Case Title: State v. D.A.

Citation: 

Docket Number: a-23-06

State: new-jersey

Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Date: 2007-06-04T00:00:00Z

Document:
The Supreme Court granted D.A. s petition for certification solely on the tampering issue. 188 N.J. 220 (2006). HELD: The offense of tampering in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a) is committed only when a person acts believing that an investigation or proceeding is underway or is about to begin. Because there was no evidence that D.A. held such a belief, his conviction of tampering must be reversed. 1. On a motion for judgment of acquittal, the test is whether, viewing all of the State s evidence and reasonable inferences in the State s favor, a jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime charged. Whether the court properly denied D.A. s motion depends on the meaning of the language used in the statute. (p. 5) 2. When interpreting a statute, the goal is to give effect to the Legislature s intent. The first place to look is the language. If that is not clear and there is more than one plausible interpretation, a court may look to other evidence to clarify the meaning. If the meaning is still unclear, the doctrine of strict construction applies to interpret a criminal statute. That doctrine provides that any reasonable doubt is resolved against the State. (pp. 5-7) 3. N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5 provides, in part, that a person commits the crime of tampering with a witness if, believing that an official proceeding or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he or she attempts to prevent someone from giving information to authorities. The statute suggests a situation where a person believes that some sort of official action has occurred or is about to begin. The State argues that every person who commits a crime and attempts to silence a witness does so because he believes that an official proceeding could be brought against him. D.A. argues that the statute is intended to address intentional interference with an official action that a person believes already exists or is about to occur, and that the statute does not make it a crime to avoid a possible future action by trying to silence a witness. Both readings are possible, so the Court looks beyond the words of the statute for insight into its meaning. (pp. 8-10) 4. In the Code of Criminal Justice, the witness tampering offense is grouped with offenses such as perjury, false swearing, and making unsworn false statements to authorities. The common element in those crimes is wrongful interference with ongoing proceedings. Because the tampering statue was based on the Model Penal Code, the Court also looks to the MPC commentary, which explains that the prosecution must establish that the defendant held the specified belief that a proceeding or investigation was underway or was about to begin when he acted. (pp. 10-12) 5. Another statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3(b), makes it a crime for a person to hinder his own apprehension or prosecution, such as by preventing a witness, by intimidation or deception, from providing information which might help authorities discover him or file a criminal charge against him. The hindering statute focuses on avoiding discovery or official action by attempting to prevent a witness from reporting a crime to police. It does not refer to whether the person believes official action exists or is about to start. On the other hand, the tampering statute focuses on wrongful interference with an official action that the person believes has begun or is about to begin. (pp. 12-15) 6. In sum, the offense of tampering under N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a) is committed only when the person believes that a proceeding or investigation is pending or about to begin. How that requirement plays out in each case will depend on the facts. Because belief is a state of mind, it will be unusual to have direct proof, like a statement by defendant that he believed official action was pending at the time of a tampering offense. Usually, circumstantial proof will be necessary, such as evidence that defendant was aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to believe that an official action was pending or about to begin. (pp. 16-17) 7. In this case, D.A. s conduct, intimidating Jessica to keep her from reporting him to police, violated the hindering statute. However, it did not violate the tampering statute -- the crime he was convicted of committing -- because there was no evidence before the jury to suggest that D.A. was aware of any facts that would lead him to believe that an official proceeding was pending or about to begin. Thus, D.A. s conviction for tampering must be reversed. (pp. 17-18) The judgment of the Appellate Division is REVERSED, and the matter is REMANDED to the Law Division for appropriate amendment of the judgment of conviction. CHIEF JUSTICE ZAZZALI and JUSTICES LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, WALLACE, RIVERA-SOTO and HOENS join in JUSTICE LONG s opinion. SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY A- 23 September Term 2006 STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. D.A., Defendant-Appellant. Argued January 16, 2007 Decided June 4, 2007 On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Amira Rahman Scurato, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney; Ms. Scurato and Steven M. Gilson, Designated Counsel, on the briefs). Daniel I. Bornstein, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (Stuart Rabner, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney). JUSTICE LONG delivered the opinion of the Court. This case centers on the meaning of the language in the witness tampering statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a), that criminalizes a defendant s knowing attempts to silence a witness while believing that an official proceeding or investigation is pending or about to be instituted. In particular, we are asked whether a threat by a defendant against a person who has observed him in a crime, with the purpose to forestall official action, will satisfy the above-cited language. On a motion for a judgment of acquittal, the trial judge answered that question in the affirmative. Thereafter, defendant was convicted of tampering and the Appellate Division affirmed. We now reverse. Because there can be no tampering, within the meaning of N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a), unless the defendant acted, believing that an official proceeding or investigation was pending or about to be instituted, and because there was no evidence that this defendant held such a belief, his conviction cannot stand. a. Tampering. A person commits an offense