Jermaine Thorpe is current in the state prison system serving a five-year term.
TRENTON -- A state appeals panel has reversed a trial court's decision to allow into evidence the .40 caliber handgun police found in a Trenton man's waistband, ruling the officer did not have enough suspicion for the search following an anonymous tip.
Jermaine Thorpe Jermaine Thorpe's lawyer tried to get the handgun suppressed in trial court, but the motion was shot down. So facing up twenty years in prison, he took a plea bargain on two gun felonies and was sentenced to five years in prison in 2012.
A state appeals court ruled Friday that the trial court in Mercer County focused on the wrong part of Thorpe's arrest, finding he shouldn't have been detained in the first place and the gun was fruit of an unlawful search.
Thorpe, 42, is current in the state prison system and assigned to a halfway house in Hudson County, records show. He is scheduled to be released in 2017.
Thorpe was arrested on a North Trenton street after Trenton police officers Jamar Booker and Vito Renna were dispatched to a report of a "a black male with a gun standing next to a silver automobile." The call to police was anonymous.
The decision states that the officers found four black males at the location. Booker initially focused on a man who he knew from prior arrests, but was drawn to Thorpe because he reached for his waistband and then pulled his sweatshirt "over top of his waistband as if to conceal something."
Based on training, experience, and fearing for his safety, the decision states, Booker pulled Thorpe's arm back during a pat down and found a loaded handgun in Thorpe's pants.
At the trial's suppression hearing, the court focused on the search of Thorpe and found Booker had "reasonable articulable suspicion defendant was armed, warranting a protective search."
The appeals court, though, said the initial tip of one black male with a handgun did not match the four males officers found. And they were near a house, not the silver vehicle, which was one or two houses away.
"The police had no articulable suspicion justifying the detention of any one man, let alone all of them," the appeals court wrote.
The trial court overlooked the initial detention of the men, the decision states, and Booker's seizure of the handgun "was the fruit of the unlawful detention of defendant."
Casey DeBlasio, spokeswoman for the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office, said the office is examining the decision. "We're consulting with the Attorney General's office and weighing our options," she said.
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.
