State v. Joao C. Torres

SYLLABUS This syllabus is not part of the Court’s opinion. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Court and may not summarize all portions of the opinion. State v. Joao C. Torres (A-15-22) (086812) Argued February 28, 2023 -- Decided May 4, 2023 SABATINO, P.J.A.D. (temporarily assigned), writing for a unanimous Court. In this appeal, the Court considers whether the seizure of defendant Joao Torres’s sweatshirt was justified under the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement in the circumstances presented. Dispatched to a residence where an axe murder had taken place, Detective Marchak learned that the victim and his stepson, defendant, were the only two people believed to have been in the house the previous night. In the bedroom, the mattress was soaked in blood and there was a significant amount of blood on the wall and ceiling. Within a few hours, officers located defendant, placed him under arrest on an outstanding warrant, and, at 3:55 p.m., placed him in a squad car to be transported to the police station. At the station, detectives interviewed defendant until he invoked his right to counsel. Defendant made incriminating admissions during the interview that provided probable cause to arrest him for murder. Detective Marchak observed during the interview that defendant “had something on his hands,” and that he was “picking at his hands” and “rubbing his fingers.” After the interview halted, Detective Marchak consulted other officers “about the preservation of biological evidence.” Detective Marchak documented these observations and his concerns about the risks of dissipation within a written report, which specifically reflected that the detective had observed “possibly biological evidence located on Mr. Torres’s sweatshirt” and stated that an assistant prosecutor advised him “to seize Mr. Torres’s clothing and conduct swabs of his hands in anticipation of approval of a court authorized search warrant for same.” Sergeant James Napp began processing defendant at 6:42 p.m. He photographed defendant from multiple angles; collected his sweatshirt; took more photographs; had defendant remove all but his underwear; took more photographs; swabbed and inspected defendant’s fingernails, ears, and beard; and then had him remove his underwear and put on a plastic suit. Once defendant had changed, he was informed he was being charged with “hindering and resisting” at that point. 1  Officers and the assistant prosecutor eventually reached the emergent duty Superior Court judge at 8:03 p.m. The warrant to take swabs from defendant and to seize his clothing was ultimately granted and signed by the judge at 8:30 p.m. The laboratory analysis of defendant’s sweatshirt identified traces of the victim’s blood. Defendant was charged in a twenty-count indictment with murder, disturbing human remains, and several other offenses. Defendant moved to suppress the warrantless seizure of his clothing. After a hearing, the judge denied the motion. Defendant entered a guilty plea. He then appealed, arguing that “the trial court erred in denying the motion to suppress the evidence seized as a result of the warrantless strip search.” The Appellate Division held that the search was not a strip search but remanded “for more explicit findings of fact and conclusions of law” to justify the warrantless seizure. On remand, the trial court issued an amplified written opinion holding that the seizure of defendant’s clothing was valid as a search incident to arrest under the totality of the circumstances. The Appellate Division affirmed. The Court granted defendant’s petition for certification. 252 N.J. 156 (2022). HELD: The Court endorses and applies the two-factor test of State v. Lentz, 463 N.J. Super. 54, 70 (App. Div. 2020), authorizing delayed warrantless searches of a person incident to that person’s arrest so long as both (1) the delay itself and (2) the scope of the search were objectively reasonable. The totality of circumstances here establishes such reasonableness, particularly given the officers’ observation and video footage showing that defendant appeared to be removing some substance from his fingers and rubbing his clothing while he was being interviewed, as well as the risk that biological evidence would dissipate during the delay while the warrant application was processed. 1. The Court reviews the Strip Search Act and the Attorney General’s Guidelines related to that Act. The statute and the Guidelines do not cover the removal and seizure of defendant’s sweatshirt for two reasons. First, defendant’s zippered sweatshirt, like a coat or a belt, is an article of “outer clothing” expressly excluded from the scope of the statute. N.J.S.A. 2A:161A-3. The fact that the police continued to remove other articles of clothing after obtaining defendant’s sweatshirt is irrelevant to the suppression of the sweatshirt as an item of evidence. The Court’s analysis must consider each portion of a search on its own terms. Second, the restrictions of the statute apply only to someone “detained or arrested for commission of an offense other than a crime.” N.J.S.A. 2A:161A-1 (emphasis added). Although initially arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant, defendant was plainly being detained for murder by the time his clothing was seized. (pp. 20-23) 2 2. It is well established that a Fourth Amendment exception authorizes the warrantless search of persons incident to their lawful arrest, justified by the need (1) to remove any weapons that the arrested person might possess and seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect an escape; and (2) to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. In United States v. Edwards, the Supreme Court held that once an “accused is lawfully arrested and is in custody, the effects in his possession at the place of detention that were subject to search at the time and place of his arrest may lawfully be searched and seized without a warrant even though a substantial period of time has elapsed between the arrest and subsequent administrative processing, on the one hand, and the taking of the property for use as evidence, on the other.” 415 U.S. 800, 807 (1974) (emphasis added). Recently, in Lentz, the Appellate Division applied the Edwards rationale, holding that a delayed search incident to a valid arrest will be constitutional so long as “the delay itself and the scope of the search are objectively reasonable.” 463 N.J. Super. at 71-72, 76. The Court reviews Lentz in detail and notes the caveat in that decision -- that the court’s holding did not “untether the search incident to arrest exception to the warrant requirement from its justification nor give police free reign to conduct warrantless searches without probable cause at any point after a lawful arrest.” Id. at 79. Subject to that important caveat, the Court concurs that Lentz’s two-part standard of reasonableness for delayed searches incident to an arrest prescribes a proper constitutional balance, and the Court endorses the sound principles set forth in that opinion. (pp. 24-32) 3. The Court reviews case law recognizing the risk of dissipation of biological evidence. Applying Lentz factor one, the delay in performing the search of defendant’s body and clothes was reasonable. There was an ongoing risk that defendant could have dissipated the evidence, either in the interview room or during a washroom break. The officers had a legitimate concern that it might take considerable time to obtain an after-hours warrant. The delay was not unreasonable and indeed far shorter than the ten-hour delay upheld in Edwards. Applying Lentz factor two, the scope of the search, which involved the swabbing of defendant’s hands and the removal of his sweatshirt, was reasonable. The sweatshirt was specifically observed to possibly have biological material on it, and the warrant gave the police the express authority to take the next steps and have the sweatshirt tested. In the totality of circumstances presented, the seizure of defendant’s sweatshirt was justified under the incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement and involved no unreasonable delay or excessive scope. (pp. 32-36) AFFIRMED. CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES PATTERSON, SOLOMON, PIERRE-LOUIS, and WAINER APTER join in JUDGE SABATINO’s opinion. JUSTICE FASCIALE did not participate. 3  SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY A-15 September Term 2022 086812 State of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Joao C. Torres, Defendant-Appellant. On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Argued Decided February 28, 2023 May 4, 2023 Margaret McLane, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; Margaret McLane, of counsel and on the briefs). Steven A. Yomtov, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (Matthew J. Platkin, Attorney General, attorney; Steven A. Yomtov, of counsel and on the briefs). Alexander Shalom argued the cause for amicus curiae American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Foundation, attorneys; Alexander Shalom and Jeanne LoCicero, on the brief). 1  Oleg Nekritin submitted a brief on behalf of amicus curiae Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (Law Offices of Robert J. De Groot and the Ziegler Law Group, attorneys; Oleg Nekritin and Jason LeBoeuf, on the brief). JUDGE SABATINO (temporarily assigned) delivered the opinion of the Court. While investigating an axe murder, police officers apprehended defendant and confiscated his clothing, including a sweatshirt, at the police station. The confiscation began about three hours after defendant was taken into custody, following an interview during which he made incriminating statements connecting him to the homicide. During the interview, the officers noticed defendant picking at his fingers and rubbing his clothing. The lead detective also observed what his report described as possible biological evidence visible on defendant’s sweatshirt. That evening, the State presented an after-hours application for a search warrant to an emergent duty judge. The police seized defendant’s sweatshirt and other garments before the judge approved the warrant, out of concern that dried blood or other biological evidence might dissipate. Laboratory testing thereafter confirmed that the sweatshirt contained incriminating traces of the victim’s blood. Defendant moved to suppress the sweatshirt evidence, arguing its warrantless confiscation was unconstitutional. 