Justia New Jersey Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Defendant Michael Cushing was indicted on five counts: first-degree maintaining a controlled dangerous substance (CDS) production facility (count one); second-degree possession of marijuana with intent to distribute ten or more but less than fifty marijuana plants (count two); second-degree possession of marijuana with intent to distribute within 500 feet of a public park (count three); third-degree possession of marijuana with intent to distribute within 1000 feet of school property (count four); and fourth-degree failure to notify law enforcement of a change of employment as required under Megan's Law (count five). Lisa Mylroie called police to have defendant removed from the home of her 85-year-old mother, Betty Cushing. Ms. Cushing was not at home when police answered the call and arrived at her home; Mylroie invited the responding officer inside, and led the officer to defendant's bedroom where the marijuana was. After seeing the bedroom, the responding officer called the station to obtain a search warrant. In executing the search warrant, police seized from defendant's bedroom sixteen marijuana plants, several five-gallon buckets used to hold the plants, ventilation units, and drug paraphernalia. Officers also seized a Ziploc bag of marijuana that was discovered in a backyard shed. After the trial court conducted a hearing and denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized from his bedroom in his grandmother's home where he resided, defendant negotiated a plea agreement. Defendant entered a conditional plea of guilty to counts two through five in exchange for the dismissal of count one. The trial court sentenced defendant in accordance with the plea agreement. On appeal, the Appellate Division reversed on the issue of suppression. The New Jersey Supreme Court granted the State's petition for certification on the validity of the third-party consent to search. The State argued that Betty Cushing had actual authority to consent to the search of defendant's room, which flowed to Mylroie through her power of attorney. The State also contended that Mylroie had apparent authority as well, on which the police reasonably relied under the circumstances. The Supreme Court affirmed: the record contained "ample evidence" to support the Appellate Division's conclusion that Betty Cushing did not have actual authority to consent to the search of defendant's room, and Betty could not have conferred through any power of attorney an authority that she did not possess herself. In addition, it was not objectively reasonable for the responding officer to rely on an apparent authority by Mylroie as the basis for valid third-party consent to his initial search of defendant's bedroom. View "New Jersey v. Cushing" on Justia Law

The police arrested defendant Gary Lunsford after they executed a search warrant at his home based on suspected criminal activity involving transactions in controlled dangerous substances (CDS). As part of its continuing investigation, the Monmouth County Grand Jury issued a subpoena duces tecum to a wireless telephone service provider requesting subscriber information associated with defendant's cell phone number, which was the contact for the controlled drug buys that led to defendant's arrest. Defendant filed a motion to quash, which the trial court granted, stating that a communications data warrant (CDW - the equivalent of a search warrant), was needed to obtain telephone billing records. The Attorney General, who superseded the Monmouth County Prosecutor s Office to litigate the constitutional question raised by the trial court's decision, sought leave to appeal, which the Appellate Division denied. On appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Attorney General did not dispute that telephone billing records were entitled to protection under the State Constitution. He argued instead that a grand jury subpoena, based on a relevancy standard rather than probable cause, was sufficient to safeguard the privacy rights at stake here. "Using a cell phone to determine the location of its owner can be far more revealing than acquiring toll billing, bank, or Internet subscriber records. It is akin to using a tracking device and can function as a substitute for 24/7 surveillance without police having to confront the limits of their resources. It also involves a degree of intrusion that a reasonable person would not anticipate." Here, the Court affirmed the trial court's grant of the motion to quash, noting that the State could apply for a court order to obtain defendant's cell phone records consistent with the Court's discussion of protected privacy interests in this opinion. View "New Jersey v. Lunsford" on Justia Law

In this appeal, the issue this case presented for the Supreme Court's review was one of first impression: whether an indigent parent who faces termination of her parental rights in a contested private adoption proceeding has a right to appointed counsel. "Because of the nature of the right involved - the invaluable right to raise a child - and the risk of an erroneous outcome without the help of an attorney, we hold that indigent parents are entitled to appointed counsel in a contested private adoption matter under the due process guarantee of the State Constitution." View "In the Matter of the Adoption of a Child by J.E.V. & D.G.V." on Justia Law

