Court Opinion

ID: 9710850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:19:01.081304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:00.332845
License: Public Domain

GARIBALDI, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the Court that defendant’s subsequent indictments charging arson and attempted theft by deception are not *712barred by double jeopardy or the mandatory-joinder rule. However, I would hold that defendant’s subsequent indictments are also not barred by the doctrine of fundamental fairness. I dissent, therefore, from the Court’s decision to remand the case to determine if this doctrine is applicable.
Fundamental fairness is a doctrine to be sparingly applied. It is appropriately applied in those rare cases where not to do so will subject the defendant to oppression, harassment, or egregious deprivation. However, State v. Currie, 41 N.J. 531, 541 (1964), and its progeny were “never intended to convey the thought that every magistrate’s determination, no matter how minor the offense charged before him, will necessarily preclude a subsequent criminal prosecution based in whole or in part on the same activity, no matter how aggravated the crime charged.” Here defendant could not have reasonably expected that his pleading guilty to a disorderly-persons offense in exchange for a lenient sentence would preclude subsequent prosecutions for the indictable offenses of attempted theft by deception and arson.
Defendant’s case is easily distinguishable from State v. Gregory, 66 N.J. 510 (1975), where defendant was prosecuted twice, based on offenses that occurred the same day, that were known at the time of the initial prosecution by the appropriate prosecuting authority, which had proof of both offenses and the ability to try them within the same jurisdiction and venue. Here, the operative facts occurred weeks apart, were not shown to have been known by the appropriate authority at the time of the first prosecution, and were not within the venue and jurisdiction of a single court. Indeed, the record supports the conclusion that at the time of the municipal hearing, investigation of the indictable offenses was ongoing. It was not until four months after the municipal conviction, in July, that evidence linking defendant to the arson offense developed, namely, Stewart Kaiser’s statement and the results of defendant’s polygraph test. The State’s claims are supported by the fact that *713the indictments were not issued until after receipt of Kaiser’s statement and the polygraph test.
Moreover, the Livingston police complaint simply alleged that Yoskowitz had falsely reported to the police that his car had been stolen. Nothing in that complaint stated that defendant was attempting to defraud the insurance company or that defendant knew that his car was to be burned. The municipal-court offense was not a lesser-included offense of the more serious offenses. Neither the elements nor the evidence of the subsequent charges of arson or attempted theft by deception were identical to or inclusive of the elements or evidence necessary to establish the municipal-court offense of filing a false police report. From the evidence and complaint before the municipal court when it took defendant’s plea, there was nothing to alert it that the complaint should have been referred to the Union County Prosecutor.
Nor do I find that defendant's colloquy with the municipal court was sufficient to place the municipal court on notice that the incident involved indictable offenses committed in another county. A defendant appearing in a municipal court on a disorderly-persons offense should not be permitted, by gratuitously informing the court of facts unnecessary to establish the disorderly offense, to foreclose a subsequent indictment on the more serious offenses.
Even assuming that the defendant expected this information to have such an effect, such an expectation was unreasonable. Defendant was not forthcoming with respect to his role in the burning of the car. Defendant made absolutely no mention of arson in his written March Fifth statement or his colloquy in the municipal court. Hence, it is difficult to believe that he reasonably expected that a guilty plea to filing a fictitious police report would bar his subsequent indictment for attempted theft and arson. Furthermore, defendant suffered no serious injuries or egregious deprivation. Defendant’s municipal court proceedings were brief, he was not represented by coun*714sel, and very little evidence was introduced. At most defendant suffered a minor inconvenience in appearing at municipal court. In this case, the “oppression or harassment historically aimed at by the constitutional and common law prohibition are not significantly involved ...” Currie, supra, 41 N.J. at 543.
To avoid double-jeopardy problems, and to provide a more effective, orderly proceeding, I too continue to urge a policy favoring “cooperation between municipal courts, municipal prosecutors, and county prosecutors.” State v. Dively, 92 N.J. 573, 589 (1983). I note that the Supreme Court Committee on Criminal Practice in its 1988 Report proposed a new Rule, 3:15-3(a)(l), which provided for the compulsory joinder of “any pending non-indictable complaint for trial with a criminal offense based on the same conduct or arising from the same episode.” 122 N.J.L.J. Index pages 116-17 (1988). The proposed Rule 3:15-3(3)(c) also stated that “[fjailure to join as required in paragraph (a) shall not bar a subsequent prosecution ... unless the bar is required by statute” or the Constitution, or the prosecuting attorney knew of the other prosecution but failed to apprise the court of its existence. The Committee withdrew the proposed Rule. I urge the Committee to continue its work in this area.
Nonetheless, even if the Rule had been enacted, the indictments in the instant case would not be barred. As shown, there is no violation of the constitutional or statutory double-jeopardy provisions, nor has the statutory mandatory-joinder rule been transgressed. Likewise, there was no prosecuting attorney in municipal court who could have known that there would be later prosecutions of defendant. The majority curiously attaches significance to the latter point in its discussion of mandatory joinder, ante at 702, yet ignores it in its analysis of fundamental fairness.
I recognize that it is particularly onerous to require coordination and cooperation between two municipal police departments located in different counties. The two officers involved in the *715investigation of defendant, Stehlgens and Mazur, were, respectively, from the Livingston and Union Police Departments. The offenses were committed on different dates, in different municipalities located in different counties, and were not easily recognizable as related crimes. There is no allegation of bad faith or animus on the part of the law-enforcement officers. This is not a case, therefore, in which different investigators within the same county-prosecutorial agency were involved in related matters but failed properly to coordinate their activities. While I continue to encourage coordination between law-enforcement agencies where, as here, the requirements of double jeopardy and mandatory joinder have not been transgressed, I do not find that the treatment of defendant was fundamentally unfair. Indeed, to hold otherwise would be fundamentally unfair to the State.
Hence, I would hold that the principle of fundamental fairness and reasonable expectations does not apply in this case. Defendant did not suffer any egregious deprivation and could not have had any reasonable expectation that pleading guilty to a “disorderly persons” charge would result in the disposition of the more serious criminal offenses.
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division but would not remand the case to determine whether the principles of fundamental fairness and reasonable expectations apply.