2  For the reasons that follow, we uphold the trial court and the Appellate Division decisions, which concluded that the officers’ seizure of the sweatshirt was justified under the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement in the circumstances presented. In particular, we endorse and apply the two-factor test of State v. Lentz, 463 N.J. Super. 54, 70 (App. Div. 2020), authorizing delayed warrantless searches of a person incident to that person’s arrest so long as both (1) the delay itself and (2) the scope of the search were objectively reasonable. As we explain in this opinion, the totality of circumstances here establishes such reasonableness, particularly given the officers’ observation and video footage showing that defendant appeared to be removing some substance from his fingers and rubbing his clothing while he was being interviewed, as well as the risk that biological evidence would dissipate during the delay while the warrant application was processed. Our analysis is consistent with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800 (1974), in which the Supreme Court held that a search of a defendant’s person ten hours after his arrest, in the circumstances presented there, was constitutional under the Fourth Amendment’s incident-to-arrest exception. We further conclude the seizure of the sweatshirt was permissible under Article I, Paragraph 7 of the 3 New Jersey Constitution. Because the incident-to-arrest exception suffices to justify the seizure, we do not reach the State’s alternative contention that the seizure was valid under a theory of inevitable discovery. We reject defendant’s separate claim that the seizure was invalidated by the Strip Search Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:161A-1 to -10, and the Attorney General’s associated Guidelines regulating strip searches. We consequently affirm the denial of defendant’s suppression motion and his resultant conviction of murder and other crimes. I. A. The facts pertinent to our suppression analysis are largely undisputed. They are also consistent with the video recordings of defendant’s interrogation and the seizure of his garments at the police station, recordings that were moved into evidence and considered by the suppression judge. 1 In the early afternoon of January 4, 2017, Detective Craig Marchak of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office was dispatched to a residence in Monroe Township. The detective was told that a 9-1-1 caller had reported a large amount of blood in a bedroom. 1 We have reviewed the video evidence, as did the Appellate Division, as part of the record on appeal. 4  Upon arriving and conferring with other officers at the scene, Detective Marchak learned that the victim, Christopher Ernst, Sr., and his stepson, defendant Joao Torres, were the only two people believed to have been in the house the previous night. The officers had located Ernst’s dead body wrapped in a blanket, with a plastic bag taped over the head, in a room off the garage. Ernst’s vehicle was missing, as was defendant. In the bedroom, the mattress was soaked in blood and there was a significant amount of blood on the wall and ceiling. The officers found no indications of forced entry at the home and learned that defendant did not regularly use Ernst’s vehicle. Within a few hours, officers located defendant and the missing vehicle in a heavily wooded area. Upon encountering the officers, defendant fled into the woods. Officers caught defendant and placed him under arrest, having been advised by dispatch that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Although the prosecutor’s office had not yet decided whether defendant was to be arrested in connection with Ernst’s killing, he was a suspect by that point. At 3:55 p.m., defendant was placed in a squad car to be transported to the police station. The officers brought defendant to the station house for an interview. The interview, which was conducted jointly by Detectives Marchak and Joseph Silvestri and was video recorded, began at 4:29 p.m. 5  After some cordial banter, Detective Marchak delivered proper Miranda 2 warnings. Defendant asked: “what did I do?” Marchak responded that defendant was not yet charged with anything and that the officers simply wanted to ask some questions. Defendant asked why he had been arrested, and the officers repeated that they just wanted to have a conversation. After confirming that he could invoke his rights at any time, defendant signed the Miranda card. In the interview that followed, the detectives told defendant that they had responded to a 9-1-1 call concerning “a lot of blood found in a bedroom” in his residence and that they had found a dead body on the property. Defendant stated that he is “always the []scape goat in the family so go ahead,” and said, “I’m getting blamed for hurting my step-dad.” He claimed that Ernst gave him permission to use the truck the previous night and that he left at some point before midnight, drove around for some time, and slept in the truck. He confirmed that only he and Ernst had been in the home the previous night. 