## Facts

- State police investigated an illegal sports bookmaking operation involving Robert A. Notaro.
- A judicially authorized wiretap on Notaro’s phone captured several betting-related calls between Notaro and Merrell Hunt.
- Surveillance and informant information linked Hunt and Ralph Pirillo, Sr. to bookmaking activity.
- A reliable informant later told Detective M. Robert Warner that Hunt ran a daily gambling business using two phone numbers.
- Warner went to the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company and, without a warrant or judicial authorization, obtained Hunt’s telephone toll billing records for a two-month period.
- The toll records showed patterns of calls, including repeated calls to a sports-results service, and were used to support warrants and the gambling prosecution.
- Defendants moved to suppress; the trial court denied suppression, defendants pleaded guilty under an agreement, and the Appellate Division affirmed.
- The Supreme Court of New Jersey granted review primarily to address the constitutionality of obtaining toll billing records without a warrant.

## Issues

1. Whether police acquisition of a subscriber’s telephone toll billing records from a telephone company, without a warrant, violates Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution.
2. Whether federal Fourth Amendment doctrine (including *Smith v. Maryland*) controls the state-constitutional analysis of privacy in toll billing records.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed the suppression ruling as to the toll billing records.
- The court held that, under Article I, paragraph 7, telephone subscribers have a protected privacy interest in toll billing records.
- Obtaining those records from the telephone company without a warrant or a recognized exception constituted an unreasonable search and seizure under the New Jersey Constitution.
- The court directed suppression of the toll records and of derivative evidence to the extent required by state exclusionary principles.
- The court found no merit in defendants’ other suppression arguments.

## Legal Principles

- Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution can provide greater protection than the Fourth Amendment, and federal search-and-seizure decisions set a minimum level of protection rather than a limit on state protections.
- Telephone toll billing records can reveal identities of persons called, call frequency, and calling patterns that may disclose associations and activities; this supports a reasonable expectation of privacy in such records.
- Routine disclosure of dialing information to a regulated telephone utility for billing and operational purposes does not, by itself, eliminate state-constitutional privacy protection.
- As a general rule, law enforcement must obtain a warrant or comparable judicial authorization to access a subscriber’s toll billing records from a telephone company, absent a valid warrant exception.

## Conclusion

The court held that warrantless police acquisition of a subscriber’s telephone toll billing records from a telephone company violates Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution, requiring suppression of the records and appropriately tainted derivative evidence.


State v. Hunt, 91 N.J. 338, 450 A.2d 952 (N.J. 1982)