Justia New Jersey Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In this appeal, a detective administered Miranda warnings but repeatedly undermined them throughout an interrogation. The New Jersey Supreme Court concluded the detective here repeatedly contradicted and minimized the significance of the Miranda warnings -- starting at the outset of the interrogation and continuing throughout -- meaning the State could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently waived his rights. The Appellate Division concluded defendant's statement made to police in violation of his Miranda rights had to be suppressed, and the Supreme Court affirmed. View "New Jersey v. O.D.A.-C." on Justia Law

The Bergen County Improvement Authority (BCIA) issued a request for qualification (RFQ) for a redeveloper to act as general contractor in the rehabilitation of the Bergen County Courthouse. Nine companies, including plaintiff Dobco, Inc., submitted proposals in response to the RFQ. The BCIA notified four firms that they were selected to proceed, and it notified Dobco and the other firms not selected for the short list. Dobco and plaintiff Hossam Ibrahim, the vice president and a shareholder of Dobco, and a resident and taxpayer of Bergen County, immediately filed separate, but essentially identical, complaints alleging that defendants’ actions violated the Local Public Contracts Law (LPCL) and were arbitrary and capricious. The trial court dismissed plaintiffs’ complaints with prejudice for failure to state a claim, concluding that the project was “not subject to the LPCL because it has been designated a redevelopment project” under the Local Redevelopment and Housing Law (LRHL). The judge determined that plaintiffs were barred from seeking equitable relief because Dobco responded to the RFQ and Ibrahim had not challenged the procurement process or the RFQ prior to filing his complaint. The Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal of Dobco’s complaint, finding “that Dobco is estopped from now complaining that a process in which it willingly participated violated the law.” The Appellate Division, however, reversed as to Ibrahim, determining that he could proceed with his suit as a taxpayer and remanding to the trial court to enter an order permanently restraining the BCIA from proceeding with the procurement process contemplated by the RFQ. The New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the Appellate Division substantially for the reasons expressed the appellate court's opinion. The Court required that, going forward, a plaintiff claiming taxpayer standing in an action challenging the process used to award a public contract for goods or services had to file a certification with the complaint. As to the merits of this appeal, the Court departed from the Appellate Division’s decision in only one respect: the Court did not rely on the leasing and financing arrangements contemplated by the BCIA and defendant County of Bergen. View "Dobco, Inc. v. Bergen County Improvement Authority " on Justia Law

Eighty-five year old Sundiata Acoli had been imprisoned for forty-nine years for his role in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey State Trooper, and the wounding of another. During his time in prison, Acoli had consistently received positive institutional reports from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, completed over a hundred programs and counseling sessions, served on the Honor Unit in his institution, taught a course to younger inmates on rational thinking and emotional control, and learned employable skills. Since 1993, the New Jersey State Parole Board denied Acoli parole every time he became eligible for release. On each occasion, including in 2016 when Acoli was seventy-nine years old, the Parole Board determined that there was a substantial likelihood that Acoli would commit a crime if released. The Board, however, did not indicate what crime it feared Acoli might commit at his advanced age. In 2010, the Parole Board denied Acoli parole, despite psychological assessments that favored his release. The Appellate Division overturned the Board’s decision, finding no substantial support in the record to justify Acoli’s continued imprisonment, and ordered his release. The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed on procedural grounds to allow the full Board to take firsthand witness testimony before deciding whether to grant parole to Acoli. At a hearing in 2016, the Parole Board called only one witness, Acoli, who was then suffering from cardiovascular disease and hearing loss. Acoli testified that, if released, he planned to reside with his daughter, a Wall Street risk analyst, and his grandchildren. The State’s psychological expert, despite issuing a report less favorable than the previous one, described Acoli’s risk of committing another offense as low to moderate. The Board again denied parole, stating “that concerns remain that [Acoli] would commit a crime if released on parole.” The Board imposed a fifteen-year future eligibility term. The Appellate Division affirmed. The Supreme Court reversed, finding the Parole Board did not establish “by a preponderance of the evidence that there is a substantial likelihood that [Acoli] will commit a crime” if placed on parole. "The Parole Board’s decision is entitled to deference -- but not blind deference." View "Acoli v. New Jersey State Parole Board" on Justia Law