2 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). Defendant did not appeal the trial court’s ruling that the police did not violate the Miranda doctrine in the course of questioning him. 6  Detective Marchak told defendant: “You’re leaving out a whole big part about what happened in the house that night.” The detective added, “We know what happened . . . . We found everything,” and “this is the time where you need to sit, sit there and say hey this is why.” At that point, defendant accused the detectives of “trying to pin” the killing on him and invoked his right to counsel. Detective Marchak, who had momentarily stepped out, returned to confirm that defendant had invoked his right to a lawyer. He instructed defendant to “sit tight.” That marked the conclusion of the interview, at 5:08 p.m. Defendant indisputably was not free to leave the police department. Notably, with respect to the issues before us, Detective Marchak had observed during the interview that defendant “had something on his hands,” and that he was “picking at his hands” and “rubbing his fingers.” 3 Defendant also “put his hands into his pockets,” 4 and Marchak “could see movement within that.” After the interview halted, Detective Marchak consulted other officers “about the preservation of biological evidence.” Marchak was 3 Defendant can be seen at multiple points in the video footage fidgeting with and picking at his hands and fingernails. 4 The video shows the pockets were of the sweatshirt and not his shirt or pants pockets. 7 concerned about “how delicate and fragile” such evidence could be and about “the enormous amount of blood” at the scene. Detective Marchak documented these observations and his concerns about the risks of dissipation within his written report, admitted into evidence 5 as an exhibit at the suppression hearing. Most pertinent here, the report specifically reflected that the detective had observed “possibly biological evidence located on Mr. Torres’s sweatshirt”: It was observed during the course of the interview that Mr. Torres was attempting to wipe and scrape particles off his hands and from his fingernails which I believed to be an attempt to destruct possible evidence. Furthermore, I observed what appeared to be possibly biological evidence located on Mr. Torres’s sweatshirt. Due to this I placed a telephone call to Assistant Prosecutor Scott LaMountain and informed him of the circumstances. I was then advised to seize Mr. Torres’s clothing and conduct swabs of his hands in anticipation of approval of a court authorized search warrant for same. [(emphases added).] Detective Marchak confirmed these facts in his testimony at the suppression hearing, although he was not asked about the possible “biological evidence” that he had noticed on defendant’s sweatshirt. The detective 5 Trial courts are permitted to rely on such hearsay reports at pretrial suppression hearings to determine the admissibility of proofs. See N.J.R.E. 104(a)(1); State v. Bacome, 440 N.J. Super. 228, 239 n.7 (App. Div. 2015), rev’d on other grounds, 228 N.J. 94 (2017). 8 reiterated at the hearing, as he had stated in the report, his concern that “evidence would be . . . on someone’s hands or -- or clothing.” Detective Marchak testified about the process that followed: DETECTIVE MARCHAK: I let Sergeant [Scott] Crocco [(Marchak’s direct supervisor)] know what I observed, and Sergeant Crocco and Sergeant [James] Napp [(supervisor of the Crime Scene Unit)], who we then indicated that to Assistant Prosecutor Scott LaMountain to a -- we wanted to get a search warrant to take his clothes and to swab his hands because of what I was seeing there. And we -- we articulated that to [LaMountain], and in the process of that we were -- we were going to be getting a warrant. PROSECUTOR: Did you wait for the search warrant to actually be granted before you started processing him? DETECTIVE MARCHAK: No. PROSECUTOR: Why not? DETECTIVE MARCHAK: Because of Sergeant Napp’s expertise in -- in the field of forensics with evidence collection. He stated that if [defendant] would ask to go to the bathroom, if he would start rubbing -- I mean, we didn’t know how much, if any evidence, was there, but we knew he was rubbing his hands, and we knew with the enormous amount of blood that it -- it possibly would be located on his hands, and even the smallest of speck would be so easily destroyed. The detective then described the steps that would need to be taken to obtain a search warrant after regular business hours: 9  DETECTIVE MARCHAK: So I would notify . . . Sergeant Crocco . . . that we would need to speak and, you know, explain my probable cause to Assistant Prosecutor Scott LaMountain, who’s our section chief of -- of the Major Crimes Unit.