An evenly divided New Jersey Supreme Court has let stand a lower court's ruling rejecting prosecutors' attempt to carve out a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, which says arrests or searches and seizures must be declared invalid if the police acted without obtaining a warrant or did not have probable cause.

The 3-3 split in State v. Shannon on Aug. 19 means an Appellate Division ruling that evidence seized after an arrest based on an invalid arrest warrant must be suppressed is affirmed.

Justice Jaynee LaVecchia, joined by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and Justice Barry Albin, said the exclusionary rule applies even when the error is made by a judicial officer. They explicitly rejected a request by the state Attorney General's Office, which participated as amicus, to overturn the court's 1987 ruling in State v. Novembrino, where the court declined to follow the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court and create a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.