On December 4, 2025, a unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court decided the Monmouth County case of State v. Paul Caneiro. The principal issue concerned application of the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement during an active fire.
Justice Fasciale wrote for a unanimous Court in relevant part: A fire was reported at defendant Paul J. Caneiro’s home at around 5:02 a.m. in November 2018. About forty minutes after arriving at defendant’s home, and while the house fire remained active, police seized, without a warrant, a security camera digital video recorder (DVR) located in the home’s attached garage.
The State alleges that defendant murdered his brother, his brother’s wife, and their two children, and then set their house ablaze to cover up his involvement in those crimes. The State further contends that defendant then set his own house on fire with his wife and children asleep inside as a ruse to suggest that criminals targeted both families. The State asserts that the DVR showed defendant disconnecting the security camera system prior to starting the fire in his house. Defendant moved pre-trial to suppress the DVR.
After a hearing, the trial judge granted defendant’s motion. He determined that the warrantless seizure of the DVR was not justified by exigent circumstances because the garage fire “had been fully extinguished for nearly thirty minutes,” and although the fire in the main house remained active, “the garage was located at the farthest possible point from the remaining fire.” Considering the facts and circumstances, the trial judge concluded that the “deliberate approach taken to locate, retrieve, and seize the DVR, following the extinguishment of the garage fire and the establishment of scene control, was inconsistent with what an objectively reasonable officer would have done under the same circumstances.” The Appellate Division affirmed the suppression order.
Under the totality of the circumstances in this case, the police acted in an objectively reasonable manner to meet an exigency that did not permit time to secure a warrant. No bright-line rule governs the question of exigency. Determining whether the exigency exception to the warrant requirement applies requires courts to conduct an objective, fact-sensitive analysis. Drawing de novo legal conclusions from the facts found by the trial judge, the Court finds that here, time was of the essence, delay was not reasonable, and seizure of the DVR by the police without a warrant was justified by exigent circumstances.
Under both the United States and the New Jersey Constitutions, searches and seizures conducted without warrants issued upon probable cause are presumptively unreasonable and therefore invalid unless the State shows by a preponderance of evidence that the search falls within one of the well-recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. Here, the State invoked the exigency exception. Exigency is found when circumstances preclude expenditure of the time necessary to obtain a warrant because of a probability that the suspect or the object of the search will disappear, or both.
To determine whether exigent circumstances excused law enforcement officers from obtaining a warrant, the Court has provided a non-exhaustive list of factors that may be considered in analyzing whether law enforcement acted in an objectively reasonable manner to meet an exigency: “(1) the seriousness of the crime under investigation, (2) the urgency of the situation faced by the officers, (3) the time it would have taken to secure a warrant, (4) the threat that evidence would be destroyed or lost or people would be endangered unless immediate action was taken, (5) information that the suspect was armed and posed an imminent danger, and (6) the strength or weakness of the probable cause relating to the item to be searched or seized.” State v. Manning, 240 N.J. 308, 333 34 (2020).
The Court disagrees with the application of the Manning factors by the trial and appellate courts here. The parties do not dispute the seriousness of the crime under investigation — aggravated arson. The first Manning factor weighs in the State’s favor. Focusing on the attached garage, the trial judge concluded that the second Manning factor weighed against finding the seizure of the DVR to be justified by exigent circumstances. However, courts must consider all the circumstances to determine whether the police had “an objectively reasonable basis to believe” that securing a warrant was not practicable because of “the urgency of the situation” they faced. An exigency analysis focuses on what officers knew at the time of making a warrantless seizure or entry. Here, when officers arrived at the scene, the house was “engulfed in flames.” A sergeant whose testimony the trial judge found credible was worried because “the fire was near the gas meter,” and “could have spread at any moment” or “accelerated and engulfed more of the house.” Fire suppression activities involving water, chemical fire extinguishers, and power saws were ongoing and could have damaged the sensitive digital evidence in the DVR. The second Manning factor weighs heavily in the State’s favor.
As to the third Manning factor, the trial judge concluded that “nothing in the record indicates that delaying to obtain a warrant would have jeopardized the DVR or compromised safety at the scene.” Applying the undisputed facts, however, the Court concludes that it was objectively reasonable for police to believe there was insufficient time to secure a warrant. Officers understood how quickly the fire spread from the basement to the attic, creating a reasonable belief that if smoke or fire reached the garage again it would happen rapidly. It is difficult to predict the length of time it would have taken to obtain a search warrant, especially at 5:30 a.m. The third Manning factor weighs in the State’s favor.
As to the fourth Manning factor, the sergeant testified that the fire in the house remained active, and while the garage itself was no longer on fire, “the fire was near the gas meter.” The sergeant’s testimony also reflected that officers did not remove any evidence of potential arson that they were able to document on their body cameras — they removed only the evidence that would be irretrievably destroyed if the fire spread. The fourth Manning factor weighs heavily in the State’s favor.
The fifth Manning factor weighs in defendant’s favor: police at the scene had not yet identified defendant as a suspect in the alleged arson and were unaware of the earlier murders. The sixth Manning factor is “the strength or weakness of the probable cause relating to the item to be searched or seized.” Officers found a burnt plastic gas can in the driveway that appeared to have been taken from another location on defendant’s property. Police also found wet boot prints near the gas can storage area, burn marks on the hood of the car parked outside the garage door, and the smell of gasoline near the garage. Officers identified multiple ignition points — indicative of arson. And the sergeant was aware from viewing defendant’s security cameras in a prior, unrelated investigation that the cameras would likely show the cause of both the fire and the damage to the hood of defendant’s car. The sixth Manning factor thus weighs in the State’s favor.
Two cases on which defendant relies — Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499 (1978), and Michigan v. Clifford, 464 U.S. 287 (1984) — are distinguishable from the present case. The Court does not impose any per se rules related to fires. The exigent circumstances exception cannot be defined with precision. Each case turns on its own unique facts, and application of the exigent circumstances exception demands an objective, fact-specific analysis.
Here, a unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court overturned the unanimous decision of an appellate panel and trial judge. This was an interlocutory appeal that was argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court on November 3 and decided just one month later, on December 4. The quick turnaround time is attributable to the fact that the case had an imminent trial date. This decision had a significant effect on the evidence that could be used at trial.