[ 6] . . . I would then have to go from A to Z of everything to him involving the case of what we’ve learned throughout it from Monroe [Police Department]’s first interaction with the case to then when I came into the case . . . . He would then say, okay, yeah, I feel that we need to start applying for a search warrant here. He would then try to call the sheriff’s department, who would provide him an on-call judge. The on-call judge would then have to be contacted. That on-call judge would then have to call Scott LaMountain back. Scott LaMountain would then have to, you know, call us back and say, all right, I got in touch with the judge. . . . LaMountain would then have to call back to the judge and say the detective is ready, and then we’d get on a three-way call at that point. In light of the anticipated time that it would take to obtain a warrant, the police decided to begin “processing” defendant and collect his clothing before a warrant application was approved. The processing, conducted by Sergeant Napp, took place in an interview room from 6:42 p.m. to 7:02 p.m. and was video recorded. 6 As noted by defense counsel at the suppression hearing, the record does not reveal the time at which Detective Marchak called Assistant Prosecutor LaMountain for his help in initiating the warrant application process. Specifically, it is unclear whether that phone call was made before the seizure of defendant’s clothing commenced, during the seizure, or afterwards. Regardless, it is undisputed that the officers did not wait for the warrant to be issued before confiscating defendant’s sweatshirt and his other clothes. 10  Sergeant Napp began by photographing defendant from multiple angles. Next, defendant’s zippered sweatshirt was collected, which defendant unzipped and removed without resistance or comment. After his sweatshirt was collected, Napp took more photographs of his hands, face, and head. Napp directed defendant to remove the rest of his clothing, and defendant was photographed wearing only his boxer shorts for about one minute. His hands, fingernails, ears, and beard were swabbed and inspected while he was still in his boxer shorts. Defendant was then instructed to remove his boxer shorts and change into a one-piece, footed plastic suit. Defendant removed his boxer shorts while holding the plastic suit in front of his genitals to block them from view. Napp did not photograph defendant while he changed. Once defendant had changed into the suit, Detective Marchak informed him that he was being charged with “hindering and resisting,” and that those were his charges “at this point.” Defendant left the room with the detectives at 7:02 p.m. At some point following defendant’s interview, the State pursued the process of obtaining a search warrant. According to Detective Marchak’s written investigative report, “the Court Smart Telephone recording system was not working properly and was unable to record the [warrant] application.” 11 Instead, “[the] application was made from the Monroe Township Police Headquarters on a recorded line which was preserved and retained as evidence. Due to the circumstances an additional recording of the application was generated utilizing a handheld audio recorder.” 7 Officers and the assistant prosecutor eventually reached the emergent duty Superior Court judge at 8:03 p.m., and they conferred with the judge for about half an hour. The warrant to take swabs from defendant and to seize his clothing was ultimately granted and signed by the judge at 8:30 p.m. Criminal complaints for murder, obstructing the administration of law, and resisting arrest by flight were approved by Assistant Prosecutor LaMountain and transmitted to a municipal judge at about 12:30 a.m. The complaints were signed by hand due to problems with a new computer system. Defendant was transported to the Middlesex County Adult Corrections Center sometime thereafter. Further evidence developed during the investigation showed that defendant had used several of Ernst’s credit cards between 1:49 a.m. and 3:33 a.m. in the early morning of January 4 at a fast-food restaurant and at various convenience stores. 7 The record supplied on appeal does not show whether these problems with the recording system that night delayed the search warrant application process and, if so, for how long. 12  The hand swabs taken from defendant were not tested, for reasons unclear from the record. But the laboratory analysis of defendant’s sweatshirt identified traces of Ernst’s blood. In March 2017, defendant was charged in a twenty-count indictment with first-degree murder, second-degree disturbing human remains, third- degree fraudulent use of credit cards, and several other offenses. B. Defendant moved to suppress the warrantless seizure of his clothing. 8 The trial court conducted a one-day suppression hearing in April 2018, at which Detective Marchak was the sole witness. At the hearing, defendant argued that the warrantless search and seizure of his clothing required suppression because it was neither contemporaneous with the arrest nor credibly done to preserve evidence. He did not assert at the hearing that he had been subjected to an unlawful strip search, although his letter brief alluded, without any statutory or other legal citation, to a “strip search.” Meanwhile, the State argued the search was constitutionally permissible based on the incident-to-arrest exception. The State also asserted, as an alternative justification, the doctrine of inevitable discovery, contending that the officers 8 On appeal, defendant clarifies that he seeks suppression of “all evidence found as a result of” the search, which presumably includes the lab report. 