Court Opinion

ID: 9701610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:27:25.99089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:25.870671
License: Public Domain

SCHREIBER, J.,
dissenting.
The door has now been closed and locked. Relevant and material evidence which no court has seen has been suppressed although that evidence could have had a crucial role in assisting the jury’s evaluation of the credibility of a key prosecution witness. The result has been reached by rejecting the Sixth Amendment implications and the trial court’s factual assessment. The Sixth Amendment issue is whether a defendant has a constitutional right to compulsory process to produce a letter, containing relevant and material evidence, for a court’s in camera inspection to determine if the same material is available through other sources. If such a right exists, then does the newsreporter shield law, N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21.1 et seq., which places the burden on the defendant to prove what is in the letter (without his having had the opportunity to read it) and also to establish that the contents are not available through other sources, conflict with defendant’s Sixth Amendment right?1
*362As to the second matter, the trial court’s factual assessment, the trial court’s feel of the case and factual findings of necessity for production of the letter should be respected. See State v. Johnson, 42 N.J. 146, 161 (1964).
Pizuto’s letter may be important and crucial evidence for the jury to consider in determining his credibility. Yet, its contents are not known and will remain unknown. I cannot conclude on this record that the less intrusive sources provide “precisely the same” information that is in the letter.2 83 N.J. at 360 (emphasis added). The majority’s conclusion assumes (1) that Pizuto had a complete recollection, which he denied, of what he had written in the letter; (2) that the letter was identical with, not simply similar to, the less intrusive material; and (3) that Pizuto’s declarations before the trial court concerning the contents of the letter were accurate. The trial court did not accept any of these assumptions.
The trial court, after carefully considering and weighing all the evidence, found the less intrusive sources were not satisfactory for several reasons. The trial court pointed out that Pizuto was not certain as to what he wrote in the letter. Before testifying, Pizuto sought unsuccessfully to have the newsreporter read the letter to him so that his testimony would be accurate. The trial court noted that the Pizuto letter may have referred to his grand jury testimony. Apparently, none of the less intrusive sources dealt with this subject. The trial court found also
that what Mr. Pizuto had to say about Major Dintino in that letter written to Robin Goldstein is relevant information with respect to information that could be used to possibly impeach Mr. Pizuto and it is not in anyway fully covered or *363even adequately covered by the information obtained from less intrusive sources with respect to what Major Dintino had said. And the same would go with respect to whatever Deputy Attorney General Bozza had said. There is very little said in most of those less intrusive sources about Mr. Bozza, and that may be crucial.
The trial court concluded that the “alternative sources [do] not duplicate all of the potentially relevant information contained in the Pizuto letter.” In its opinion the letter may bear “significantly” on “the issue of guilt or innocence” and “therefore it is necessary to the Defendants.”
The defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights, including his right to a fundamentally fair trial by obtaining evidence which may be helpful to his defense, are entitled to be safeguarded by at least permitting the trial court to make an in camera inspection of the letter. Those rights include the production of evidence which may or may not be ultimately found admissible at trial. In In re Farber, 78 N.J. 259 (1978), cert. den. 439 U.S. 997, 99 S.Ct. 598, 58 L.Ed.2d 670 (1978), we interpreted Article I, § 10 of the New Jersey Constitution which is worded exactly the same as the Sixth Amendment,
as affording a defendant in a criminal prosecution the right to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents and other material for which he may have, or may believe he has, a legitimate need in preparing or undertaking his defense. It also means that witnesses properly summoned will be required to testify and that material demanded by a properly phrased subpoena duces tecum will be forthcoming and available for appropriate examination and use. [78 N.J. at 274; emphasis added]
The decision to produce Pizuto’s letter, whose contents cannot be known without examination, prior to its introduction into evidence, should be placed “in public, not [the] private, hands” of the reporter. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 698, 92 S.Ct. 2646, 2665, 33 L.Ed.2d 626, 649 (1972). See also United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 711, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3109, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039, 1066 (1974) (It is the duty of the courts to vindicate the guarantee of the Sixth Amendment). The need for in camera review is not to be equated with the need for introduction of the letter into evidence. Only after the trial court has examined the letter can it determine whether there are any less intrusive *364sources.3 Cf. United States v. Garrett, 542 F.2d 23, 26 (6 Cir. 1976) (Sixth Amendment confrontation right abridged where trial court erroneously denied in camera review of confidential record). See generally, Kerr v. United States Dist. Ct., 426 U.S. 394, 405-406, 96 S.Ct. 2119, 2125, 48 L.Ed.2A 725, 734-735 (1976); United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 714, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3110, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039, 1067 (1974); Note, “Defendant v. Witness: Measuring Confrontation and Compulsory Process Rights Against Statutory Communications Privileges,” 30 Stan.L.Rev. 935, 986 (1978). Furthermore, placing the burden on defendant to prove precisely what was in the letter and that the alternative sources did not contain the same information as in the letter compounds the adverse impact on defendant’s constitutional right of production.4
*365In Farber we held that when a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right and a statutory privilege conflicted, the privilege must yield. Here the Legislature is preventing the court from deciding whether that conflict exists. It is because of the shield law that the court may not examine a relevant and material document and decide whether the defendant is entitled to have that document placed in evidence. This proposition is contrary to the policy long advocated in this State of presenting all relevant and material facts to a jury to assist it in its search for truth. Chief Justice Vanderbilt wrote in In re Seiser, 15 N.J. 393, 405 (1954), “the doctrine of privileged communication runs counter to the fundamental theory of our judicial system that the fullest disclosure of the facts will best lead to the truth and ultimately to the triumph of justice.”
I suggest that under the circumstances of this case the trial court has a right to examine the letter and subsequently exercise an informed judgment as to whether the letter is admissible, not only with respect to less intrusive source data, but also with respect to cumulativeness, redundancy and remoteness. In this manner a trial court may exercise its discretion, rather than being prevented from doing so.
The setting in which the request for the letter is made should not be overlooked. Preserving the confidentiality of the newsreporter’s sources and her work product is not at stake. The majority asserts that the information in the letter is known. If that is so, then none of the major purposes which motivated adoption of the shield statute is present in this case. It is difficult to believe that sources seeking anonymity will be discouraged from confiding in-the press because of an in camera inspection of the letter in this case, where the source has publicly acknowledged that he wrote the letter and has made every effort to divulge its contents. The effort to avoid this speculative chill should not be permitted to deny the defendant’s constitutional right by impeding the judicial role of determining whether that right is being adversely affected.
As indicated in my previous dissent, I am of the opinion that defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to have compulsory process *366may not be infringed at this preliminary stage because of a statutory evidentiary privilege.
I would affirm the trial court’s order.
For reversal—Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices SULLIVAN, PASHMAN, CLIFFORD, HANDLER and POLLOCK—6.
For modification and affirmance—Justice SCHREIBER—1.