Officer Cohen observed a vehicle approaching from about a quarter-mile away. The vehicle was traveling with its high beams on at a normal speed in a well-lit, residential area. The vehicle obeyed the stop sign at the intersection of New York Avenue and Adams Street. Using the strobe light attachment on his flashlight, Officer Cohen signaled to the driver to pull over. Officer Cohen intended to educate the driver on the proper use of high beams. As Officer Cohen approached the driver's side of the vehicle, and instead of a warning to turn off her high beams, instructed her to produce her license, registration, and insurance cards. With the driver's-side window down, Officer Cohen could smell burnt marijuana. He then walked around the vehicle, asked defendant, the front passenger, to roll down the window, and detected a stronger odor of burnt marijuana. Officer Cohen asked defendant and the rear passenger whether they had any controlled dangerous substance on them, and both replied, No. While engaged in this exchange, Officer Cohen noticed inside the vehicle a hollowed-out cigar, which, from his experience and training, he knew was used as a receptacle for marijuana. Based on this observation, Officer Cohen told defendant to step out of the car. In response, defendant indicated that he had a gun under his jacket. The officer ordered defendant to keep his hands up while he retrieved the weapon. Defendant was placed under arrest, and the driver was later issued a ticket for a violation of the high-beam statute. Defendant was later charged with unlawful possession of a .40 caliber handgun, receiving stolen property (the handgun), possession of hollow-nose bullets, and possession of a large-capacity magazine. Defendant filed a motion to suppress the handgun, the bullets, and the magazine on the ground that the police did not have a constitutionally permissible basis for stopping the car in which he was a passenger. The court granted the motion, observing that the high-beam statute presupposed that the offending driver's high beams were on when his vehicle approaches an oncoming vehicle. Here, Officer Cohen testified that he did not observe any other vehicle traveling in the opposite direction toward defendant's vehicle. The court also concluded that the stop could not be justified based on the community-caretaking exception to the warrant requirement. The Appellate Division affirmed, and the State appealed. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed both the trial court's and Appellate Division's judgments. View "New Jersey v. Scriven" on Justia Law

Defendant Robert Stein was charged with DWI and careless driving after a motor vehicle accident in Wayne Township. The municipal court found defendant guilty of DWI and careless driving. The court based its DWI finding on breathalyzer readings and the arresting officers' observations of defendant at the time of his traffic stop. The court sentenced defendant, as a third-time DWI offender, to incarceration for a term of 180 days in the county jail and loss of his license for a period of ten years. After a trial de novo on the record, the Law Division also convicted defendant of DWI and careless driving, based on the breathalyzer readings and, separately, on observational evidence. The court imposed the same sentence as did the municipal court. Additionally, the Law Division ruled that the municipal prosecutor was not required to provide discovery of the names of the neighboring police officers or the videotapes that defendant requested. The Appellate Division affirmed. Defendant appealed, and the Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part. In accordance with Rule 7:7-7(b), the municipal prosecutor was required to provide defendant with the names of the police officers from the adjacent jurisdiction who were present at the DWI accident scene. Defendant, however, did not seek relief from the court pursuant to Rule 7:7-7(j). Here, the discovery issue was never truly placed before the municipal court. The court could not grant relief on an issue of which it was unaware. Defendant could not raise the purported discovery violation for the first time on appeal and therefore the issue was waived. Furthermore, the Court held that pursuant to Rule 7:7-7(b), the municipal prosecutor was required to provide the requested videotapes that may have recorded defendant's appearance, behavior, and motor skills. Such information, if available, was clearly relevant to a DWI defense. The Court could not determine from the record whether any such videotape ever existed or existed at the time of defendant's discovery request. Therefore, the case was remanded to the Law Division to conduct a hearing to address that issue. View "New Jersey v. Stein" on Justia Law