A car driven by defendant Rashaun Bell crashed into two teenaged boys riding a bicycle on a roadway in Jersey City. Both boys died as a result of the accident. Defendant and his three passengers fled the scene. Defendant was eventually apprehended and indicted on two counts of leaving the scene of an accident; he moved to dismiss one of the counts, arguing that, as applied here, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-5.1 violated the rule against multiplicity. The trial court denied defendant’s motion and concluded N.J.S.A. 2C:11-5.1 holds a driver who knowingly flees the scene of an accident criminally responsible for each person who dies in the accident. Defendant thereafter pled guilty, pursuant to a plea agreement as to both counts of the indictment. Consistent with the agreement, the trial court sentenced defendant to two consecutive five-year terms of imprisonment. In response to defendant’s appeal, the Appellate Division reversed the trial court’s ruling, dismissed one of the convictions, vacated the five-year term of imprisonment for that conviction, and remanded the matter to the trial court to amend the judgment of conviction accordingly. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that the number of fatalities caused by the accident was not an element of the second-degree offense codified in N.J.S.A. 2C:11-5.1. Therefore, the Court affirmed the part of the Appellate Division's judgment, but reversed with respect to that court's sua sponte amendment to defendant's sentence, "in a manner not contemplated by the terms of the plea agreement negotiated by the parties in good faith and approved by the trial court under Rule 3:9-2. Under these circumstances, the appellate court should have remanded the case to the trial court to permit the parties to negotiate a new plea agreement that the trial court finds acceptable or otherwise schedule the case for trial." View "New Jersey v. Bell" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Hamid Harris alleged that Donald Stabile, a Newark Police Department detective, falsely accused him of four armed robberies that were committed in Newark in January 2015, and unlawfully arrested him in connection with those robberies based on an improperly issued arrest warrant. After the charges against plaintiff were dismissed, he filed this action. Defendants the City of Newark, Detective Donald Stabile, and Police Officer Angel Romero following the trial court’s denial of their motion for summary judgment, contended the trial court erred in denying them qualified immunity as a defense to Harris’s claims brought under the New Jersey Civil Rights Act (NJCRA). Defendants contended the trial court’s order denying summary judgment was a legal determination and should therefore be deemed appealable as of right, in keeping with both New Jersey appellate practice and federal law. The trial court reasoned that because Stabile did not have probable cause to arrest plaintiff, and because Stabile’s belief that plaintiff committed the robberies was objectively unreasonable, defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity. The Appellate Division ruled that “[t]he appeal is interlocutory as it is not from a final order” and dismissed defendants’ notice of appeal. The appellate court also denied defendants’ motion for leave to appeal. The New Jersey Supreme Court found the trial court’s order was a decision premised on factual findings as well as legal conclusions, not an exclusively legal determination. "In an NJCRA action, a defendant seeking to challenge a trial court’s order denying qualified immunity prior to final judgment must proceed by motion for leave to file an interlocutory appeal in accordance with Rules 2:2-4 and 2:5-6. View "Harris v. City of Newark, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant Anthony Sims, Jr. challenged his conviction of attempted murder and weapons offenses arising from the April 9, 2014 shooting of P.V. One of the issues this case presented for the New Jersey Supreme Court's review centered on the Appellate Division majority’s holding that police officers, prior to interrogation, were required to inform an arrestee of the charges that will be filed against him, even when no complaint or arrest warrant has been issued identifying those charges. Here, the divided panel found that the police officers who interrogated defendant violated his Miranda rights by not providing that information. Further, this case presented the issue of whether the trial court’s decision to admit at trial P.V.’s prior testimony at a pretrial hearing violated the rule against hearsay and the Confrontation Clause. P.V. was indicted for the murder of defendant’s brother. Although offered an immunity agreement by the State and ordered to testify by the trial court, P.V. asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify. The trial court permitted the State to present at trial P.V.’s testimony at the Wade/Henderson hearing as the prior testimony of an unavailable witness. The Appellate Division vacated defendant’s convictions and remanded for a new trial. A divided panel held that the police officers who interrogated defendant violated his Miranda rights. The court unanimously held that the trial court’s decision to admit at trial P.V.’s prior testimony violated the rule against hearsay and the Confrontation Clause. The Supreme Court declined to adopt the Appellate Division's analysis, and found no plain error in the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress his statement to police. The Court also concurred with the trial court that the victim’s testimony at the pretrial hearing was admissible under N.J.R.E. 804(b)(1)(A)’s exception to the hearsay rule for the prior testimony of a witness unavailable at trial, and that the admission of that testimony did not violate defendant’s confrontation rights. View "New Jersey v. Sims" on Justia Law