if, believing that an official proceeding or investigation is pending or about to be instituted, he knowingly attempts to induce or otherwise cause a witness or informant to: Testify or inform falsely; (2) Withhold any testimony, information, document or thing; (3) Elude legal process summoning him to testify or supply evidence; or (4) Absent himself from any proceeding or investigation to which he has been legally summoned. The offense is a crime of the second degree if the actor employs force or threat of force. Otherwise it is a crime of the third degree. Privileged communications may not be used as evidence in any prosecution for violations of paragraph (2), (3) or (4). b. Retaliation against witness or informant. A person commits a crime of the fourth degree if he harms another by an unlawful act with purpose to retaliate for or on account of the service of another as a witness or informant. c. Witness or informant taking bribe. A person commits a crime of the third degree if he solicits, accepts or agrees to accept any benefit in consideration of his doing any of the things specified in subsection a.(1) through (4) of this section. [N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5 (emphasis added).] Facially, the statute contemplates a situation in which a defendant believes that some sort of official action has occurred or is contemplated. That is the bone of contention between the parties. See footnote 3 The State argues that every defendant who commits a crime and attempts to silence a witness does so because he believes that an official proceeding could otherwise be brought against him, and thus that action is sufficient to satisfy the statute. Defendant counters that the evil the statute addresses is quite different -- intentional interference with an official action that defendant believes is ongoing or is about to occur. According to defendant, the tampering statute does not criminalize mere avoidance of a possible future action by securing a person s silence. Both readings of the statute are plausible. Indeed, the Act prohibits causing an informant to withhold information, words that align with the State s view. Also interdicted are causing a witness to testify falsely, to withhold testimony, to evade legal process, and to absent oneself from a proceeding to which he or she has been summoned -- words that together support defendant s view that the real focus of the Act is interference with what defendant believes is an already existing or soon-to-be existing official action. We therefore look beyond the words of the Act for insight into its meaning. First, we note its placement in the Code. N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5 is included under Chapter 28, which is titled Perjury and other Falsification in Official Matters. (emphasis added). The kinds of offenses with which it is grouped also shed light insofar as they are of a piece. They include, among others, Perjury, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-1, False Swearing, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-2, and Unsworn Falsification to Authorities, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-3. The unifying element of those crimes is the wrongful interference with ongoing proceedings of the justice system. Because N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5 was modeled after section 241.6 of the Model Penal Code (MPC) (Tampering with Witnesses and Informants; Retaliation Against Them), we look, as well, to the commentary to that MPC section, which declares that it was included to deter conduct that affects the integrity of the criminal justice system. Model Penal Code and Commentaries: Part II, 241.6 (1980). The MPC further provides that the tampering offense targets attempts to induce a witness or informant to subvert the administration of justice but only if the defendant acts believing that an official proceeding or investigation is pending or about to be instituted. Ibid. That requirement is entwined with the ultimate harm of obstructing justice, yet is phrased in such a way as to eliminate the need for a proceeding or investigation actually to be pending or contemplated by the authorities. Thus, the statute focuses on the individual actor s culpability and not on external factors that may be irrelevant to the actor s aim of subverting the administration of justice. . . . The prosecution must establish that the defendant held the specified belief but need not prove that a proceeding or investigation was in fact pending or about to be instituted. In assessing such belief, the word about as it appears in this subsection should be construed more in the sense of probability than of temporal relation. [Ibid.] Defendant argues that the requirement that he hold a specified belief that a proceeding or investigation was in fact pending or about to be instituted is dispositive of the meaning of the statute and points to the Model Charge on N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5 as supportive of that view: [T]he defendant must have believed that an official proceeding or investigation was pending or about to be instituted. This requires that the defendant considered to be true the fact that an official proceeding or investigation was pending; in other words, that the defendant, in (his/her) mind, believed that an official proceeding or investigation was pending. [Model Jury Charges (Criminal), 2C:28-5 Tampering with Witnesses [and Informants] (1982).] The State counters that the probability language in the commentary undergirds its position and that any other interpretation would allow witness interference to occur with impunity. In fact, the hindering statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3, operates to proscribe the exact conduct at issue here. As initially enacted, that statute only prohibited hindering the apprehension, investigation, prosecution, or conviction of another. In 1981, subsection (b) was added providing in relevant part that: b. A person commits an offense if, with purpose to hinder his own detention, apprehension, investigation, prosecution, conviction or punishment for an offense or violation of Title 39 of the New Jersey Statutes or a violation of chapter 33A of Title 17 of the Revised Statutes, he: (1) Suppresses, by way of concealment or destruction, any evidence of the crime or tampers with a document or other source of information, regardless of its admissibility in evidence, which might aid in his discovery or apprehension or in the lodging of a charge against him; or (2) Prevents or obstructs by means of force or intimidation anyone from performing an act which might aid in his discovery or apprehension or in the lodging of a charge against him; or (3) Prevents or obstructs by means of force, intimidation or deception