Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was indicted on drug charges. His privately retained attorney appeared at the initial trial court hearing, during which a trial date was set. The trial did not proceed on that day. Defendant continued pro se at the next hearing and the subsequent trial date. Defendant was then assigned a public defender. The court set a hearing date for defendant’s motion to suppress. The public defender informed the court that she could not try the case, but did not formally request an adjournment for change of counsel. Defendant's new public defender was told that he was being transferred from the OPD’s juvenile unit to a new trial team and that he would serve as defendant’s trial counsel. The trial judge denied counsel's request for a continuance to allow counsel additional time for preparation. Defendant’s attorney spent ten to eleven hours preparing for trial, but had no contact with defendant. At issue in this appeal was the propriety of the trial court’s denial of a request for adjournment by a defendant who met his appointed counsel for the first time on the day of trial. The Supreme Court concluded that the trial judge’s denial of an adjournment did not violate defendant’s constitutional right to effective representation, was not an abuse of discretion, and did not violate principles of fundamental fairness. View "New Jersey v. Miller" on Justia Law

A police officer observed defendant William O'Driscoll after watching him drive his SUV across the center line of the road twice. Defendant failed a number of field sobriety tests. Consistent with the implied consent and refusal laws, the officer read defendant a standard statement designed to inform him of the consequences of refusal and to impel him to provide a sample of his breath. Although the officer correctly told defendant that if he refused, his license could be revoked for up to twenty years, the officer read from an outdated form and misstated three other parts of the potential penalty. Both the municipal court and the Law Division found the discrepancies immaterial and convicted defendant of refusal. The Appellate Division reversed. After its review, the Supreme Court disagreed, holding courts should consider whether an error in the reading of the standard statement is material in light of the statutory purpose to inform motorists and impel compliance. Because the errors in this case were not material and could not have reasonably affected defendant's choice to refuse to provide a breath sample, the Court reversed and reinstated defendant's conviction. View "New Jersey v. O'Driscoll" on Justia Law

Prior to killing his uncle, defendant had a history of psychiatric problems for which he received in-patient treatment at several hospitals. Evidence derived from those hospitalizations reveals that defendant suffered from delusions about having been sexually and physically assaulted. Defendant expressed fear that he was always in danger of being assaulted and made a handwritten list of people whom he believed had sexually assaulted or harmed him. Although there were approximately forty names on the list, his uncle's name was first. Five months prior to the stabbing death of his uncle, defendant was admitted for treatment after physicians determined that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Defendant's competency was evaluated on several occasions, with different professionals reaching different conclusions. During the competency proceedings before the trial court, the State argued and defense counsel did not contest, that defendant was competent to stand trial. However, the State also asserted, and defense counsel agreed, that even though defendant was competent to stand trial, he was not competent to waive the insanity defense. Both counsel agreed that the two defenses, insanity and self-defense, could not be tried in a single, unified proceeding. The State argued that the insanity defense should be tried first, while defense counsel argued that the self-defense claim should be tried first. The trial court ruled that defendant was competent to stand trial as long as he continued to take his medications; that he was not competent to waive the insanity defense; that the "Khan" bifurcated trial procedure should be utilized; and that the insanity defense would be tried first because it related to a substantive element of the offense rather than to an affirmative defense defendant sought to interpose. The trial court found defendant not guilty by reason of insanity and committed him to treatment. Although continuing to conclude that the defenses should be tried in a bifurcated proceeding, the Appellate Division declined to follow the sequence mandated by "Khan," instead holding that a court should not require a defendant to present an insanity defense during the first phase of a bifurcated trial. After its review of the matter, the Supreme Court disapproved the bifurcated trial procedure created in "New Jersey v. Khan," and overruled it. In the future, trials that involve both a substantive defense and an insanity defense must be unitary proceedings. The matter was remanded back to the trial court to afford defendant the opportunity to continue in a second phase of his trial. View "New Jersey v. Handy" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court reversed the Appellate Division in this case. The defendant appealed his 2010 conviction for third-degree eluding a police officer. The Court held that because the reliability of the State's evidence of out-of-court photographic identifications of defendant by two police witnesses should have been assessed at a "Wade" hearing. The Appellate Division unanimously determined the State's evidence was impermissibly suggestive under the first prong of the test articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in "Manson v. Brathwaite," adopted in "New Jersey v. Madison." The majority exercised original jurisdiction, made factual findings, and weighed the evidence in order to consider the second Manson/Madison prong. One appellate judge dissented, and urged remand to the trial court for a new Wade hearing. Defendant appealed as of right based on that dissent. The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed with the dissenting judge and remanded the case to the Law Division for further proceedings. View "New Jersey v. Micelli" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted on several charges, including third-degree burglary, third-degree theft, and third-degree receiving stolen property. Defendant filed a motion to suppress. The trial court found that defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy under State law and that the police should have obtained a warrant before tracking defendant via cell-tower information from T-Mobile. Nonetheless, the court admitted the evidence under the emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement. Defendant pled guilty to third-degree burglary and third-degree theft and was sentenced in accordance with a plea agreement. The Appellate Division affirmed the sentence and later allowed defendant to reopen his appeal to challenge the suppression ruling. The Appellate Division affirmed on different grounds, concluding that defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information and that the police lawfully seized evidence in plain view. The panel did not consider the emergency aid doctrine. The Supreme Court granted defendant's petition review of the validity of defendant's arrest based on law enforcement's use of information from defendant's cell phone provider about the general location of the cell phone and the application of the plain view exception to the warrant requirement. The Court concluded that the New Jersey Constitution protects an individual's privacy interest in the location of his or her cell phone. Police must obtain a warrant based on a showing of probable cause, or qualify for an exception to the warrant requirement, to obtain tracking information through the use of a cell phone. View "New Jersey v. Earls" on Justia Law

