Title: New Jersey v. Camey

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. Rafael Camey (A-73-17) (080574)

Argued January 2, 2019 -- Decided August 1, 2019

LaVECCHIA, J., writing for the Court.

       The Court reviews two key pre-trial determinations involving the DNA evidence
from defendant Rafael Camey, who stands charged with murder. First, the trial court
ruled the results of a buccal swab that had been excluded on the basis of invalid consent
inadmissible under either of the State’s inevitable discovery arguments. Second, the trial
court also applied an inevitable discovery analysis in rejecting the State’s application to
take a second buccal swab from defendant. The second determination raises a novel
question: Under what circumstances, if any, may the police apply to conduct a new
search for immutable evidence like DNA? Is a suspect’s DNA off-limits to law
enforcement for all time if an initial search was invalid? Or, are there situations in which
law enforcement may seek a new buccal swab to examine a person’s DNA?

       On September 30, 2013, the Passaic Police Department received a 9-1-1 report of
a brutally beaten body of a woman, later identified as “Katie,” in a wooded area near a
river bank behind a ShopRite store. Sergeant Bordamonte, the lead detective in the
matter, was familiar with “Tina,” a prostitute, who placed the 9-1-1 call. Bordamonte
interviewed Tina, who said that Katie was “the new girl on the block” and that she saw
Katie with a person she described as a “violent Mexican male” on the night before
Katie’s death. Tina said that she had been choked by the same man during a paid sexual
encounter. She also said that the man had assaulted another woman.

       Police obtained a statement from Katie’s husband, who stated that Katie was a
prostitute and drug addict who would “disappear for days at times.” Later, Bordamonte
learned that Katie’s husband had been arrested for aggravated sexual assault and
kidnapping and that there had been a domestic violence incident between him and Katie.

      Over the next weeks, the police interviewed Tina again, as well as other people
who knew Katie. The police also interviewed and took, with consent, buccal swabs from
numerous individuals who were in the vicinity of where Katie’s body was found. On
October 20, 2013, Tina called police to report that she saw the violent male. Police
responded to her location, where Tina made an on-scene identification of defendant.

                                             1
       The next night, officers went to a bar that defendant frequented after his work shift
and detained him. A detective advised defendant of his Miranda rights and interviewed
him in Spanish, his native language, but presented him with a consent form for a buccal
swab printed in English. After defendant signed the untranslated form, another detective
took a buccal swab from defendant and released him. Several weeks later, Bordamonte
sent defendant’s DNA sample, along with the approximately twenty other samples
collected from local homeless individuals, to the State Police Laboratory for testing.

        On June 25, 2014, the State Police notified Bordamonte that DNA found on
Katie’s body matched defendant’s DNA profile. That day, defendant was placed under
arrest and charged with felony murder, murder, and aggravated sexual assault.

       During pre-trial applications, the trial court was required to evaluate defendant’s
consent to the buccal swab. The court determined that the consent obtained from
defendant was invalid and ordered suppression of the DNA test results from that swab,
holding that the swab was the product of an illegal detention, the consent form presented
to defendant was written in English and never translated for defendant into his native
Spanish, and defendant was never informed of his right to refuse or that the DNA would
be sent to a police lab for analysis in a criminal investigation.

        Thereafter, the trial court also rejected the State’s further argument that the swab’s
results were admissible under the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule.
The court followed the formulation of that doctrine adopted for use in New Jersey in
State v. Sugar,  100 N.J. 214 (1985) (Sugar II). The court determined that the State failed
to show that proper, normal and specific investigative procedures would have been
pursued. The court noted there was “little urgency” and “little use of legal process”
throughout the investigation and referenced Bordamonte’s “infrequent use of the legal
process,” throughout his career. The court further pointed to other investigatory failings
or shortcomings, citing as “shocking” the failure to interview defendant’s roommates or
co-workers regarding his whereabouts on the night of the murder, and the failure to seek
a search warrant for the home of Katie’s husband, despite his criminal history, including
his prior incident of domestic violence involving the victim.

