Paterson police conducted a search of a home in 2017. Here's why a court ruled it illegal

PATERSON — The state appellate court last week decided city police detectives conducted an illegal search when, during an October 2017 patrol, they entered a Manchester Avenue house where one of them allegedly saw a man with a gun run aside.

In its ruling, the New Jersey Superior Court's Appellate Division determined that the detectives should have gotten a warrant before searching the house because the officers did not know whether the man legally owned the gun and he had not given any indication that he was a threat to fire it at anyone.

As a result, the court said, the prosecutors should not have been allowed to use as evidence the two guns and various drugs the detectives seized during the search in the trial against Michael Goodwin, the Paterson man they followed into the building. The court set aside Goodwin’s 2019 convictions for resisting arrest along with weapons and narcotics crimes.

What comes next

The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office now must decide whether to appeal the court’s illegal search ruling, pursue the charges without the evidence from the house, or drop the charges.

Goodwin — who has an extensive criminal record that included two attempted murder indictments in shootings before the case in question — has spent 5½ years in prison since he was arrested at the Manchester Avenue house. He was not going to be eligible for parole until October, state Corrections Department records show.

Goodwin, now 36, had attempted during his trial to get the evidence from the warrantless search dismissed, but the Superior Court judge overseeing that proceeding ruled against him. He also had filed a civil lawsuit in December 2017, two months after his arrest, alleging the search was illegal. But Goodwin was pursuing that civil complaint without a lawyer and the case ended up being dismissed over his lack of responses while he was in prison to various correspondence from the court.

Goodwin’s lawyer in the successful appeal could not be reached for comment.

What happened in 2017

On the evening of Oct. 17, 2017, four Paterson narcotics detectives were patrolling the Manchester Avenue area. They spotted a man they believed was homeless coming from the rear of the house at 58 Manchester and stopped to question him, the appellate court decision said.

One of the detectives, Jason English, “heard a noise” and saw Goodwin come out of the rear of the house next door, 56 Manchester. English testified that he looked through a hole in the fence and spotted a silver handgun in Goodwin’s right hand, the court decision said.

“Gun. There’s a man with a gun,” English yelled, allegedly causing Goodwin to run back inside. English then hopped the fence, kicked in the back door of the house and found a gun on a kitchen counter. He allegedly saw Goodwin run through the living room and exit through the door, into the apartment building’s common hallway, the court ruling said.

The detectives apprehended Goodwin at a third-floor apartment entrance, where they allegedly seized a silver gun from the suspect’s waistband as well as heroin and marijuana, the ruling said.

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Why the search was ruled illegal

The appellate court gave two reasons for finding the warrantless search illegal:

• First, the court said English had no probable cause for being in the backyard of 58 Manchester when he allegedly saw Goodwin with the gun on a porch at 56 Manchester.

• Therefore, the court said, English’s presence in the yard was illegal and anything he saw while there could not be used as evidence.

But the court also ruled that if English had probable cause to be in the yard at 58 Manchester, the search of the house next door still would have been improper.

“As noted, the detectives justified their search of 56 Manchester Ave. based on Detective English's observation of defendant holding a handgun on the porch and retreating into the house when he heard Detective English call out about a man with a gun,” said the court ruling. “Those two facts, individually or in combination, failed to establish probable cause.

“First, the mere possession of a weapon on the porch of a home, without more, does not support the trial court's finding that defendant was engaged in illegal activity,” the court continued. “The only activity Detective English observed was not per se illegal, and thus could not establish probable cause.”

The appellate court cited a New Jersey Supreme Court decision that said possession of a gun “is not always and everywhere criminal.”

The court said the decision to allow the guns and drugs found during the illegal search to be used as evidence in Goodwin’s trial was “clearly capable of producing an unjust result.”

Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press.

Email: editor@patersonpress.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ police conducted illegal search in 2017, court says