any witness or informant from providing testimony or information, regardless of its admissibility, which might aid in his discovery or apprehension or in the lodging of a charge against him; or (4) Gives false information to a law enforcement officer or a civil State investigator assigned to the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor established by section 32 of P.L.1998, c.21. The offense is a crime of the third degree if the conduct which the actor knows has been charged or is liable to be charged against him would constitute a crime of the second degree or greater. The offense is a crime of the fourth degree if such conduct would constitute a crime of the third degree. Otherwise it is a disorderly persons offense. [L. 1981, c. 290, 29 (codified at N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3(b)) (emphasis added).] Although N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3 was broadly modeled after MPC 242.3 (Hindering Apprehension or Prosecution), the MPC does not proscribe a defendant s attempts to hinder his or her own apprehension or prosecution but remains limited to third-party hindering. Thus, under the MPC, tampering is the only statute interdicting attempts to secure a witness s silence. That is not so in New Jersey. When the Legislature amended N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3 in 1981 to prohibit an individual from hindering his own apprehension, it created a specific law governing that conduct. Indeed, the press release issued at the bill s passage explains that the amendment [e]stablishes a new crime for any person who attempts to hinder his own apprehension, prosecution or conviction by concealing evidence, intimidating witnesses, or by giving false information to a police officer. Press Release, Acting Governor Joseph P. Merlino, Senate Bill No. 1537 (Sept. 24, 1981) (emphasis added). Thus, though both the tampering statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5, and the hindering statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3, broadly proscribe the suppression of evidence, there is a fundamental difference between them. N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3 prohibits such suppression at any point prior to a defendant forming a belief that an official action has been or is about to be instituted. Unlike N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5, N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3 is phrased in terms of avoiding discovery, apprehension, or the lodging of a charge. For that reason, it is also associated in the Code with escape, eluding, resisting, flight, and physical interference, all of which constitute efforts by a defendant to stay out of the official cross-hairs of law enforcement, without necessarily believing that official action exists or is contemplated. On the contrary, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5 addresses action taken after one is already the focus of, or believes he may be the focus of, an official proceeding. That distinction is important. The conduct that hindering addresses is the wrongful avoidance of an official action by attempting to prevent a witness from reporting a crime to the police; the conduct that is the focus of tampering is the wrongful interference with an official action that defendant believes has begun or is about to begin. The grading of those offenses reflects that tampering is considered a greater societal threat than hindering. Indeed, all tampering offenses are at least third-degree offenses unless committed with force, in which case they are second-degree offenses. N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5. Hindering ranges from a disorderly persons offense to a third-degree offense, depending on the degree of the offense the defendant seeks to avoid. N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3. That grading reveals that a higher level of culpability attaches to interference with what defendant believes are the already grinding wheels of the criminal justice system than to a defendant s effort to avoid becoming a target of law enforcement in the first instance. In sum, we read the requirement in N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a) to mean exactly what it says: that the proscribed offense is committed only when a defendant acts believing an official proceeding has been or is about to be instituted. How that requirement will play out in an individual case will depend upon the facts. Because belief is a state of mind, it will not, as a regular matter be subject to direct proof. Wilson v. Amerada Hess Corp., 168 N.J. 236, 254 (2001). Although there could be a case in which a defendant actually expresses his belief in the pendency of official action at the time of a tampering offense, it seems to us that such a scenario would be unusual. Therefore, the proofs in a tampering case will ordinarily be circumstantial. What will be necessary to establish the requisite state of mind is evidence that defendant was aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to believe that an official action was pending or about to be instituted. For example, if a defendant in a tampering case has been arrested or has been served with a complaint or an indictment, he will satisfy the requirement of a belief that an official proceeding is pending because a reasonable person would hold that belief based on the facts. The same is true if a defendant encourages a witness, who he knows has been called to testify, to do so falsely, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a)(1), or if he causes that witness to elude the legal process of which he is aware, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a)(3), or absents himself from a proceeding or investigation to which he has been summoned, N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(a)(4). On the other end of the spectrum are cases in which the defendant threatens a person at the very scene of his own misconduct to avoid official involvement altogether. That conduct violates the hindering statute. N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3. The State s contrary interpretation -- that any effort to silence a witness, at any time, is tampering -- writes out of the statute the critical language (believing that an official proceeding or investigation is pending) and obliterates the legislatively-mandated distinction between tampering and hindering. SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY NO. A-23 SEPTEMBER TERM 2006 ON CERTIFICATION TO Appellate Division, Superior Court STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. D.A., Defendant-Appellant. DECIDED June 4, 2007 Chief Justice Zazzali PRESIDING OPINION BY Justice Long CONCURRING/DISSENTING OPINIONS BY DISSENTING OPINION BY