Court Opinion

ID: 9859561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 22:01:24.241042+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:53:01.640294
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
Defendant, Eugene F. Mulcahy, was convicted of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, in violation of N.J.S.A. 39:4-50(a), and of refusing to submit to a breathalyzer examination, as called for by N.J.S.A. 39:4-50.-4a. The Appellate Division affirmed the drunk driving conviction but reversed the “refusal” charge. State v. Mulcahy, 202 N.J.Super. 398 (1985). The Court upholds the driving-while-intoxicated charge, and, reversing the Appellate Division in part, reinstates the conviction for refusal to submit to the chemical test. I would hold both convictions invalid, and therefore dissent.
The Court treats the critical issues as having been presented in hypothetical form. Ante at 469. I do not read the record that way. The case was tried the way any other “real, live” case is tried, with the defense stipulating identification and intoxication at the time of arrest, leaving it to the State to prove operation. Nothing extraordinary about that. And nothing to suggest the fanciful hypothesis gratuitously adopted by the Court, ante at 470 that defendant “stagger[ed] out of Bondy’s Tavern” and otherwise exhibited symptoms of insobriety.
Rather, the following evidence was adduced as related by the Appellate Division in support of its affirmance of Mulcahy’s drunk-driving conviction:
According to the State’s proofs at approximately 7:30 p.m. * * * Sean Dunay, a 15-year old boy, was standing near Bondy’s Tavern when he saw defendant “driving down Piermont” Road in Cresskill toward Demarest. Dunay testified that as defendant attempted to pull into a driveway “right by Bondy’s ... he *484missed pulling into the driveway and came up on the curb and hit his license plate.” Dunay testified that after hitting the curb defendant pulled away from the curb, pulling off his “license plate half way” so that “it was hanging on by one screw.” Defendant proceeded down the street, "stopped for a while in the middle of Piermont and then just pulled away and drove away.” Dunay further testified that at approximately 9:30 p.m. that same evening he saw defendant again. This time, according to Dunay, defendant “came from the direction of Tenafly,” parked by Jolly Nick’s, which is next to Bondy’s Tavern, and after getting out of his car staggered across Piermont.
At approximately 9:45 p.m. Officers Macchio and McLaughlin of the Cresskill Police Department arrived at the area of Bondy’s Tavern. Officer Macchio testified that defendant’s car was parked on a sidewalk which was not a parking area. He observed defendant approach the car, enter the car, and take the car key in his right hand. As defendant “started to make his way towards the ignition,” Officer Macchio “intercepted the keys from his hand.” At that point Officer Macchio arrested defendant for driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor in violation of N.J.S.A. 39:4-50. As indicated both on the summons and in the testimony of Officer Macchio this arrest occurred at approximately 10:00 p.m.
[202 N.J.Super. 401-03 (footnote omitted).]
As I see the case, defendant was not “operating” his vehicle at the time he was charged with drunk driving, wherefore that charge must fall. And because the arresting officer could not, for the same reason, have had probable cause to believe that defendant had been driving while drunk, the conviction for refusal to submit to a breathalyzer test likewise cannot be sustained.
I
At the outset I acknowledge that I approach the issues on this appeal with a view that some might legitimately perceive as primitive. I still believe, as I did in State v. Daly, 64 N.J. 122 (1973), that a conviction for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence requires a demonstration that the vehicle was “in motion on the roadway.” Id. at 126 (concurring opinion). I agreed then, as I do now, with Justice Francis’s dissenting position in State v. Sweeney, 40 N.J. 359 (1963).
The source of Justice Francis’s disagreement with the Court in Sweeney was the majority’s holding that a person “drives” a stationary motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, within the meaning of the drunk-driving statute, *485“when, in that condition, he enters a stationary vehicle, on a public highway or in a place devoted to public use, turns on the ignition, starts and maintains the motor in operation and remains in the driver’s seat behind the steering wheel, with the intent to move the vehicle * * *.” Id. at 361. Justice Francis, after meticulously picking over the legislative history, reached the conclusion that “[a] stationary vehicle is not being operated in the sense required for conviction; nor was the purpose of the act to make proof of an unexecuted intent to drive (operate) sufficient to convict of the offense specified therein.” Id. at 367 (Francis, J., dissenting). Said he:
We are dealing here with a quasi-criminal legislative enactment which visits serious consequences upon those who transgress it. The fact that all of us are aware of the hazards presented by drunken automobile drivers on the highways should not drive us from the normal view that penal statutes call for strict construction. Conduct should not be declared criminal unless it is plainly within the terms of the lawmakers’ condemnation.
In my judgment “operates” in the Motor Vehicle Act context is and was used as synonymous with “drives.” The word connotes and requires movement of the car on the highway before violation occurs.
*******
I am convinced the lawmakers and other officially-interested persons regarded “operate” as interchangeable with “drive.” There is no reasonable support in the legislative history for the view that an immobile automobile is being driven or operated by a person who [as was the case in Sweeney ] seats himself behind the steering wheel and does no more than start the motor.
[Id. at 362-63 (Francis, J., dissenting) (emphasis added).]