Defendant Stephen Scharf was convicted of first-degree purposeful and knowing murder of his wife Jody, who fell to her death off a cliff at the Palisades. Defendant defended the charge by claiming the death was an accident. At trial, the court allowed the State to present, in rebuttal to the defense of accident, hearsay statements, under N.J.R.E. 803(c)(3) and (c)(4), from Jody s friends and her therapist. The witnesses claimed that Jody repeatedly told them of her fear of defendant, particularly after she had served him with a divorce complaint, and told them that she had declined defendant's request to go to the Palisades cliffs with him shortly before her death. On appeal, the Appellate Division reversed the conviction, concluding that the trial court erred in admitting the hearsay statements. The State appealed, raising the issue of whether the trial court erred in admitting the statements, and if the evidence was admissible, whether the evidence, cumulatively, constituted an abuse of the trial court's discretion that caused defendant's trial to be unjust. Finding that the Appellate Division erred in reversing the trial court's judgment of conviction, the Supreme Court reversed, and the matter remanded for consideration of defendant's unaddressed appellate arguments. View "New Jersey v. Scharf" on Justia Law

Defendants Lixandra Hernandez and Jose G. Sanchez were charged in a State Grand Jury indictment with second-degree conspiracy to distribute more than five ounces of cocaine, first-degree distribution of more than five ounces of cocaine, second-degree distribution of cocaine within 500 feet of a public park, and third-degree possession of cocaine. The cooperating witness (the Witness) in defendants' case assisted the State in a number of drug investigations and prosecutions. In discovery, defendants were given the agreements between the State and the Witness in this case and in unrelated cases, and the State has represented that it would provide the defense with any known material false statements made by the Witness in those cases. Defendants nevertheless insisted that they were entitled to every statement made by the Witness in each case in which he has cooperated with the State, whether those statements are contained in a transcribed interview, recorded drug transaction, investigative report, or memorandum between members of the prosecutorial team. The trial court determined that such information, regardless of its lack of relevance, was discoverable under our court rules. The Appellate Division affirmed. After its review, the Supreme Court held that the discovery ordered by the trial court and Appellate Division exceeded the limits of Rule3:13-3(b) and was not supported by New Jersey jurisprudence. "Although our discovery rule generally requires that the State provide all evidence relevant to the defense of criminal charges, it does not open the door to foraging through files of other cases in search of relevant evidence. . . . The discovery order here requires disclosure of information not mandated by our discovery rule - information that has no ostensible relevance to the case to be tried." Accordingly, the Court reversed the judgment of the Appellate Division and remanded for further proceedings. View "New Jersey v. Hernandez" on Justia Law

Defendant, a massage therapist, was charged with sexually assaulting a customer (E.S.) while giving her a massage. E.S. alleged that after defendant massaged her back, he lifted the privacy cover as E.S. turned beneath it, and began massaging her front side. While massaging E.S.'s right thigh, defendant asked if he could continue to massage E.S. further up her leg. E.S. told him no. Defendant continued to massage the area, slightly higher and higher. Defendant repeated the action, at which point E.S. opened her eyes; defendant had one hand on her head, one hand in her vagina, and was exposing himself to her. Defendant asked E.S. to perform oral sex on him, which E.S. refused. E.S. later reported the sexual assault to a spa manager. Defendant was arrested and taken to police headquarters to be interviewed. He denied any sexual contact with E.S., stating that nothing out of the ordinary happened during [the] massage. A grand jury charged defendant with one count of second-degree sexual assault and one count of fourth-degree criminal sexual contact. Prior to defendant's trial, the State moved under N.J.R.E.404(b) to admit extrinsic evidence of a prior incident in which defendant had been charged with, but ultimately acquitted of, sexually assaulting a female spa customer in Florida. At the hearing on the State's motion, A.W., the alleged victim, testified about the alleged prior assault. A.W. s description shared certain similarities with E.S.'s experience, including that defendant lifted the sheet as A.W. turned from lying face down to lying on her back, just as defendant did with E.S. The trial court found the evidence admissible under N.J.R.E.404(b), even though defendant had been acquitted of the prior crime. The Appellate Division reversed the trial court's decision, finding the evidence inadmissible. The State appealed, but the Supreme Court affirmed insofar as the Appellate Division held that the evidence of defendant's prior sexual assault in Florida was inadmissible under N.J.R.E. 404(b) because it failed to satisfy the four-factor test established in "New Jersey v. Cofield," (127 N.J. 328 (1992)). The Court declined to adopt, however, the appellate panel's bright-line rule that evidence of a prior crime for which a defendant was acquitted is always inadmissible, or the panel's reformulation of the instruction provided to jurors governing the circumstances under which it may give any weight to acquitted-crime evidence. View "New Jersey v. J.M., Jr." on Justia Law

