Court Opinion

ID: 9697298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:12:15.548378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:31.158139
License: Public Domain

Weintkatjb, C. J.
(concurring). A criminal charge must sufficiently identify the criminal event to enable the accused to defend and to defeat a subsequent prosecution for the same offense. These essentials are not the distinctive incidents of the right to indictment. They are required as well of accusations, informations or any other mode of charging an offense, and this because of the demands of due process of law and the constitutional guaranty against multiple exposure for the same offense. The requirement peculiar to the constitutional right to indictment is that a grand jury must find probable cause before a man is brought to trial for a crime, and accordingly that the indictment shall *19be sufficiently specific to preclude the substitution and trial of an offense the grand jury did not in fact find. State v. Sullivan, 33 N. J. Super. 138, 142 (App. Div. 1954); State v. DeVita, 6 N. J. Super. 344, 347 (App. Div. 1950); Linden Park Blood, Horse Association v. State, 55 N. J. L. 557, 558 (E. & A. 1893); 1 Chitty, Criminal Law (3d Am. ed. 1836), at p. *169. If an indictment is so phrased that the criminal event cannot be identified, it will not be aided by a bill of particulars, and this for the reason that only a grand jury may initiate a prosecution for the crime.
The difficult question is whether the indictment here is sufficiently definitive to assure against the trial of a crime the grand jury did not find. To determine if this is so, the common law crimes subsumed popularly under the generic-head of misconduct in office must be understood in the aspect pertinent to that inquiry. There is no such offense as official misconduct in general any more than there is a crime of larceny in general. Both are crimes only with relation to specific situations. An indictment for larceny must identify the specific event. So also must an indictment for misconduct in office. As Chief Justice Case expressed it in State v. Jenkins, 136 N. J. L. 112, 113 (Sup. Ct. 1947), writ of error dismissed 137 N. J. L. 209 (E. & A. 1948):
“Misconduct of that nature necessarily consists of a particular incident or of a series of particular incidents. It is not just an attitude. It is action; or it is non-action with respect to specific incidents. There is not a failure to raid a pool room unless a particular pool room exists, not a failure to lay complaints unless there are particular persons against whom complaints should be laid, and not a failure to seize gambling equipment unless there are particular items of equipment in existence intended for or used for the unlawful purpose. There can be no conviction on such a charge unless the particular incident or a multiplicity of such incidents is proved. A defendant is unable to plead or to prepare a defense against such proofs unless he knows in advance the particular offense or offenses counted upon; not merely the general definition of the crime, either in the words of the statute or according to the common law, but such details of the act or omission as will enable him to know precisely what accusation is laid against him and to prepare his case with fore-knowledge of what he will be called upon to meet.” (Emphasis added.)
*20Thus an indictment for misconduct must not only indicate the duty of office offended but must identify the acts or omissions which the grand jury found to breach that duty. There may be a continuous breach of duty constituting but a single offense, as for example if a policeman over a period of time fails to suppress a known gambling operation. If a police officer continuously fails to suppress five different gambling operations at five different places, there are five offenses. If the five are lumped together in a single count with whatever the required specificity, the issue would only be one of misjoinder, and that issue would present none of the constitutional problems with which we are presently concerned. But as I understand the constitutional guaranty of indictment, there would be a denial of that right if the indictment merely alleged a continuous breach of duty to suppress gambling without specifying the places or activities as to which the failure occurred. See Linden Park Blood Horse Association v. State, supra. I suppose there could be a charge that the officer adopted a policy of disregarding his duty to enforce the gambling laws, and if such were the charge, the specific failures would be in the nature of overt acts or omissions rather than multiple charges of crime. But upon an indictment cast upon that thesis, the jury issue would be whether the defendant adopted that policy and not whether, without such policy, he failed criminally to discharge his duty in a specific situation.
With these views in mind, I turn to the indictment in this case. If it merely charged violation of duty with respect to competitive bidding without identifying the transactions, it unquestionably would fail unless it could be read to charge the adoption of a general policy to evade the bidding statute, in which event that would be the issue for trial rather than a breach of duty in some single transaction. (Eor present purposes I pass the question whether an indictment on that broad thesis would nonetheless have to contain allegations of specific overt acts or omissions.) I do not understand the State so to construe the indictment, *21and neither did the Appellate Division. Rather the indictment is read to be limited to transactions with the four contractors mentioned therein. So construed, there is no constitutional difficulty if the indictment is read to charge that all of the transactions with the named contractors were criminal, either with or without an overall agreement between defendant and the contractors to evade the bidding statute as each municipal need should arise. Upon that construction, the constitutional right to indictment would be satisfied even though the question of misjoinder (in a single count), a non-constitutional problem, might arise. Since the attack was addressed to the face of the indictment and it may be construed as just suggested, the indictment is not constitutionally vulnerable and for that reason I concur in the result.
Upon the oral argument, the State informed us there were a number of transactions with the named contractors and seemed to advance the theme that the grand jury meant to charge illegality only as to such of the transactions as in fact were attended with illegality and that the prosecution will later indicate which were which. I cannot subscribe to the thesis that a grand jury may return a grab-bag allegation that among the many transactions answering the general description in the indictment some of them, wholly unidentified, were infected with crime. If a merchant who had made 100 purchases from a wholesaler over a span of years were indicted for false pretenses in one of the transactions, the indictment would fall if it did not within the limits of practicality identify the particular transaction the grand jury had in mind. In my opinion, indictments so phrased do not satisfy the constitutional right to indictment. The circumstances advanced at the argument beyond the record suggest the State should re-evaluate the situation and consider the advisability of superseding indictments consonant with the constitutional right to indictment upon the ultimate facts as the State knows them.
*22I understand the Appellate Division to hold that bad faith must be proved in addition to an intentional doing of the acts which constitute a violation of the bidding statute. I agree that such is the mens rea required and that the indictment fairly charges it.
As to the demand for a bill of particulars, I of course agree that particulars are plainly required under any view of the indictment.