The foregoing position, I concede, has not exactly swept through the body of case law on this subject like wildfire, having been adopted only by Justice Francis in Sweeney and Justice Pashman and me in Daly. It may be a trifle antediluvian, a quaint relic the proponents of which are to be indulged, maybe gently humored, but surely not followed; but the fact remains that no matter what tests for “operating” the lower courts may have concocted, this Court has invariably required as a bare minimum of “operation” of a stationary vehicle that its engine have been started. See State v. Daly, supra, 64 N.J. at 125.
*486So for me today’s case is an a fortiori proposition: defendant had not even put the key in the ignition, much less started the car. And if we are going to start drawing new lines for operation — here, when defendant’s hand, with the key enclosed, is on its way toward the ignition — what about when defendant puts his hand on the driver’s door handle? Or when he approaches the car? Or when he departs from the saloon? Or when he gets off the bar stool? It reminds me of nothing so much as the chaos we created for ourselves in the bad old days of the worker’s compensation “going and coming” rule, see, e.g., Briggs v. American Biltrite, 74 N.J. 185 (1977); Paige v. City of Rahway, Water Dep’t, 74 N.J. 177 (1977); Wyatt v. Metropolitan Maintenance Co., 74 N.J. 167 (1977); Watson v. Nassau Inn, 74 N.J. 155 (1977), from which the legislature has mercifully granted us deliverance. See N.J.S.A. 84:15-36; Cressey v. Campus Chefs, 204 N.J.Super. 337, 343 (App.Div.1985).
Here the defendant was charged with an offense on October 7, 1983, at 10:00 p.m. (that is the time written on the summons) at “Piermont Rd., Cresskill” (again, the place written in by the officer in the appropriate box for “location”). This information is followed by the printed legend: “And did then [10 p.m.] and there [Piermont Rd., Cresskill] commit the following offense(s):,” after which the Officer Macchio inserted “driving under the influence.” That is the charge — not drunk driving between 7:30 and 9:45 p.m., for which the municipal court judge found defendant guilty, and apparently — but not clearly — as agreed to by the Superior Court on trial de novo on the record. As for the Appellate Division, it in effect simply amended the charge without acknowledging as much, because it concluded that defendant “had been fairly apprised that he was charged with driving while under the influence and that that charge included his driving the motor vehicle to the place where he parked it on the sidewalk and was subsequently arrested.” 202 N.J.Super. at 405. And as for this Court, I think — but I am not certain — that what it is saying is that in fact defendant was *487convicted of driving under the influence before he entered Bondy’s, see ante at 481; that in fact the summons specified the time of offense as 10:00 p.m. after he'left the tavern; and that in fact this little — umm—disharmony presents “a troublesome question indeed,” ante at 481, but no matter, because “the entire legal contest was over whether the defendant’s conduct constituted operation sufficient to require submission to a breathalyzer test.” Ante at 482. It is difficult to be critical of that conclusion because I do not understand it.
What I do understand is that the arresting officer conceded that he arrested defendant and charged him with drunk driving at 10:00 p.m. based exclusively on his own observations at the scene — not on any other information from young Dunay or any other source. Because I am satisfied that defendant did not operate his vehicle at 10:00 p.m., and because defendant was not charged with driving under the influence at any earlier time, I would reverse the judgment of conviction for drunk driving.
II
On the “refusal” charge, the elements that must be proven include, in addition to defendant’s refusal to submit to the breathalyzer test, an arrest for drunk driving (surely that must mean a legal arrest, not simply a taking into custody), and, if we get over that one, a demonstration that “the arresting officer had probable cause to believe that the person had been driving * * * while under the influence * * N.J.S.A. 39:4-, 50.4a. Given my view of the “operation” issue and Officer Macchio’s admissions, I would conclude that the arresting officer did not have probable cause to believe that defendant had been driving at ten o’clock while under the influence. See State v. Wright, 107 N.J. 488 (1987), also decided today. I would therefore affirm the Appellate Division’s judgment reversing the defendant’s conviction on the “refusal” offense.
*488III
One final word by way of reassurance. This opinion should in no way be read as reflecting any insensitivity to the mayhem that can be visited on innocent people by drunks behind the wheel. I believe that I have demonstrated elsewhere my understanding of that problem and of the judiciary’s proper role in addressing it. See, e.g., State v. Milligan, 104 N.J. 67, 68 (1986) (dissenting opinion). Nor should what I say today be taken as any criticism of the law-enforcement people involved— they would have been derelict had they not intercepted defendant, as his counsel is quick to admit — or of the young witness, Dunay, and his parents, who supported his courage and laudable purpose in coming forward to give information and in testifying. But the legislature has not yet created an offense akin to, say, an “attempt” to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence (although it has, of course, denominated as “criminal” a whole category of offenses generally falling under the heading of “criminal attempt,” see N.J.S.A. 2C:5-1); and until it does so, I shall adhere to my position in this case and Daly.
For affirmance in part and reversal in part — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN and GARIBALDI — 5.
For reversal in part and affirmance in part — Justice CLIFFORD — 1.