The New Jersey Appellate Division has delivered a significant ruling regarding the use of “tower dump warrants”—a powerful investigative tool that sweeps up cell phone data from cell towers near a crime scene—declaring the specific warrants used in a recent robbery and sexual assault case unconstitutional, but ultimately allowing the evidence against the defendants to stand on separate grounds.
The court’s decision provides critical clarity on the privacy rights of New Jersey residents when law enforcement uses technology to track mobile devices, establishing that while such searches require a warrant supported by probable cause, the warrants must be narrowly tailored to avoid invading the privacy of thousands of innocent people.
The Crime and the Investigation
The case stemmed from a violent home invasion and robbery in South Plainfield in November 2020, where a family was targeted. Law enforcement identified defendants Phillip D. Bryant and James Hunter as suspects, along with a third individual, Wayne Smith, based on witness accounts, surveillance footage, and existing investigative leads.
To solidify the case, police obtained four “communication data warrants” (CD warrants), often called tower dumps, targeting cell towers near the crime scene. These warrants sought stored records for *all* cell phones that connected to those towers during the relevant time window (9:15 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.).
The warrants were exceptionally broad, requesting extensive identifying information—including names, billing addresses, and Social Security numbers—for every device that pinged the towers. In response, the State received data relating to approximately 10,477 cell phone users across a search area spanning over 193 square miles.
Warrants Deemed Unconstitutional Overreach
Defendants Hunter and Bryant moved to suppress the evidence derived from these tower dumps, arguing they constituted unconstitutional “general warrants” that violated both the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution.
The Appellate Division, in an opinion delivered by Judge Gilson, agreed with the defendants on the core constitutional challenge.
“We hold that governmental requests for data from cell towers are searches and require a warrant,” the court stated. “We further hold that those warrants must be supported by probable cause and must be particularized in the information they seek.”
Crucially, the court found the four warrants issued in this case failed the particularity requirement.
“There was no probable cause to believe that thousands of individual cell phone users were involved in the home invasion, robbery, and sexual assault,” the opinion noted. The warrants improperly sought identifying information for thousands of uninvolved citizens, transforming the search into an unconstitutional, wide-ranging sweep. The court explicitly rejected arguments that the Third-Party Doctrine (which suggests users have no privacy in data shared with a phone company) applies in New Jersey, citing established state precedent that prioritizes an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
Evidence Against Defendants Saved by “Inevitable Discovery”
Despite ruling the warrants unconstitutional, the Appellate Division ultimately affirmed the trial court’s decision to deny the motion to suppress the evidence *as it related to Hunter and Bryant*.
The court invoked the “inevitable discovery doctrine.” This legal principle allows evidence obtained illegally to be admitted if the prosecution can prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that investigators would have lawfully obtained the same evidence through normal investigative procedures anyway.
The court found the record supported this doctrine. Before receiving the massive data dump, investigators already had leads pointing to Wayne Smith, and knew one robber contacted Smith during the crime. The State presented evidence that they had already obtained separate, lawful warrants for Smith’s phone records.
By cross-referencing Smith’s data, police could have lawfully identified Hunter, and then, through a subsequent lawful warrant targeting Hunter’s communications during the crime, they could have identified Bryant. Because the necessary evidence concerning the defendants would have been discovered through lawful means independent of the flawed tower dumps, the evidence against them was allowed to stand.
New Rules for Handling Third-Party Data
Perhaps the most lasting impact of the ruling concerns the fate of the data collected from the 10,477 innocent cell phone users whose information was swept up by the overbroad warrants.
The court directed that the State must promptly and permanently delete all information pertaining to these third-party users once the current criminal proceedings and appeals are concluded.
“If the State was to maintain and use that information in the future, the constitutional rights of those users would be violated because the CD warrants were not supported by probable cause concerning them, nor were the warrants particularized as to them,” the opinion warned.
The court acknowledged the State’s need to preserve evidence during litigation but mandated that any desire to retain third-party data beyond the appellate process requires a specific, court-approved order detailing the purpose and duration of retention.
This ruling sets a clear precedent in New Jersey: Tower dumps are searches requiring warrants supported by probable cause, and the scope of those warrants must be strictly limited to avoid violating the constitutional privacy rights of the general public.