Court Opinion

ID: 9752285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:55:02.641762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:12.851485
License: Public Domain

HANDLER, J.,
concurring.
I join the Court in reinstating defendant’s convictions and sentence. However, I do so solely because the State indictment was based on evidence independent of the circumstances surrounding defendant’s federal plea agreement and the breach of that agreement. New Jersey law enforcement began to investigate Pamela Costello because of a suspicion that she was using funds that she had stolen from a casino to pay for her medical education. This investigation then led to defendant’s implication in the crimes for which he was later indicted. Moreover, according to Costello, she began to cooperate with State authorities before she found out about defendant’s testimony at the federal trial of Joseph Merlino. Because the State prosecution relating to the casino thefts was based on information provided by Costello, the information that the State may have obtained from defendant’s federal testimony was not the source of the prosecution.
Despite my agreement with the Court’s ultimate resolution of the case, however, I do not subscribe to its unnecessarily overstated holding regarding the determination of when a New Jersey court should defer to a federal court’s factual findings. The Court, in validating the Law Division’s refusal to defer to the federal findings, implicitly draws the startling conclusion that, when a criminal conviction is at stake, the only reason to afford comity to the factual findings of another jurisdiction is to neutralize bad faith on the part of prosecuting authorities. Ante at 613-15, 689 A2d at 139-40. Thus, according to the Court, because the federal court in this ease could not have enjoined the State prosecution under the principles enunciated in Younger v. Harris, *617401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), the Law Division had no obligation to defer to that court’s findings. Ante at 613-14, 689 A.2d at 140.
The Court does a disservice by converting the true statement that comity is not “a binding obligation,” City of Philadelphia v. Austin, 86 N.J. 55, 64, 429 A.2d 568 (1981), into a presumption against comity if no bad faith has been shown. If the State prosecution in this case were not based on independent evidence (in other words, if the federal court’s findings were relevant to the disposition of the case), I would hope that the Court would be truly reluctant to instruct New Jersey courts that they simply should disregard the findings of the court of another jurisdiction. I fear' that lower courts may be tempted to do just that in future cases when the factual findings of other courts are relevant.
In this ease, the federal court, after taking the exceptional step of conducting a plenary hearing into the alleged prosecutorial breach of defendant’s plea agreement, determined that the government had violated at least the spirit of the agreement by divulging information to New Jersey authorities. United States v. Barone, 781 F.Supp. 1072, 1078 (E.D.Pa.1991). The court made extensive factual findings to that end. Id. at 1074-77. However, it determined that it lacked power to enjoin New Jersey from prosecuting defendant. Id. at 1079. This lack of power stemmed from the principle, as embraced repeatedly by the United States Supreme Court, that courts of different jurisdictions should respect each other’s ability to decide issues. E.g., Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976) (holding that federal courts hearing petitions for habeas corpus should defer to state-court Fourth-Amendment exclusionary rulings if state courts provided full and fair opportunity to raise issue); Younger, supra, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669.
Yet, the federal court’s lack of power to enjoin New Jersey from prosecuting defendant does not translate into a license for our courts to disregard the federal findings entirely. See State v. Lueder, 74 N.J. 62, 70, 376 A.2d 1169 (1977) (stating that, while *618full faith and credit did not require deference to foreign criminal judgments, New Jersey courts ordinarily would defer to such judgments based on principles of comity).
Although the Law Division was not bound to accept the federal court’s factual determinations, its decision not to accept them was unsupported by credible reasoning. The federal court provided thorough analysis, based on first-hand testimony, of the events surrounding the breach of the plea agreement by federal authorities, and the Law Division could not conceivably have done a better fact-finding job. Moreover, the federal court had the benefit of New Jersey law enforcement officers, who were present at the federal hearing and who were in an excellent position to inform the federal court of the adequacy and accuracy of that court’s factual findings and to challenge those findings that the officers believed to be erroneous.
Considering the federal court’s thorough treatment of the subject and the State’s ample opportunity to affect that treatment, the Law Division simply had no sound reason to rebuff the federal court’s determinations out of hand. Where one court has this type of advantage in the fact-finding process, deference is particularly appropriate. Cf. State v. Marshall, 244 N.J.Super. 60, 69, 581 A.2d 538 (Law Div.1990) (“[Wjhile this court is not bound by the ... Oklahoma conviction, it recognizes the superior position of the Oklahoma courts to render an assessment on the propriety of the judgment.") (emphasis added). Yet, despite its inferior vantage point, the Law Division forged ahead, evincing an insensitivity to the very idea of comity and an obtuseness to the comprehensive factual determinations of another court.
While comity is not always a “binding obligation,” nor is it a doctrine to be brushed aside lightly. We are but one component of a jurisdictional constellation that must function in unison if the American jurisprudential theory of multiple sovereignties is to succeed. We should be mindful of this abstract theory when we decide concrete cases.
Accordingly, I concur.
*619For reversal — Chief Justice PORITZ, and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI, STEIN and COLEMAN — 7.
Opposed — None.