        The court rebuffed the State’s argument that it would have inevitably obtained
defendant’s DNA because police are statutorily required to take a DNA sample from
persons arrested for certain enumerated violent crimes including sexual assault (with
which defendant was charged here). Because defendant was arrested primarily based on
the illegally obtained DNA sample, the court would not allow the State to rely on an
arrest based on those DNA results to justify the taking of another swab. Moving on to the
State’s application to compel defendant to provide a new buccal swab under Rule 3:5A,
the trial court denied the motion. The court concluded that the application must also be
evaluated under inevitable discovery and held that the doctrine’s application already had
been rejected by the court.
                                              2
       The Appellate Division affirmed on interlocutory appeal, and the Court granted
the State’s motion for leave to appeal.  234 N.J. 6 (2018).

HELD: The Court affirms the suppression of DNA evidence from the first buccal swab.
The trial court’s thorough and detailed reasons for denying admission of this evidence,
under either of the State’s two inevitable discovery arguments, are clearly sustainable on
appeal. However, the State’s application for a second buccal swab calls for a remand for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion and its new test, derived in part from
aspects of the independent source doctrine: To apply for a new buccal swab for DNA
evidence under Rule 3:5A, the State must demonstrate probable cause for the new search.
That showing may include evidence that existed before the initial invalid search, but
cannot be tainted by the results of the prior search. In addition, to deter wrongdoing by
the police, the State must show by clear and convincing evidence that the initial
impermissible search was not the result of flagrant police misconduct.

1. A buccal swab is a common method to collect specimen material for DNA testing.
But it is also a “search,” and must be obtained in a manner consistent with constitutional
search and seizure principles for valid use in a criminal prosecution. To pass muster, a
search must be conducted pursuant to a search warrant or must fall within an exception to
the warrant requirement. Obtaining voluntary consent to conduct a buccal swab is one
way to obtain a constitutionally valid swab without a search warrant. Another means for
obtaining a swab is to utilize judicial authority to compel a suspect to submit to an
investigative detention. Pursuant to Rule 3:5A-1, investigative detention orders can
compel a defendant “to submit to non-testimonial identification procedures for the
purpose of obtaining evidence of that person’s physical characteristics.” Rule 3:5A-4
provides the substantive standards for issuance of such an order. (pp. 17-20)

2. Whereas consent can serve as an exception to the warrant requirement, the inevitable
discovery doctrine under Sugar II can preserve the admissibility of evidence obtained
without a warrant or a valid exception to the warrant requirement. The Court agrees with
the trial court’s determination that inevitable discovery was the correct prism through
which to evaluate the State’s request to avoid exclusion of the DNA results from
defendant’s illegal buccal swab. While no published New Jersey opinion has applied the
inevitable discovery doctrine to immutable DNA evidence, many other states have. The
Court rejects arguments that DNA identification evidence is exempt from an inevitable
discovery analysis merely because it reveals uniquely identifying information about an
individual’s identity. The trial court and Appellate Division here correctly determined
that the doctrine could be used to evaluate DNA evidence. (pp. 21-27)

3. The Court also agrees with the trial court’s application of the inevitable discovery
standard to defendant’s buccal swab and has no difficulty affirming its findings, which
were based on the determination that the State failed to meet the first prong of the Sugar
II test by clear and convincing evidence. The State argues that police either would have
                                             3
applied for a search warrant or an investigative detention to obtain a buccal swab from
defendant or would have acted on its probable cause to arrest him. But the events of the
actual investigation suggest otherwise, as the trial court found. (pp. 27-30)

4. The trial court also used an inevitable discovery analysis to parse the State’s
application under Rule 3:5A for an order to take a new buccal swab and rejected the
request essentially for the reasons already given in its previous inevitable discovery
ruling. The Court is unconvinced that an inevitable discovery framework is correct in
these circumstances. The doctrine generally addresses completed searches that cannot be
replicated. A key factor in the trial court’s decision here was its perception that the State
was seeking to obtain through legal means the same evidence that it had earlier obtained
unlawfully. But DNA is not an item like guns, drugs, or documents. A new DNA
sample might provide the same information as the original sample, but each sample is
evidence in its own right -- and the exclusionary rule bars the use of the same evidence
that was illegally obtained or “poisoned fruit” evidence that would not have been
discovered but for the initial, illegally obtained evidence. The State’s request to compel a
new sample must therefore be viewed for what it truly is: a request to obtain a new
buccal sample -- new evidence -- notwithstanding that it will lead to the same uniquely
identifying information that DNA provides. A properly issued judicial order under Rule
3:5A-4 should be available to law enforcement, on the right terms. (pp. 30-33)