13 would have been able to obtain defendant’s garments as part of routine procedures at the jail. The judge denied the suppression motion. In his brief oral opinion, the judge found that the police did not act unreasonably under the circumstances in having defendant remove and exchange his clothing before the issuance of a warrant. Among other things, the judge noted the risks to the State of the loss of biological evidence on defendant’s hands and clothing as time passed, and the need “to secure [that] evidence under these exigent circumstances.” Following plea negotiations, defendant pled guilty in May 2018 to murder, disturbing human remains, and two counts of fraudulent use of a credit card. During the plea colloquy, defendant admitted that he deliberately killed Ernst by striking him several times with an axe and then concealed the body. In July 2018, defendant was sentenced in accordance with the plea agreement on the murder count to thirty years in prison, subject to the No Early Release Act, N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.2. The court imposed concurrent sentences on the other offenses, also consistent with the plea agreement. As permitted under Rule 3:5-7(d), defendant appealed following his conviction, arguing that “the trial court erred in denying the motion to suppress the evidence seized as a result of the warrantless strip search,” and asking that the matter be remanded so he could withdraw his guilty plea. Unlike at the 14 suppression hearing, that appeal characterized the seizure of defendant’s clothes as a “strip search.” Defendant argued that strip searches incident to arrest are disallowed and that the doctrine of inevitable discovery cannot be applied to strip searches. In an unpublished decision, the Appellate Division “recognize[d] procedural defects in defendant’s present strip-search argument.” The appellate court noted that the term “strip search” was mentioned only once in the trial court briefing, in the facts section of defendant’s letter brief to the trial court on the motion to suppress. The appeals court also noted that the only mention of a strip search at the suppression hearing was by the assistant prosecutor, who remarked that she could not “stand by the proposition that [law enforcement] would have been permitted to do a strip search” when defendant was arrested for the non-criminal traffic offense. However, the Appellate Division did not rule that defendant had waived the strip search argument, and instead addressed the question on the merits. In holding the search was not a strip search, the Appellate Division observed that N.J.S.A. 2A:161A-3(a) defines a strip search as “the removal or rearrangement of clothing for the purpose of visual inspection of the person’s undergarments, buttocks, anus, genitals or breasts.” (emphases added). The court acknowledged that “photographing defendant in his underwear could 15 very well be considered a visual inspection of his underwear,” but “no evidence resulted from those photographs” that could have been suppressed. The Appellate Division noted that “the only evidence found was trace amounts of the victim’s blood on defendant’s sweatshirt” and that the seizure of that outer garment “did not involve an inspection of undergarments or defendant’s private areas.” Even though defendant’s first appeal focused entirely on the strip search argument, the Appellate Division nonetheless chose to remand the case to the trial court “for more explicit findings of fact and conclusions of law” to justify “the warrantless seizure, whether it be [the] incident to arrest or inevitable discovery [doctrines].” C. On remand, the trial court issued an amplified written opinion holding that the seizure of defendant’s clothing was valid as a search incident to arrest under the totality of the circumstances. The trial court highlighted that defendant was found with the victim’s vehicle; defendant had fled from police; and defendant was plausibly trying to destroy evidence during the interview by scratching his hands. The court concluded that “considering the information officers were already [privy] to regarding the victim’s death, a real-time decision had to be made” and that it was “objectively reasonable” to seize 16 defendant’s clothing. The trial court did not analyze the State’s alternative argument of inevitable discovery. Defendant again appealed, under the original appellate docket number. He argued that the “police were not permitted to seize and search [his] clothes without a warrant hours after his arrest.” The Appellate Division affirmed the trial court in an unpublished decision. The Appellate Division underscored that defendant was “clearly a suspect” in the murder and that he “appeared to be destroying the evidence on his hands as the interview progressed.” In light of those and other facts, the Appellate Division concluded: Given the totality of the circumstances -- namely the blood discovered at the crime scene and that the body was moved from one part of the residence to another; defendant’s attempt to flee police; and his comments and conduct at the interview -- it was not