New Jersey Constitution protects private property, especially one’s home, from warrantless search and seizure. However, under certain circumstances, the police may enter a private residence to arrest a dangerous suspect, even if there is no warrant to enter and search such residence. In such case, any evidence, such as weapons or illegal drugs, found in the residence in plain view, may lead to separate charges.

In a recent published opinion, State v. Craft (Docket# A-5022–10T2), decided on May 14, 2012, New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, looked at one of those cases. In that case, the police had a warrant to arrest one James Craft, based on a shooting incident. Police officers arrived to the residence of James Craft’s mother, but they did not have a warrant to enter her residence. The Court found, however, that the mother voluntarily let the police enter the apartment. Next, the mother said that she did not know where her son was and offered to the police officers that she would call on the son’s cell phone. When she called James Craft’s cell phone, one police officer heard a phone ringing in one of the rooms of the residence, behind a closed door. The officer then entered that room and found the suspect there trying to escape through a window. The police then arrested James Craft and found an unregistered weapon and illegal drugs in the room, in plain view.

The issue before the Appellate Division was whether the police officer could open the bedroom door in the mother’s residence, without having a warrant to search that residence, after the officer heard the phone ringing behind the door. The Court held that under the circumstances the actions of the police officers were “objectively reasonable” and they could enter the mother’s bedroom. The Court reasoned that the police had reasons to believe that potentially armed and dangerous suspect was in the bedroom, after they heard the phone ringing, and it was impracticable in that situation to obtain a separate search warrant. The Court thus concluded that the weapon and the illegal drugs found in the bedroom in plain view should not be suppressed from the evidence.

Many people these days go online to look for legal help. In turn, many lawyers realize that potential clients use Internet to look for legal help – and attorneys do advertise online. Websites like avvo.com are becoming very popular among lawyers and potential clients. Avvo.com can be generally described as an Internet forum where anybody can post a legal question and wait to see if a lawyer will answer that question on-line. Needless to say, that those questions and answers become visible to general public.

So, if you are hit with a legal issue in your life, is it wise to go online and ask your question at sites like avvo.com? Well, it may be a good first step, but chances are that you should probably speak to an attorney in private, if your situation is serious enough. Consider these points:

• Many legal situations are very fact-sensitive. This means that in order to better evaluate your case, an attorney may need to ask you many follow-up questions, which you may consider totally irrelevant, but answers to which can be very important for your specific case. Posting question at avvo.com often does not involve any follow-up questions and answers.

• Attorneys’ answers to your questions posted at avvo.com do not constitute legal advice: this is the policy of the company that runs the website. Most lawyers are very careful when answering those questions online – they emphasize that you should not rely on their general responses to your on-line questions. By posting an answer to your question, they may provide some general idea of what to expect if you go to court, and what kind of lawyer you should talk to.

• When posting your legal question at avvo.com, you are required to indicate your town and state. Note, that some lawyers, who answer question at avvo, are not even licensed to practice law in the state where the asker resides. This means that such lawyers may be ineligible to represent you in your state – they are just giving you some general idea about your question.

• Whatever you post online becomes public information, and, under certain circumstances, may be used against you in court. Therefore, you should be very careful when disclosing your private sensitive information on-line – in fact, you probably should notdisclose it to public at all!

In sum, while it may be good to use avvo.com as a starting point in looking forlegal help, it is probably wise not to rely on the website too much: you may want to meet and discuss your matter with an attorney in private.

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