it is important to recognize that the question whether the letter is privileged “is ultimately a federal one to be resolved by constitutional standards, [and] that the constitutional standard is a rigorous one. ...” Westen, “Confrontation and Compulsory Process: A Unified Theory of Evidence for Criminal Cases,” 91 Harv.L.Rev. 567, 593 (1978). In my dissent in State v. Boiardo, 82 N.J. 446 (1980), I advocated an interpretation of the shield law which would comport with the Sixth Amendment. The majority has seen fit *362to construe the shield law literally. This interpretation sanctions the Legislature’s control over what may or may not be offered into evidence.

Defendant’s proposed use of the letter was to attack Pizuto’s credibility, but he did not limit or concede that its contents were to be used solely to show Pizuto’s bias to help the State’s case in return for a non-custodial sentence. Even if the letter were limited to Pizuto’s “deal,” the details in the letter could be significantly different from those in the other sources and could have had a much greater impact at trial.

When several sources of comparable material are available, it may be contended that the defendant has the right to make the choice of what he shall use. In United States v. Seeger, 180 F.Supp. 467 (S.D.N.Y.1960), the defendant was charged with willful refusal to answer a question during an investigation of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The Government sought to quash a subpoena served upon the Chairman of the Committee and urged that all the matters which the witness could be called upon to testify to were deducible from documents, records and minutes of the Committee’s proceedings. Judge Weinfeld refused to quash the subpoena. He wrote:
Under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution a defendant accused of crime is guaranteed the right to compel the attendance of witnesses. Who these witnesses shall be is a matter for the defendant and his counsel to decide. It does not rest with the prosecution or the person under subpoena. The defendant may not be deprived of the right to summon to his aid witnesses who it is believed may offer proof to negate the' Government’s evidence or to support the defense. The fact that the witness here under subpoena is a member of Congress does not submerge the basic question—the right of the defendant in a criminal prosecution to compulsory process. [Id. at 468; footnote omitted]

The majority overstates the position I am advocating when it states that under my view circumstantial evidence proving the contents of a document could never be a legally satisfactory substitute for in camera inspection. 83 N.J. at 359. Cf. In re Kozlov, 79 N.J. 232 (1979); see discussion in dissenting opinion in State v. Boiardo, 82 N.J. at 451—452.