Court Opinion

ID: 9859326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 19:44:30.275784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:35:03.907078
License: Public Domain

Justice ALBIN,
concurring.
I concur with the majority that Detective Swan gave impermissible expert testimony when he opined that defendant and his two passengers were in “constructive possession with intent to distribute” the cache of drugs found in the car. I agree with the majority that a drug expert should not “undertake to opine on whether drugs were possessed by a defendant,” that Detective Swan’s testimony “closely tracked the legalistic construct of ‘constructive possession,’ ” and that Detective Swan “reached an ultimate issue that the jury was well-equipped to decide, and, thus, encroached on the jury’s role as the ultimate fact-finder.” See ante at 293-94, 300 n. 4, 962 A.2d at 1095-96, 1099 n. 4.
Those well-articulated reasons for rejecting Detective Swan’s expert testimony, however, cannot be squared with this Court’s holdings in State v. Odom, 116 N.J. 65, 560 A.2d 1198 (1989), State v. Summers, 176 N.J. 306, 823 A.2d 15 (2003), and State v. Nesbitt, 185 N.J. 504, 888 A.2d 472 (2006). In each of those cases, this Court upheld convictions even though police experts testified in response to hypothetical questions that the defendants possessed with intent to distribute the drugs in question. I cannot find any sound jurisprudential distinction between a police expert’s opinion — whether given hypothetically or directly — that a defendant constructively possessed with intent to distribute drugs or that a defendant simply possessed with intent to distribute those drugs.
However much experience police officers may have or well-trained they may be in the ways of drug possession and distribution, police officers are not mind readers and should never be *302allowed, under the guise of opinion testimony, to tell a jury that a defendant possessed the state of mind necessary for a conviction. Detective Swan, as the majority states, “went too far” because, by opining that defendant constructively possessed the drugs, he in effect was telling the jury that defendant knowingly possessed with intent to distribute the drugs found in the car. See ante at 285, 962 A.2d at 1089. The same overstepping of bounds occurs when the expert, tracking the statutory language, tells the jury that the defendant — absent the word “constructively” — possessed with intent to distribute drugs. In that example, too, the police expert conveys to the jury his opinion that the defendant knowingly possessed the drugs, and therefore intrudes on the jury’s exclusive role as finder of fact. I therefore stand by my dissents in Summers and Nesbitt in which the majority permitted virtually the same type of expert testimony that it condemns today. See Nesbitt, supra, 185 N.J. at 519, 888 A.2d 472 (finding that court did not commit plain error by allowing police detective to opine that defendant was accomplice to crime of possession with intent to distribute controlled dangerous substance); Summers, supra, 176 N.J. at 316, 823 A.2d 15 (finding that court did not commit plain error by allowing police detective to opine that defendant possessed drugs with intent to distribute).
I am sensitive to the needs of law enforcement to explain, through expert testimony, the arcane language, culture, and methods surrounding the crimes of drug possession and distribution for the purpose of enlightening the jury on a subject on which it will have little or no knowledge. As I stated in my dissent in Nesbitt,
[a]n average juror will not know the meaning of code language used by drug distributors or the importance to be attached to the packaging, quantity, and quality of drugs. An expert could edify jurors concerning the customary use of scales and other drug paraphernalia by drug traffickers, as well as the methods used by drug dealers to ply their trade. In those instances, the specialized knowledge and training of the expert is of assistance to the jury in understanding the evidence before it.
[Nesbitt, supra, 185 N.J. at 521, 888 A.2d 472 (Albin, J., dissenting) (citing Summers, supra, 176 N.J. at 322-23, 823 A.2d 15 (Albin, J., dissenting)).]
When there is expert testimony “explain[ing] the significance of the methods and means of drug dealing — matters outside common *303knowledge — ¡jurors are well equipped to answer questions such as whether the defendant possessed drugs with intent to distribute, or whether the defendant was an accomplice in a drug transaction, without further expert guidance.” Ibid. As the majority has observed, a jury does not need expert testimony to explain the obvious.
There is little difference if police officers, tracking the statutory language, give an opinion that a defendant possessed with intent to distribute drugs or if they give an opinion that defendant is guilty of the offense. In both cases, police officers invade the jury’s exclusive domain by presuming to know the defendant’s state of mind — answering the ultimate factual issue in dispute. Constructive possession is just one manner of possessing an object. The distinction the majority creates between constructive and simple possession with intent to distribute may be sufficient to decide this case — but provides no satisfying or coherent approach to the proper bounds of expert testimony.
Although I am heartened by the majority’s opinion today, because I believe it is a step in the right direction, the majority’s dutiful but mistaken adherence to the decisions in Odom, Summers, and Nesbitt, denies the present case a solid jurisprudential foundation or a consistent rationale that can be applied to future cases.
Justice LONG joins in this opinion.