5. The Court fashions a standard tailored for the unique nature of DNA evidence and a
fair assessment of whether a second buccal swab sample should be allowed. The test is
derived in part from aspects of the independent source doctrine, as set forth in State v.
Holland,  176 N.J. 344, 360-62 (2003). Noting that flagrancy is a high bar that requires
active disregard of proper procedure, or overt attempts to undermine constitutional
protections, the Court adopts the following test: First, the State must demonstrate that
probable cause exists to conduct the new search. The court should look at the showing
advanced by the State to demonstrate probable cause. The evidence may involve the
same evidence that existed at the time of the illegal search. Thus, Tina’s statements and
her identification of defendant are not off-limits. Second, the court should determine
whether the State’s showing of probable cause is untainted by the results of the prior
search. Here, that means that the probable cause must be independent of the information
obtained through the results from the prior swab. Third, to deter wrongdoing by the
police, the Court requires the State to show by clear and convincing evidence that the
initial impermissible search was not the result of flagrant police misconduct. The Court
notes that a buccal swab is minimally intrusive and stresses that it is considering only a
Rule 3:5A application which addresses minimally intrusive identification procedures.
The Court remands to allow the State to demonstrate whether it can meet the standard
announced. Because the original judge made extensive credibility determinations about
the witnesses before the court, as well as about Tina, who was not before the court, the
Court refers this matter to the Assignment Judge for assignment. (pp. 33-36)

                                             4
    The judgment of the Appellate Division is AFFIRMED IN PART and
REVERSED IN PART, and the matter is REMANDED for further proceedings.

        JUSTICE ALBIN, dissenting, expresses the view that there is no basis to reverse
the trial court’s suppression order and to remand before a different judge, because the
State cannot prove by clear and convincing evidence that the police officers did not
engage in flagrant misconduct when they unlawfully detained Camey three times,
unlawfully interrogated him, and unlawfully secured a buccal swab without his consent.
Justice Albin notes that the trial court properly applied the inevitable discovery doctrine
-- the theory presented by the State at the suppression hearing -- and that its factfindings
must be accorded deference. Justice Albin also explains that the majority’s retreat from
Holland’s rigorous independent source test -- the test for determining whether a “seizure
of evidence was independent of, and untainted by, earlier illegal police misconduct” --
diminishes the deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule. In Justice Albin’s view, allowing
the State to rely on the same evidence to establish probable cause permits the police a do-
over after a failure to adhere to constitutional dictates.

CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES PATTERSON, FERNANDEZ-VINA,
SOLOMON, and TIMPONE join in JUSTICE LaVECCHIA’s opinion. JUSTICE
ALBIN filed a dissent.

                                             5
       SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY
             A-
73 September Term 2017
                        080574

                State of New Jersey,

                 Plaintiff-Appellant,

                          v.

                     Rafael Camey,

               Defendant-Respondent.

         On appeal from the Superior Court,
                Appellate Division .

       Argued                      Decided
   January 2, 2019               August 1, 2019

Lila B. Leonard, Deputy Attorney General, argued the
cause for appellant (Gurbir S. Grewal, Attorney General,
attorney; Lila B. Leonard, of counsel and on the brief,
and Christopher W. Hsieh, Chief Assistant Passaic
County Prosecutor, on the brief).

Stefan Van Jura, Deputy Public Defender, argued the
cause for respondent (Joseph E. Krakora, Public
Defender, attorney; Stefan Van Jura, of counsel and on
the brief, and Laura C. Sutnick, Designated Counsel, on
the brief).

Alexander Shalom argued the cause for amicus curiae
American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (American
Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Foundation,
attorneys; Alexander Shalom, Tess Borden, Edward
Barocas, and Jeanne LoCicero, on the brief).

                          1
            JUSTICE LaVECCHIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

      In this case, defendant Rafael Camey stands charged with murder. The

police discovered the victim’s lifeless body behind a supermarket in Passaic

and swabbed it for DNA evidence. The victim had been brutally beaten and

was partially disrobed; the cause of her death was blunt force trauma and

drowning.

