Court Opinion

ID: 9764568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:27:32.02959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:52:14.085877
License: Public Domain

HANDLER, J.,
concurring.
The Court upholds defendant Robert J. Mancine’s conviction for aggravated manslaughter. I concur fully in its reasoning and judgment with respect to that conviction. The Court also upholds defendant’s conviction for tampering with a witness, supported solely by the recanted prior inconsistent statement of his girlfriend, Bernadette Hohney. I concur as well in that determination. The Court, finding that the reliability concerns generated by prior inconsistent statements “shadow” those of confessions, ante at 250-251, 590 A.2d at 1116, adopts a test for such statements similar to the one it has used in evaluating the reliability of confessions. The Court holds that “[a] prior inconsistent statement for which substantial evidence exists corroborating any of its specific elements and enhancing its *261seeming reliability is corroborated in its entirety and may be used for all purposes.” Ante at 251, 590 A.2d at 1117. Because parts of Hohney’s recanted statement were corroborated by other evidence, and because the statement “carrie[dj with it intrinsic and extrinsic indicia of reliability apart from the substance it contains,” the Court concludes that the statement in its entirety is sufficiently reliable to stand as the sole support of defendant’s tampering conviction. Ante at 253-256, 590 A.2d at 1118-1119. Although I agree in general with the Court’s test to determine the admissibility and use of prior inconsistent statements, I am troubled by the analytical route it follows to reach that result. I write separately, therefore, to differentiate my endorsement of using that test to determine the admissibility and use of prior inconsistent statements from my disapproval of using that test to determine the admissibility and use of confessions. See State v. DiFrisco, 118 N.J. 253, 289-98, 571 A.2d 914 (1990) (Handler, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The Court has previously “determine[d], as a matter of law, that no presumption of unreliability attaches to ... prior inconsistent statements that requires a special or heightened burden of proof.” State v. A. Gross, 121 N.J. 1, 15, 577 A.2d 806 (1990). I therefore find unobjectionable a rule by which a prior inconsistent statement may, on its own, support a criminal conviction, so long as substantial evidence corroborates the statement at least in part, and the circumstances in which the statement was given support its reliability. Confessions, by contrast, have long been regarded as generally suspect. Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 153, 75 S.Ct. 194, 197, 99 L.Ed. 192, 198-99 (1954); State v. DiFrisco, supra, 118 N.J. at 278-79, 571 A.2d 914; State v. Lucas, 30 N.J. 37, 51, 152 A.2d 50 (1959). Thus, “[i]t is a widely accepted doctrine ... that an uncorroborated extra-judicial confession cannot provide the evidential basis to sustain a conviction for a crime.” State v. Lucas, supra, 30 N.J. at 51, 152 A.2d 50. The foundation of the corroboration rule
*262lies in a long history of judicial experience with confessions and in the realization that sound law enforcement requires police investigations which extend beyond the words of the accused. Confessions may be unreliable because they are coerced or induced, and although separate doctrines exclude involuntary confessions from consideration by the jury, further caution is warranted because the accused may be unable to establish the involuntary nature of his statements. Moreover, although a statement may not be “involuntary” within the meaning of this exclusionary rule, still its reliability may be suspect if it is extracted from one who is under the pressure of a police investigation — whose words may reflect the strain and confusion attending his predicament rather than a clear reflection of his past. Finally, the experience of courts, the police and the medical profession recounts a number of false confessions voluntarily made.
[Smith, v. United States, supra, 348 U.S. at 153, 75 S.Ct. at 197, 99 L.Ed. at 198-99 (citations omitted).]
For those reasons, this Court has recognized that “[n]o greater burden should be required of the State than independent corroborative proof tending to establish that when the defendant confessed he was telling the truth____” State v. Lucas, supra, 30 N.J. at 58, 152 A.2d 50. That burden encompasses the need for corroborative evidence of both the confession itself and the commission of the crime. Ibid.
In State v. DiFrisco, although a majority of the Court endorsed the corroboration rule and its rationale, it eviscerated the rule by effectively holding that even though the crime is not corroborated, the whole of the confession is deemed reliable if some of the confession is corroborated. See 118 N.J. at 269-80, 571 A.2d 914. In DiFrisco, a capital-murder case, the defendant confessed that he committed a murder and that he was hired to commit that murder by one Franciotti. The latter aspect of the crime, the hiring, constituted an aggravating factor that was the functional equivalent of the crime of capital murder. There was, however, no extrinsic evidence of that criminal arrangement. The Court nonetheless found the confession sufficient to support the murder-for-hire aggravating factor, which the trial court had ultimately used to sentence the defendant to death. The Court, in sustaining that use of the confession, stated: “[w]hen there is no extrinsic evidence of the aggravating factors themselves, the [finder of fact] must be *263satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the confession itself is sufficient to establish the aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 275, 571 A.2d 914.
The Court, in my view, so diluted the requirement of extrinsic crime corroboration as effectively to eliminate it. I wrote:
[T]he Court departs from the traditional corroboration rule, which, as noted, entails some degree of both independent evidence of the underlying crime and independent evidence that bolsters the trustworthiness of the confession. ********
It is evident that the Court understands that its new corroboration rule tolerates only a shred of evidence as sufficient to authenticate what otherwise would unquestionably be a legally insufficient confession.
[Id. at 293, 294, 571 A.2d 914 (Handler, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (citation omitted).]
I believed in DiFrisco, and continue to believe, that the use of that diluted corroboration test as applied to confessions is both unprincipled and unacceptable. See id. at 294, 571 A.2d 914.
The Court in this case homogenizes confessions and prior inconsistent statements. I see no necessity to equate for evidentiary purposes admissions of guilt by an accused and incriminating statements by a witness nor to fashion an identical test to determine their respective admissibility and probative worth to establish criminal guilt. We have, as noted, concluded that, unlike confessions, “no presumption of unreliability attaches to ... prior inconsistent statements.” State v. A. Gross, supra, 121 N.J. at 15, 577 A.2d 806. We have prescribed a comprehensive and stringent standard to determine the admissibility of a recanted prior inconsistent statement. That standard, in my opinion, is sufficiently protective of the rights of criminal defendants and does not pose intolerable risks that a defendant’s conviction will be based on intrinsically unreliable evidence. The test that the Court now applies to prior inconsistent statements conforms to that standard. I repeat, however, that the justification for that test should not depend on its improvident application to confessions.
Thus, in all respects save its endorsement of and reliance on DiFrisco, I join the Court’s opinion.