Title: Plaintiff v. Defendant

State: new-jersey

Issuer: New Jersey Supreme Court

Document:

SYLLABUS

This syllabus is not part of the Court’s opinion. It has been prepared by the Office of the
Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the
Court. In the interest of brevity, portions of an opinion may not have been summarized.

                      State v. Laura Gonzalez (A-47-20) (085132)

Argued October 26, 2021 -- Decided February 8, 2022

SOLOMON, J., writing for a unanimous Court.

      The Court considers whether defendant Laura Gonzalez invoked her right to
counsel during a police interview and whether certain evidence should have been
suppressed as a result. The Court also considers defendant’s challenges to other
evidentiary determinations and jury instructions by the trial court.

       In January 2017, Seth and Lisa Borsuk hired defendant as an in-home nanny. On
Thanksgiving morning that year, their son Tommy, who was less than a year old, cried
whenever his leg was touched. The Borsuks brought Tommy to a pediatrics office, where
Dr. Aliah Khan noted that Tommy had two bone fractures and insisted that the Borsuks
take him to the hospital, where a third fracture was discovered. Detective Iris Reyes of
the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office met the Borsuks at the hospital and interviewed
them about Tommy’s injuries. Detective Reyes interviewed defendant at the Somerset
County Prosecutor’s Office a few days later.

       Defendant agreed to provide a videotaped statement after waiving her Miranda
rights. Defendant initially denied any responsibility for Tommy’s injuries. As the
interview continued, however, Detective Reyes told defendant that video surveillance
cameras in the home captured footage of her interactions with Tommy; in truth, no
cameras existed in the home.

       During the interview, before defendant made any incriminating statements,
Detective Reyes stated that if defendant lied, “[t]he situation is going to get worse.”
Defendant then asked, “But now what do I do about an attorney and everything?”
Detective Reyes responded, “That is your decision. I can’t give you an opinion about
anything,” and added that defendant would “have a better option by telling the truth.”

       Eventually, defendant acknowledged that she was “full of anger” and admitted to
shaking, swinging, hitting, suffocating, and throwing Tommy. Near the end of the
interview, Detective Reyes asked defendant if she wanted to write the Borsuk family a
note. Defendant agreed and wrote a note in which she described herself as a monster and
expressed “hope God forgive[s] me and all that I did.”
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      Defendant was charged with endangering and aggravated assault. Before trial,
defendant moved to suppress portions of her statement to Detective Reyes and the note to
the Borsuks, arguing that both were made after she invoked her right to counsel.
Following a Miranda hearing, the court denied defendant’s motion.

       At trial, the State played defendant’s recorded statement, read the note aloud, and
provided the jury with a transcript of defendant’s statement. Also relevant to this appeal
were statements made during trial by Lisa and Seth over defense counsel’s objections,
and the testimony of Dr. Gladibel Medina, the State’s expert in general pediatrics with a
subspecialty in child abuse pediatrics.

       Specifically, on direct examination, Lisa testified that upon discovering the
fracture of Tommy’s left leg, Dr. Khan told her that “it was clear child abuse.” Then Lisa
was asked whether Dr. Khan told her anything about the fracture. Defense counsel
objected, but the court found that the hearsay statements were admissible as statements
made for purposes of medical diagnosis or treatment under N.J.R.E. 803(c)(4). In
response to the question, Lisa testified that she was told the abuse was intentional.
Following Lisa’s cross-examination, the court instructed the jury that the statements by
Dr. Khan to which Lisa testified “were admitted not for the truth of the matter asserted
but to explain the actions that this witness took subsequent to hearing those statements.”

       Seth Borsuk then testified that Dr. Khan told him, “This is, basically, textbook
child abuse.” Defense counsel objected at side bar, and the court agreed to strike Seth’s
testimony and instructed the jury that the quote could not be considered by the jury in any
deliberations; the jurors responded that they could follow those instructions.

        Dr. Medina testified as the State’s expert in pediatrics with specialized knowledge
in child abuse. When asked whether she had an opinion “within a reasonable degree of
medical certainty” as to what caused the injuries to Tommy’s right femur, Dr. Medina
testified that “the only mechanism of trauma that was reported on the records” was the
description by defendant in her interview of what she had done to Tommy. Dr. Medina
testified that Tommy’s injuries could have been caused by the actions defendant
described and that those actions were not consistent with “normal caregiving activity.”

        The jury found defendant guilty of endangering the welfare of a child and of
simple assault. Defendant appealed, and the Appellate Division affirmed both the trial
court’s decision to deny defendant’s motion to suppress and the trial court’s rulings as to
the disputed testimony at trial. The Court granted certification,  245 N.J. 466 (2021),
limited to whether defendant’s statement and letter of apology should have been
suppressed because defendant sufficiently invoked her right to counsel, as well as
whether the trial court erred in admitting testimony by Dr. Medina regarding ordinary
caregiving; in admitting testimony by Seth and Lisa as to what Dr. Khan told them; and
in the form of its cautionary instruction regarding hearsay testimony by Seth.
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HELD: Defendant’s question about the attorney was an ambiguous invocation of her
right to counsel. Under settled New Jersey law, see, e.g., State v. Reed,  133 N.J. 237,
253 (1993), the detective was required to cease questioning and clarify whether defendant
was requesting counsel during the interview. Because the State played defendant’s
recorded statement at trial and read the apology note -- written at the detective’s
suggestion -- to the jury, the error in failing to suppress that evidence was harmful. The
Court also finds plain error in the trial court’s admission of certain challenged evidence,
and it provides guidance for the proceedings on remand.

1. If a person subject to custodial interrogation “states that he wants an attorney, the
interrogation must cease until an attorney is present.” Miranda v. Arizona,