      The ensuing investigation led the police to search for a particular violent

individual with whom the victim had been seen. To try to solve the crime, the

police swabbed multiple individuals for DNA including defendant. His DNA

profile matched the DNA found in the victim. In this interlocutory appeal, we

review two key pre-trial determinations involving the DNA evidence from

defendant.

      First, after the trial court granted defendant’s motion to suppress DNA

results from a buccal swab obtained on the basis of invalid consent, which the

State no longer contests, the State sought admission of the excluded DNA

results on the basis of inevitable discovery. The State argued that it could

have obtained a buccal swab from defendant under  N.J.S.A. 53:1-20.20 or

through an application for investigative detention under Rule 3:5A-4. The trial

court agreed to employ an inevitable discovery analysis and ruled the results

                                        2
from that buccal swab inadmissible under either inevitable discovery

argument. The Appellate Division affirmed the suppression of the results from

that swab.

      Second, the State filed a separate application under Rule 3:5A-4 to take

a second buccal swab from defendant. The court again turned to the

framework of an inevitable discovery analysis and rejected the application.

The Appellate Division again affirmed.

      Like the trial court and the Appellate Division, we hold that the police

violated the Fourth Amendment in the way they obtained defendant’s DNA.

As a result, the results from that search cannot be used.

      DNA evidence, however, is immutable. It is unlike a completed search

of a home in which the police already removed contraband -- a search that

cannot be repeated. After a person is swabbed for DNA, of course, his DNA

remains intact. It will be the same ten years from now as it was several years

ago. The application for a second buccal swab from defendant calls into

question the standard to which the State should be held when making an

application for a judicially sanctioned swab as part of an investigative

detention, see R. 3:5A-4, after the State’s previous swab -- secured through an

unconstitutional search and seizure -- was excluded. Notwithstanding the

immutability of DNA information, the second buccal swab does not lose its

                                        3
character as a second search and seizure merely because the new buccal

evidence will provide the same uniquely identifying information available

from an individual’s DNA that the initial buccal evidence provided.

      The appeal thus raises a novel question: Under what circumstances, if

any, may the police apply to conduct a new search for immutable evidence like

DNA? Is a suspect’s DNA off-limits to law enforcement for all time if an

initial search was invalid? Or, are there situations in which law enforcement

may seek a new buccal swab to examine a person’s DNA?

      We conclude that a traditional inevitable discovery “look-back” analysis

for alternative reasoning to support admission of already-seized evidence is a

poor fit for the analysis needed in these circumstances. Instead, we draw from

the independent source doctrine to analyze the question and frame an

appropriate test. To apply for a new buccal swab for DNA evidence under

Rule 3:5A, we conclude that the State must demonstrate probable cause for the

new search. That showing may include evidence that existed before the initial

invalid search, but the showing cannot be tainted by the results of the prior

search. In addition, to deter wrongdoing by the police, the State must show by

clear and convincing evidence that the initial impermissible search was not the

result of flagrant police misconduct. The approach adopted protects a

                                        4
suspect’s constitutional rights and recognizes the legitimate public interest in a

fair assessment of whether a second buccal swab sample should be allowed.

      In sum, we affirm the suppression of DNA evidence from the first buccal

swab. We hold that the trial court’s thorough and detailed reasons for denying

admission of this evidence, under either of the State’s two inevitable discovery

arguments, are clearly sustainable on appeal. However, the State’s application

for a second buccal swab calls for a remand. We vacate the Appellate

Division’s affirmance of the denial of the State’s application to take a new

buccal swab from defendant and remand for further proceedings consistent

with this opinion and the new test set forth herein.

                                        I.

      The pertinent facts from the pre-trial applications and related evidential

proceedings involve the State’s investigation into the death of a woman whose

body was discovered in a secluded area of Passaic and the narrowing of the

investigation to defendant.

      A little after 6:00 p.m. on September 30, 2013, the Passaic Police

Department received a 9-1-1 report of a body in a wooded area near a river

bank behind a ShopRite store. Sergeant Bordamonte, the lead detective in the

matter, testified that the deceased -- later determined to be a woman named

                                        5
Katie1 -- had been “beaten very, very brutally” and was partially disrobed. An

autopsy revealed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma and drowning.

      Bordamonte was familiar with Tina, the person who placed the 9-1-1

call. The police knew she was a prostitute who frequented the area where

Katie’s body was located and that she had provided useful information in other

police investigations.