Defendant Samandar Dabas worked part-time at a dollar store. One day in August 2004, he brought his wife, Renu, with him for his scheduled shift. At some point, Dabas left Renu stocking shelves while he went to a nearby liquor store to purchase a bottle of Scotch. Dabas drank two coffee mugs of Scotch and water, closed the store at 9 P.M. and walked with Renu to his parked minivan. As Dabas began driving out of the parking lot with Renu seated beside him, the minivan struck a tree, causing the airbags to deploy. Renu would later die from blunt-force trauma caused by the accident. A patrol officer arrested Dabas for driving while intoxicated. At police headquarters, an investigator conducted a "pre-interview" of Dabas, which, in accordance with the procedures of the prosecutor's office, was not electronically recorded. While on the stand recalling what was said during the pre-interview, the investigator did not testify from his notes, instead referring to a 2006, typewritten final report into which he had purportedly incorporated his hand-written notes. Per the prosecutor's office policy the pre-interview notes had been destroyed. At the charge conference, the defense requested that the court instruct the jury that it could draw an adverse inference from the investigator's destruction of his pre-interview notes. The trial court declined to give the adverse-inference charge. The jury found Dabas guilty of both murder and attempting to leave the scene of a fatal motor vehicle accident. Defendant appealed. The Appellate Division reversed the murder conviction on the ground that the trial court erred in not giving the requested adverse-inference charge. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the prosecutor's office violated its post-indictment discovery obligations under Rule 3:13-3, when its investigator destroyed his notes the pre-interview. Furthermore, the trial court abused its discretion in denying defendant's request for a charge that would have allowed the jury to draw an adverse inference from the destruction of the interview notes more than a year after the return of the indictment. View "New Jersey v. Dabas" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with multiple counts of burglary, sexual assault, and weapons offenses for his alleged assaults and rapes of four women. The State sought to have one trial of all matters on the theory that there were sufficient similarities to make them "signature crimes," and that viewed as a whole they were relevant to the issue of the perpetrator's identity. The trial court held that the indictments involving offenses against two of the four women could be tried together because the assault of one would have been admissible at the trial of the assault of the other, and vice versa, if tried separately. The court found that the attacks against these two women in particular were "so nearly identical as to constitute the defendant's signature crime or handiwork" based on the attacker's condom use, racial comments, and use of a knife to cut off their underwear. The court ruled that the assault against a third woman had to be tried separately because those identifying features were not present. The trial court also ruled that the fourth burglary could be joined with either trial or admitted as other-crimes evidence because it demonstrated the identity of the defendant and how he came to be linked to the earlier crimes. The issue on appeal to the Supreme Court was whether joinder principles were properly applied in the two trials. The Court concluded it was error to join three crimes into one trial and to admit evidence relating to the third burglary at the trial involving the fourth victim. The convictions involving the first and fourth victims were properly reversed. However, based on the strong evidence against defendant in respect of the crimes committed against the second and third victims, the errors were harmless and did not require retrial. View "New Jersey v. Sterling" on Justia Law

Defendant John Lawless, Jr. was driving under the influence of alcohol. He struck ad killed another driver and seriously injured the other driver's wife and daughter who were passengers in the other vehicle. Defendant was charged with first-degree manslaughter and several other crimes including DWI, and driving on a suspended license. The prosecution and defense reached a plea agreement pursuant to which defendant pled guilty to aggravated manslaughter and DWI, and the other charges were dismissed. Defendant was not convicted of any charges relating to the injuries sustained by the passengers. The trial court imposed the maximum sentence of the applicable range, thirty years’ imprisonment subject to the No Early Release Act. The Appellate Division reversed and remanded for resentencing, holding that the sentencing court should not have found aggravating factor two because the term "victim" meant only the driver and not the passengers. The panel found a distinction between the direct harm inflicted on the victim of the crime of which defendant is convicted and the harm inflicted on third parties. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that because defendant pled guilty to only one criminal offense (aggravated manslaughter), the sole "victim" was the driver, and the harm inflicted upon the passengers was irrelevant to aggravating factor two; the passengers' injuries could be considered part of the "nature and circumstances of the offense." Therefore, the sentencing court could consider aggravating factor one when resentencing. View "New Jersey v. Lawless" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted for the shooting death of Alyssa Ruggieri. Before sentencing, he signed a written waiver excusing him from appearing at the hearing. The victim's mother moved to compel defendant to be there. The trial court found defendant had no right to be absent and ordered him to appear. The Appellate Division affirmed. Defendant appealed. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that a criminal defendant does not have an absolute right to be absent from his sentencing hearing. The trial court has discretion whether to accept a defendant's waiver. The trial court must balance the interests of the public, the victims, the State and the defendant. In this case, the Supreme Court found no abuse of discretion and affirmed. View "New Jersey v. Tedesco" on Justia Law

The issue before the Supreme Court in this case was whether the shooting death of an individual by a criminal fleeing from a business gives rise to a cause of action sounding in tort on behalf of the decedent's estate against the owner of the business premises. The Supreme Court held that based on the facts in this case, the Appellate Division erred in imposing a duty of care on a person who left his premises and requested that a neighbor use a telephone to call the premises, who told the neighbor what he had observed before he left the premises, but who then failed to prevent the neighbor from going to the scene where he encountered a fleeing robber who shot him. View "Estate of Naitil Desir v. Vertus" on Justia Law