Title: State of New Jersey v. Richard J. Chippero
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: a-46-99
State: new-jersey
Issuer: new-jersey Supreme Court
Date: June 30, 2000

(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. 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 Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized). Stein, J., writing for a unanimous Court. This appeal requires the Court to determine the admissibility at trial of defendant's confession to murder and other crimes during police interrogation following his arrest without probable cause. On July 23, 1991, the murder victim, Ermina Ross Tocci, was raped and stabbed inside her mobile home. Two days after the murder, police were contacted by a former neighbor who had been in the mobile home park on the day of the murder and had seen an unidentified man walking quickly from alongside the victim's mobile home to an adjacent mobile home belonging to the defendant. Detectives went to defendant's mobile home with a search warrant. They were informed by defendant's brother that defendant was fishing, and officers located him at a nearby lake. Defendant was patted down, handcuffed, and taken to the prosecutor's office, where he waived his Miranda rights. The State does not dispute that defendant was arrested without probable cause. Defendant was interrogated at the prosecutor's office for nine hours. The circumstances of the interrogation are in dispute. According to defendant, he asked for a lawyer, asked that they terminate the interrogation, was given extra doses of his own Valium, and experienced significant psychological alterations during the interrogation. According to the State, the first three hours of the interrogation consisted of light conversation, following which defendant admitted that he was inside the victim's mobile home on the day of the murder. Approximately four hours into the interrogation, the officers confronted defendant with information obtained from investigators who had returned from canvassing the defendant's and victim's neighbors, one of whom stated that defendant told her on the evening of the murder that the victim had been found dead from stab wounds and lying in a pool of blood. After almost nine hours of interrogation, defendant admitted that he had committed the crime. Defendant was again read his Miranda rights, after which he confessed further details. A five-week capital murder trial ensued at which defendant denied that he committed the crime. The confession was admitted into evidence by the trial court because it determined that the police had obtained new, independent information during the interrogation, relating to defendant's knowledge about the victim's condition upon discovery of her body, that provided probable cause to continue the interrogation. At trial, defendant contended, among other defenses, that the interrogation resulted in a false confession. Defendant was convicted, but the jury did not elect to sentence him to death. The trial judge sentenced him to two life terms with fifty-five years of parole ineligibility. The Appellate Division affirmed the admissibility of the confession on other grounds, finding that the long time delay between the arrest and the confession attenuated the connection between them and purged the taint of the illegal arrest. The court rejected any contention of flagrant police misconduct and found that defendant did not suffer sufficient psychological pressure during the interrogation to require suppression of the confession. The court did not find that information obtained by the officers between the arrest and confession constituted an intervening factor that provided probable cause to continue the interrogation. HELD: Defendant's confession must be suppressed because the causal chain between the illegal arrest and the interrogation was unbroken. 1. Confessions are suppressed if they were obtained during custodial interrogation after an illegal arrest unless the causation chain between the arrest and interrogation is sufficiently broken so that the confession is an act of defendant's free will that purges the taint of the arrest. Three factors are examined in determining whether the confession must be excluded. These are the temporal proximity to the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct. (Pp. 14-16) 2. Of the three factors, temporal proximity is the least determinative and it is influenced by the conditions of the detention. Intervening circumstances or events that indicate the causal connection between the illegal arrest and the confession was broken include Miranda warnings, clear evidence that the defendant intended to turn himself in and confess, and circumstances that emerged during the interrogation that induced the defendant to confess or in some way demonstrate that the illegal arrest did not cause the confession. The factor of police misconduct requires assessment of the manner in which defendant was arrested, detained and interrogated. (Pp. 16-23) 3. Here, on the factor of police misconduct, the Court finds that the arrest without probable cause militates in favor of suppression, while the conditions of defendant's interrogation, after review of the conflicting statements of the defendant and the State, are at best neutral and at worst tilt in favor of suppression. On the factor of intervening circumstances, the Court finds that, prior to the interrogation, the officers knew about the statement defendant made to a neighbor concerning the circumstances in which the victim's body was found . However, the Court notes that even if the information was new, it was not sufficient to erase the taint of the illegal arrest. The Court finds the final factor, temporal proximity, unpersuasive here since the mere passage of time ordinarily does not purge the taint of an illegal arrest. In light of the illegal arrest and interrogation and the unbroken causal connection between them, the confession must be suppressed. (Pp. 23-29) The judgement of the Appellate Division in respect of the admissibility of the confession is REVERSED, and the matter is REMANDED to the Law Division for retrial. CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ and JUSTICES O'HERN, COLEMAN, LONG, VERNIERO, and LaVECCHIA join in JUSTICE STEIN's opinion. STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. RICHARD J. CHIPPERO, Defendant-Appellant. Argued March 28, 2000-- Decided June 30, 2000 On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Frank J. Pugliese, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Ivelisse Torres, Public Defender, attorney). Nancy A. Hulett, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (John J. Farmer, Jr., Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney). The opinion of the Court was delivered by STEIN, J. This appeal concerns the admissibility of defendant's confession to, among other crimes, murder and aggravated sexual assault. Defendant sought to suppress the confession because he was arrested without probable cause, as the State acknowledged. The trial court admitted the confession because it found that the police obtained information during the interrogation, but prior to the confession, that gave them probable cause to continue interrogating defendant. The Appellate Division affirmed the admissibility of the confession but disagreed with the trial court's reasoning, holding instead that the confession was admissible because the nine-hour interrogation of defendant purged the taint of the illegal arrest. We reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and remand the matter for retrial. NO. A-46 STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. RICHARD J. CHIPPERO, Defendant-Appellant. DECIDED June 30, 2000 Chief Justice Poritz