unreasonable for police to conclude his clothing also contained evidence of the crime. The Appellate Division upheld the judge’s finding that the delay of less than two hours from the end of the interview to the seizure of defendant’s clothing was reasonable. It added that “the search was not unduly intrusive because, as we previously ruled [in the first appeal], defendant was ordered to remove his clothing to retain the evidence on the garments rather than to visually inspect his underwear or body.” 17  In support of this finding of reasonableness, the Appellate Division cited Edwards, 415 U.S. at 806-08, in which the United States Supreme Court held the seizure and subsequent search of a defendant’s incriminating clothing about ten hours after his arrest was a valid search incident to arrest. The Appellate Division also cited to its opinions in State v. Oyenusi, 387 N.J. Super. 146, 156 (App. Div. 2006), and Lentz, 463 N.J. Super. at 68, both of which invoked Edwards in holding that a search incident to arrest does not always have to be conducted contemporaneously with the arrest. The Appellate Division therefore held the trial court “properly concluded the search incident to arrest was constitutional and did not err in denying the suppression motion.” Defendant petitioned this Court for certification, which was granted. 252 N.J. 156 (2022). Although defendant’s letter petition referred only to the Appellate Division’s second opinion and his brief filed in the second appeal, his supplemental brief filed in this Court also included his strip search claims that had been rejected in the first appeal. We granted permission to participate as amici curiae to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU) and the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL). 18  II. Defendant contends the Appellate Division erred in concluding that the strip search statute and the Attorney General’s related Guidelines did not require suppression of his sweatshirt. Defendant does not argue that if all the officers had done here was seize his sweatshirt, the statute and Guidelines would have been violated. However, he maintains that the officers’ continuation of the process, having defendant remove the rest of his clothes and photographing him, was one continuous illegal strip search. As for the incident-to-arrest exception, defendant maintains that the police acted unreasonably in seizing his clothing more than two hours after arresting him instead of waiting for a judge to issue a search warrant. He contends there was no reasonable danger that biological evidence would be destroyed while he was at the police station being monitored by multiple officers. He suggests that the fingernail-picking and clothes-rubbing in the interview room could simply have been nervous fidgeting. He also argues that the inevitable discovery doctrine is inapplicable. The State asks that we affirm the Appellate Division in all respects. As part of its contention, the State argues that defendant procedurally waived his strip search argument. The State also requests that the seizure of the 19 sweatshirt be upheld under the incident-to-arrest doctrine, the exigent- circumstances exception, or the doctrine of inevitable discovery. The ACLU addresses only the alleged procedural waiver of the strip search issue, whereas the ACDL focuses on the search-incident-to-arrest issue. Both amici urge that we adopt a more restrictive approach to the police’s authority to seize an arrestee’s garments and that we reverse the rulings in this case. III. We first address -- and readily dispense with -- defendant’s reliance upon the strip search statute and the Attorney General’s Guidelines. To provide guidance to the bench, bar, and law enforcement agencies, we choose to entertain the merits of those arguments rather than rest our disposition on any alleged procedural shortcomings. Enacted in 1985, the Strip Search Act limits the use of strip searches in particular circumstances. See State v. Evans, 235 N.J. 125, 133-35 (2018). The statute defines a strip search as “the removal or rearrangement of clothing for the purpose of visual inspection of the person’s undergarments, buttocks, anus, genitals or breasts” but excludes from that definition “the removal of articles of outer-clothing such as coats, ties, belts or shoelaces.” N.J.S.A. 20 2A:161A-3(a). Strip searches of persons “detained or arrested for commission of an offense other than a crime” 9 are barred under the Act unless: a. The search is authorized by a warrant or consent; b. The search is based on probable cause that a weapon, controlled dangerous substance, . . . or evidence of a crime will be found and a recognized exception to the warrant requirement exists; or c. The person is lawfully confined in a municipal detention facility or an adult county correctional facility and the search is based on a reasonable suspicion that a weapon, controlled dangerous substance, . . . or contraband, as defined by the Department of Corrections, will be found, and the search is authorized pursuant to regulations promulgated by the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections. [N.J.S.A. 2A:161A-1.] The statute further provides that