Court Opinion

ID: 9699468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:25:58.893787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:50.865234
License: Public Domain

Justice WALLACE, JR.,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that any asserted Fifth Amendment violation was personal to eodefendant Baum, and therefore defendant Moore lacks standing to raise the issue as part of his Fourth Amendment claim of an unreasonable search and seizure. I respectfully dissent.
As a preliminary matter, there may be some question whether the issue of defendant’s standing to challenge the search is properly before the Court. The standing issue was not raised before the trial court or the Appellate Division and it was not discussed by the State in its brief to the Supreme Court. We faced the same issue in a Fourth Amendment case, in which we concluded that because the standing issue “raises important ques*427tions in the administration of criminal justice in this state,” we should address the issue. State v. Alston, 88 N.J. 211, 219, 440 A.2d 1311 (1981). For that same reason, I agree that we should address this issue.
It may be that the standing issue was not raised below because, in light of this Court’s rule of automatic standing for possessory offenses adopted in Alston, the parties and the courts did not consider that standing was an issue. See id. at 228,440 A.2d 1311. In Alston this Court traced the federal law on standing and noted that in cases in which an essential element of the crime charged is possession of the seized property at the time of the contested search, the United States Supreme Court abandoned the “automatic standing” rule previously adopted in Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 263, 80 S.Ct. 725, 732, 4 L.Ed.2d 697, 703 (1960). Id. at 221-24, 440 A.2d 1311. The Alston Court noted that under the federal search and seizure law, “standing to challenge the prosecutorial use of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is not enjoyed by a mere passenger in a searched automobile even if he alleges ownership of the property seized.” Id. at 224, 440 A.2d 1311. However, this Court parted company with that view of standing and “eonstrue[d] Article I, paragraph 7 of our State Constitution to afford greater protection.” Id. at 226, 440 A.2d 1311. The Court held that “a criminal defendant is entitled to bring a motion to suppress evidence obtained in an unlawful search and seizure if he has a proprietary, possessory or participatory interest in either the place searched or the property seized.” Id. at 228, 440 A.2d 1311. Further, this Court made it clear that
when the charge against defendant includes an allegation of a possessory interest in property seized such as would confer standing, under the traditional test we retain today, to object to prosecutorial use of evidence obtained in an unlawful search and seizure, the defendant has automatic standing to bring a suppression motion under R. 3:5-7, as “a person claiming to be aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure and having reasonable grounds to believe that the evidence attained may be used against him in a penal proceeding.”
[Id. at 228-29,440 A.2d 1311 (quoting R. 3:5-7(a)).]
Recently this Court reviewed our standing jurisprudence in State v. Johnson, 193 N.J. 528, 544-46, 940 A.2d 1185 (2008). The *428Court explained that “Hollowing Alston, our courts have consistently applied the automatic standing rule to defendants charged with possessory offenses, regardless of whether they had an expectation of privacy in the area searched.” Id. at 545, 940 A.2d 1185; see also State v. Smith, 155 N.J. 83, 102, 713 A.2d 1033 (1998); State v. Clausell, 121 N.J. 298, 325-26, 580 A.2d 221 (1990); State v. Cleveland, 371 N.J.Super. 286, 295-96, 852 A.2d 1150 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 182 N.J. 148, 862 A.2d 57 (2004); State v. Arthur, 287 N.J.Super. 147, 154-55, 670 A.2d 592 (App. Div.), rev’d on other grounds by 149 N.J. 1, 12-13, 691 A.2d 808 (1997); State v. Mollica, 114 N.J. 329, 340, 554 A.2d 1315 (1989); State v. Saunders, 75 N.J. 200, 208-09, 381 A.2d 333 (1977).
To be sure, this Court has noted that a defendant generally may assert only his or her constitutional rights. Saunders, supra, 75 N.J. at 208-09,381 A.2d 333. Despite that, when appropriate, this Court has concluded that “when the party raising the claim ‘is not simply an interloper and the proceeding serves the public interest, standing will be found.’ ” Clausell, supra, 121 N.J. at 324, 580 A.2d 221 (quoting In re Quinlan, 70 N.J. 10, 34-35, 355 A.2d 647 (1976)).
In Saunders, supra, the defendant and the accomplice were indicted for rape and related charges. 75 N.J. at 203, 381 A.2d 333. At trial, the defendant asserted that the two complainants consented to sexual intercourse in exchange for drugs. Ibid. The trial court, over the defendant’s objection, charged fornication as a lesser included offense. Ibid. The jury found the defendant not guilty of the charges in the indictment, but guilty of fornication. Ibid. The defendant moved for acquittal, contending the fornication statute was unconstitutional. Ibid. That motion was denied, and defendant’s challenge before the Appellate Division was rejected. Ibid. This Court granted certification and reversed, addressing first the State’s argument that the defendant lacked standing based on the “general principle that a litigant as to whom application of a statute would be constitutional lacks standing to attack the statute by asserting the constitutional rights of others.” *429Id. at 208, 381 A.2d 333. After noting that the rule of standing generally “limits a criminal defendant to constitutional claims related to his own conduct,” ibid,., this Court stated:
We think it would be inappropriate to refuse to review the constitutionality of N.J.S.A 2A:110 1 on the fortuitous ground that the defendant’s act may have constituted a violation of other criminal statutes such as public or private lewdness. We therefore conclude that the salutary purposes of the usual rales of standing should not operate in these circumstances to prevent defendant from challenging N.J.S.A. 2A:110-1 as unconstitutional on its face.
[Id. at 209-10, 381 A.2d 333.J
In Mollica, supra, this Court faced the issue of whether one of the defendants, Primo Mollica, had standing to challenge the seizure of telephone toll records from another individual’s hotel room. 114 N.J. at 337, 554 A.2d 1315. The State argued that Mollica was limited to contesting the seizure of items from his hotel room, but that he lacked standing to challenge the prior warrantless seizure of the hotel telephone toll records from the codefendant’s room. Ibid. This Court noted that as a matter of state constitutional doctrine, New Jersey applies a broad standard in standing issues, “ ‘namely, that a criminal defendant is entitled to bring a motion to suppress evidence obtained in an unlawful search and seizure if he has a proprietary, possessory or participatory interest in either the place searched or the property seized.’ ” Id. at 339, 554 A.2d 1315 (quoting Alston, supra, 88 N.J. at 228, 440 A.2d 1311). The Court then declared that there was a “sufficient connection between the telephone toll records and the underlying criminal gambling ... and a sufficient relationship between the defendant and the gambling enterprise, to establish a participatory interest on the part of defendant in this evidence” for the defendant to have standing to challenge the validity of the seizures of the toll records. Id. at 340, 554 A.2d 1315.
As I understand the majority opinion, despite the clear proprietary, possessory, or participatory interest that a defendant may have in property seized, if a coerced statement of a codefendant resulted in the police receiving information to support a warrant-less search, the defendant may not raise that constitutional violation as part of his or her challenge to the search. In my view, our *430automatic standing rule should allow a passenger in a vehicle to challenge a search of the vehicle when there is an allegation that the driver’s Fifth Amendment rights were violated and that such violation led to the search of the vehicle. Unfortunately, the majority opinion will now lead to the result that the driver of a vehicle (in this case, codefendant) may challenge the search of the vehicle for the violation of his or her Fifth Amendment rights, but the passenger (in this ease, defendant) may not make that same challenge because the Fifth Amendment challenge is personal to another person.
In the present case the circumstances overwhelmingly cry out for the Court to extend standing to defendant to raise the asserted violations of codefendant’s Fifth Amendment rights. Defendant obviously is not an interloper and has a proprietary, possessory, or participatory interest in the property seized. Both defendant and codefendant claimed that the search of the vehicle and the resulting seizure of contraband were fruits of the illegal detention of codefendant that resulted in her involuntary statements to the police. Specifically, both defendants argued that the police officer’s questioning of codefendant was overly invasive, unrelated to the purpose of the stop, and lasted longer than necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop, resulting in a violation of both defendants’ Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Further, defendant argued that code-fendant’s Fifth Amendment rights were violated because she was in custody and subject to custodial interrogation without the benefit of Miranda1 warnings. The trial court agreed. Based on that finding, the violation of codefendant’s constitutional rights directly affected defendant to his detriment.
I conclude that defendant has a sufficient connection to the asserted coerced statements from codefendant such that the usual rules of standing should not deprive him of the right to challenge *431the search based on the claimed violation of codefendant’s constitutional rights. Under the circumstances here, the Fifth Amendment and the Fourth Amendment challenges are so inextricably bound together that defendant has standing to challenge the search both on his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures, and on codefendant’s Fifth Amendment right to be free from custodial interrogation that is both coercive and -without the benefit of Miranda warnings. I find no justification to parse the standing issue to allow one defendant to raise the constitutional violation but not the other.
Because I conclude that defendant has standing to challenge the search and seizure, and because there was sufficient credible evidence for the trial court to find that the questioning of eodefen-dant was coercive and not preceded by Miranda warnings, I find no basis to interfere with the trial court’s judgment to suppress the evidence.
Justice LONG joins in this opinion.
For affirmance as modified/remandment—Chief Justice RABNER and Justices LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, RIVERA-SOTO and HOENS—5.
For reversal—Justices LONG and WALLACE—2.

 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 473, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1627, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 723 (1966).