      Bordamonte interviewed Tina the day after Katie’s body was found.

Tina told Bordamonte that Katie was “the new girl on the block” and that she

saw Katie with a person she described as a “violent Mexican male” (the violent

male) at about 11:00 p.m. on the night before Katie’s death. Tina said that she

had been choked by the same man during a paid sexual encounter. She also

said that the man had assaulted another woman, Ashley, and that a friend,

Dennis, would be better able to describe this man because Dennis “definitely

knows who he is.”2 Bordamonte showed Tina photographs from the police

database and later drove her around in the hope that she might recognize the

man she recalled seeing with Katie. Neither effort produced an identification,

and Tina agreed to contact the police if she saw the man again. According to

1
  We have assigned fictitious names to many individuals discussed herein,
including the victim, her husband, and the informant.
2
  Those statements were not borne out in independent interviews of Ashley
and Dennis.
                                       6
Bordamonte, Tina appeared to be under the influence of an intoxicating

substance during this initial interview.

      Later that day, police obtained a statement from Katie’s husband,

Martin. According to Martin, Katie was a prostitute and drug addict. He said

that he had not seen her for one or two days and that it was not uncommon for

her to “disappear for days at times.” Bordamonte later learned, through a

criminal history search, that Martin had been arrested for aggravated sexual

assault and kidnapping and that there had been a domestic violence incident

between him and Katie.

      Three days after finding Katie’s body, Bordamonte conducted a second

interview with Tina in which she repeated that she last saw Katie with the

violent male the night before her body was found. During this interview, Tina

again appeared to Bordamonte to be under the influence of drugs.

      That same day, police officers conducted on-scene interviews with

approximately sixteen homeless individuals who were in the vicinity of where

Katie’s body was found and from whom the police received consent to take

buccal swabs. None of the individuals whom the police interviewed and

swabbed were able to provide information related to Katie’s death.

Beforehand, police had administered buccal swabs to at least four other

homeless individuals who were in the area near where Katie’s body was found.

                                           7
      On October 8, 2013, police interviewed a friend of Katie’s, Penny, who

reported that Katie and Martin were having “marital problems.” Penny also

stated that, on the night before Katie’s body was found, she saw her with a

man named Richard and she believed Richard was involved in the murder

because he had not been back since that night. Richard was subsequently

interviewed, and he confirmed that he saw Katie the night before her body was

found. Others interviewed by Bordamonte included a woman who reported

that she had acted as a lookout for Katie while Katie had a sexual encounter

with a Polish man the day she was killed. According to this report, Katie and

that man were alone for a long time.

      On October 18, 2013, Tina was interviewed for a third time. She

reiterated that she last saw Katie walking away from others toward a more

secluded area with the so-called violent male and added that the “rumor in the

street” was that someone called “Blaze” killed Katie.3 Two days after this

interview, Tina called police to report that she saw the violent male about

whom she had been telling them. Police responded to her location, where Tina

made an on-scene identification of defendant by pointing him out.

3
  At the suppression hearing, Bordamonte could not confidently confirm that
Tina was under the influence of drugs during the October 18 interview , unlike
his observations from earlier interviews, but he stated that her behavior that
day suggested that she may have been.

                                       8
       Thus, despite the investigation leading in various directions, by October

21, 2013, defendant was a person of interest in the investigation into Katie’s

murder. That night, officers went to a bar that defendant frequented after his

work shift and detained him. Detective Alex Flores advised defendant of his

Miranda4 rights and interviewed him in Spanish, his native language. Flores

also presented defendant with a consent form for a buccal swab printed in

English. After defendant signed the untranslated form, another detective took

a buccal swab from defendant and released him.

       Several weeks later, on January 13, 2014, Bordamonte sent defendant’s

DNA sample, along with the approximately twenty other samples that the

police had collected from local homeless individuals, to the State Police

Laboratory for testing. Bordamonte testified that he waited so he could submit

the samples in a single group, conceding that the submission “was a touch

delayed.”

       On March 18, 2014, Tina provided police with another formal statement,

this time shortly after her incarceration, during which she was drug-free. This

statement was consistent with her previous statements regarding Katie and the

violent male. Also, after viewing photographs depicting eighteen of the

twenty individuals who had either consented to buccal swabs or been

4
    Miranda v. Arizona,