The unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court continued in relevant part: Data supplied by the Attorney General corroborates to some extent what the Supreme Court majority in Glover described as the “commonsense” nature of an inference that the vehicle owner, despite having lost the privilege to drive, can be reasonably suspected to be the person behind the wheel, as does the rebuttable presumption that the owner of a vehicle was the operator of the vehicle codified in New Jersey’s eluding statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:29-2(b). The constitutional requirement of “reasonable and articulable” suspicion to stop a vehicle, articulated in Prouse, remains the Fourth Amendment standard. As Prouse and its progeny forbid, an officer may not stop a car on a mere hunch that the driver may lack proper credentials.
In the absence of information that reasonably indicates to a pursuing officer that the driver is not the vehicle’s owner, the MDT data furnishes reasonable suspicion to authorize the stop. But there is a crucial limitation to that principle: once it becomes reasonably apparent to the officer that the observed driver does not resemble the owner — either by the photo displayed on the MDT or the age, gender, or description of the owner reported on the license or other visible characteristics — the pursuit or stop of that driver must cease. Furthermore, an officer making an MDT-based stop who is presented with sufficient objective reason to believe the driver is not the owner may not, without further additional constitutional justification, linger by the vehicle and continue the roadside detention, even to collect or review the driver’s documentation. Rather, the stop must end. If, however, during the brief time in which the officer is lawfully at the side of the car providing the motorist with a brief explanation that the vehicle was inadvertently stopped and permission to leave, that officer observes in plain view a firearm, illegal narcotics, or other apparent contraband within the vehicle, the officer may pursue a further investigation. In that situation, the officer may detain the motorist for an additional reasonable period based on reasonable suspicion that another, separate crime is being or has been committed. Such further investigation may include a canine drug sniff, provided the sniff does not consume an unreasonable period.
Before body cameras were commonplace, police would routinely claim that contraband was in plain view after it was revealed by a search. This still occurs with body cameras, but less frequently. With body cameras, police will sometimes position the body camera’s lens against a car seat while they search for contraband. When they back away from the seat, the contraband then appears as if it were in plain view.
