaving oddly: He stood behind a sheet draped in the doorway, seemed "nervous," and told Gelber that he had "sexual stuff" in the house he was embarrassed to let the officer see. When Gelber said he wanted to make sure nobody in the house was hurt or in danger, Frankel asked for a warrant and asked Gelber if he should contact an attorney.

Frankel's reaction of "shock and panic" to a "simple request" convinced the officer to radio for backup "out of concern for his own safety and fearing that someone inside the house was in danger," the court wrote.

When backup officers arrived, they entered the house, where they found a stash of drugs in a closet; marijuana plants and a "grow light" in the bathroom; and more marijuana plants, a watering system, and grow lights in the basement. The officers arrested Frankel and found no one else in the house.

At his trial, Frankel argued that he had never made the 911 call--he said his computer had dialed it by accident--and argued that because the search was warrantless and conducted without his consent, the evidence it yielded should be suppressed. The trial court found for Frankel, but the appeals court reversed the decision.

The state supreme court justices called it "a close case," but the majority found that the state had met the three-pronged test of the emergency-aid doctrine that allows an exception to the Fourth Amendment and the state's bill of rights. For a court to apply the exception, the state must show that there was an "objectively reasonable" belief that the situation was dangerous and required immediate action; that the intent of the search was not to find evidence of a crime, but only to find people who might need emergency help; and that the evidence was in plain view.

The court conceded that it was difficult to balance "the competing values at stake." The right to privacy is "among the most cherished rights," the court noted, but the Fourth Amendment does "not demand that public safety officials stand by in the face of an imminent danger and delay potential lifesaving measures while critical and precious time is expended obtaining a warrant."

The justices rejected the state's contention that any unanswered 911 call can justify a warrantless search, but they likewise declined to adopt a rule requiring a warrant in every case. The justices cautioned that there is "no bright line or magic formula to be applied across the board. A fact-sensitive analysis must be applied to each case."

Finally, the court said that only rarely does "the duty to preserve and protect life and the need to act decisively and promptly outweigh the privacy interests of an individual. This case presents one such example."

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers each filed amicus briefs in the supreme court case. Frankel was sentenced to two years' probation.