Defendant Bobby Perry was charged with sexually and physically assaulting a woman he had been casually dating. Prior to trial, defendant filed a motion under the New Jersey Rape Shield Law to admit DNA evidence of an unidentified semen stain, which did not belong to defendant, found on the shorts that the victim was wearing on the night of the assault. Although it was never determined to whom the semen belonged or when it was left on the victim's shorts, defendant argued that the evidence supported his defense that the victim was still romantically involved with her ex-boyfriend, providing motive for the ex-boyfriend to assault the victim and for the victim to fabricate the charges. The trial court denied defendant's motion, finding that the DNA evidence was irrelevant to defendant's theory of third-party guilt, precluded by the Rape Shield Law, and, in any event, inadmissible because the low probative value of the evidence [wa]s substantially outweighed by a danger of prejudice. Following a jury trial, defendant was convicted of second-degree sexual assault and third-degree aggravated assault. In a split decision, the Appellate Division reversed and remanded for a new trial, holding that the DNA evidence was relevant to prove defendant's theory that the victim s ex-boyfriend perpetrated the assault and was, therefore, admissible. The dissent, conversely, concluded that the trial court properly applied the Rape Shield Law to exclude [the DNA] evidence proffered by defendant that served only to establish that the victim engaged in sex with an unknown third party. After review, the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded that the semen found on the victim's shorts constituted inadmissible evidence of sexual conduct within the meaning of the Rape Shield Law, and was not relevant to defendant's third-party guilt defense. The Court therefore, reversed the judgment of the Appellate Division and reinstated defendant's convictions. View "New Jersey v. Perry" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented for the Supreme Court's review centered on the admission of other-crime evidence, pursuant to N.J.R.E. 404(b), of an attempted sexual assault that occurred three years before the sexual assault that was the subject of defendant Richard Willis' trial. The victim, K.M., was a twenty-two-year-old prostitute who readily admitted that she had performed various sex acts with men other than the defendant the day of the alleged sexual assault, but denied that she had consensual sexual relations with defendant. Defendant admitted that he had sexual intercourse with the victim but insisted that K.M. had consented. Prior to trial, the State informed the trial court and defense counsel that it would seek to introduce evidence of an attempted sexual assault against another young woman, N.J., that had occurred three years before the alleged sexual assault against K.M. The State noted that the central issue in its case was whether K.M. consented to sexual relations with defendant because the forensic evidence clearly established that they had engaged in sexual relations that evening. The State maintained that N.J.'s experience provided relevant and probative evidence of defendant's intent when he encountered K.M. A jury found defendant guilty of third-degree criminal restraint, second-degree sexual assault, and the disorderly persons offense of simple assault. The Supreme Court reviewed this case and concluded that the "marginal relevance of a three-year-old attempted sexual assault against N.J. could not overcome the manifest prejudice of that evidence. It should not have been admitted. The error was compounded by the quality and quantity of the other-crime evidence introduced at trial that could have been interpreted by the jury only as evidence that defendant had a propensity to commit sexual offenses against young women he encountered on the street." The Appellate Division's judgment was reversed. View "New Jersey v. Willis" on Justia Law