In February 2019, an attorney made a complaint to the Union County Prosecutor’s Office on behalf of employees of the Elizabeth Police Department. The complaint alleged that Police Director James Cosgrove, the civilian head of the Department for more than two decades, used racist and sexist language to refer to employees on multiple occasions. In response, the Prosecutor’s Office conducted an internal affairs investigation. In April 2019, the Office sustained the complaints; ten days later, the Attorney General issued a public statement describing the investigation and its conclusion and calling upon Cosgrove to resign, which he did. In July 2019, plaintiff Richard Rivera filed a request for records with the Prosecutor’s Office based on New Jersey's OPRA and the common law. As relevant here, plaintiff asked for “all internal affairs reports regarding” Cosgrove. The Prosecutor’s Office denied the request on the ground that it was “exempt from disclosure under OPRA” and not subject to disclosure under the common law. The trial court concluded the internal affairs report should have been made available under OPRA. The Appellate Division reversed, finding that the requested materials were not exempt as “personnel records” under OPRA, but that they could not be disclosed under OPRA on other grounds. Further, the Appellate Division rejected plaintiff’s common law claim, determining that defendant’s interest in preventing disclosure outweighed plaintiff’s right to the documents. The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed, finding the internal affairs report should have been disclosed, as the Attorney General conceded, but after the trial court reviewed it and redacts parts that raise legitimate confidentiality concerns. View "Rivera v. Union County Prosecutor's Office" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Kathleen Moynihan and defendant Edward Lynch were involved in a long-term “marital-style relationship.” Anticipating the potential dissolution of that relationship, they signed and notarized a written agreement, without the assistance of counsel, that finalized the financial obligations each owed to the other. The issue this case presented for the New Jersey Supreme Court's review was the validity of that palimony agreement. In 2015, the parties parted ways, and Lynch refused to abide by their written agreement. Moynihan filed a complaint seeking enforcement of the written agreement and an alleged oral palimony agreement that she claimed the parties had entered before the Legislature in 2010 amended N.J.S.A. 25:1-5 to include subparagraph (h), which mandated that palimony agreements be reduced to writing and “made with the independent advice of counsel.” She challenged N.J.S.A. 25:1-5(h) on constitutional grounds and urged enforcement as a typical contract; alternatively, she sought enforcement of the agreement on equitable grounds. Lynch denied the existence of an oral palimony agreement and asserted that the written agreement was unenforceable because the parties did not receive the independent advice of counsel before entering it. The Supreme Court concluded the palimony agreement, as written and signed, without the attorney review requirement, was enforceable. That portion of N.J.S.A. 25:1-5(h), which imposed an attorney-review requirement to enforce a palimony agreement, contravenes Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution. The Court concluded the parties did not enter an oral palimony agreement. View "Moynihan v. Lynch" on Justia Law

In October 2017, an incarcerated woman filed a lawsuit against Cumberland County and several corrections officers, including Tyrone Ellis, alleging she had been forced to engage in non-consensual sex acts on a regular basis. Plaintiff Libertarians for Transparent Government (Libertarians) obtained minutes of the public meeting of the Board of the Police and Firemen’s Retirement System at which the Board considered Ellis’s application for special retirement. According to the minutes, the County originally sought to terminate Ellis, who had been charged with a disciplinary infraction. When he submitted his resignation, the County warned that it intended to continue to prosecute the disciplinary matter. Ellis, in turn, “agreed to cooperate” with the County’s investigation of four other officers suspected of similar misconduct. “As a result of his cooperation, Cumberland County agreed to dismiss the disciplinary charges and permit Mr. Ellis to retire in good standing” with a reduced pension. Libertarians sent the County an OPRA request seeking, as relevant here, the settlement agreement and Ellis’s “'name, title, position, salary, length of service, date of separation and the reason therefor’ in accordance with N.J.S.A. 47:1A-10.” The County declined to produce the settlement agreement, claiming it was a personnel record exempt from disclosure. In response to the request for information, the County stated in part that “Officer Ellis was charged with a disciplinary infraction and was terminated.” Libertarians filed a complaint in Superior Court, and the trial court ordered the County to provide a redacted version of the settlement agreement. The County appealed, and the Appellate Division reversed the trial court’s judgment. The New Jersey Supreme Court concluded the trial court properly ordered disclosure of a redacted settlement agreement, and the Appellate Division reversed. The Supreme Court reinstated the trial court’s order. View "Libertarians for Transparent Government v. Cumberland County" on Justia Law

In winter 1996, defendant Samuel Ryan (then aged 23) robbed a Bridgeton, New Jersey gas station at gunpoint, stealing $100 and shooting a store clerk in the process. The offense resulted in defendant’s third first-degree robbery conviction, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole pursuant to the Persistent Offender Accountability Act, known as the “Three Strikes Law.” In this appeal, defendant contended the Three Strikes Law violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey Constitution. He alleged that, by allowing courts to count crimes committed while under the age of eighteen as predicate offenses in sentencing defendants to mandatory life without parole, the Three Strikes Law ignored the constitutional constraints embodied in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), and New Jersey v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422 (2017), which prohibited imposition of mandatory life-without-parole sentences or their functional equivalent on juvenile offenders. The New Jersey Supreme Court found that because defendant committed his third offense and received an enhanced sentence of life without parole as an adult, this appeal did not implicate Miller or Zuber. Accordingly, defendant’s sentence was affirmed and the Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the Three Strikes Law. View "New Jersey v. Ryan" on Justia Law