State v. Davila, 203 N.J. 97 (2010)
We hold that a protective sweep of a home may only occur when (1) law enforcement officers are lawfully within the private premises for a legitimate purpose, which may include consent to enter; and (2) the officers on the scene have a reasonable articulable suspicion that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger. Where those substantive conditions are met, as a matter of procedure, the sweep will be upheld only if (1) it is cursory, and (2) it is limited in scope to locations in which an individual could be concealed. As additional guidance we add the following. The search should be strictly limited in duration to the time frame during which police are lawfully within the premises. Moreover, when a protective sweep is performed in a non-arrest setting, as when police presence in the home is not due to the execution of an arrest warrant, the legitimacy of the police presence must be probed. And, a careful examination must be undertaken of the basis for the asserted reasonable articulable suspicion of dangerous persons on the premises. The law enforcement officers cannot have created the danger to which they became exposed by entering the premises, and thereby bootstrap into an entitlement to perform a protective sweep. Thus the inquiry should examine whether the request for entry was legitimate or a ruse and whether the officers can identify articulable reasons for suspecting potential harm from a dangerous person that arose once the officers arrived at the scene.
In summary, the review of a protective sweep search and seizure shall require the State to bear the burden of proving, in these warrantless search contexts, the reasonableness of the protective sweep. That requires a demonstration that the police presence at the property that was swept was both lawful and legitimate.
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