Court Opinion

ID: 9697236
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:09:16.17584+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:28:42.930405
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I dissent from the Court’s holding that State v. Sanchez, 129 N.J. 261, 609 A.2d 400 (1992) should apply retroactively to pipeline cases. The effect of that holding is to require the suppression of an otherwise reliable inculpatory statement by defendant because an F.B.I. Agent in California did not predict that New Jersey would not follow a sixteen-month old decision of the United States Supreme Court.
Defendant was indicted in New Jersey on December 8,1988, for the murder of Glenn Brown. He was located and arrested in California on October 25, 1989, by F.B.I. Agent Mark Wilson and local police officers in Palmdale, California. After his arrest, Agent Wilson read defendant his Miranda rights, and defendant signed a written Miranda waiver. Defendant then gave a state-
*263ment to Agent Wilson, which was used at trial to connect defendant to Brown and support the theory that defendant killed Brown to avenge an alleged robbery. Ante at 241, 678 A.2d at 646.
Applying Sanchez, the Court holds that because defendant had been indicted prior to Agent Wilson’s interrogation of defendant, the uncounseled waiver did not constitute a valid waiver of his state constitutional right to counsel. Ante at 244 and 261, 678 A.2d at 648 and 657. I dissent from the Court’s retroactive application of Sanchez because Sanchez announced a new rule of law and any retroactive application places an unjustifiable burden on law enforcement.
The Sanchez rule was an unanticipated break with existing law that was announced after the conclusion of defendant’s trial. At the time Agent Wilson interrogated defendant, the controlling federal law held that reading the Miranda rights to an indicted defendant provides a sufficient basis from which the defendant can make a valid waiver of his or her Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U.S. 285, 296, 108 S.Ct. 2389, 2397, 101 L.Ed.2d 261, 275 (1988). As the majority points out, Patterson was consistent with our law and New Jersey did not announce a different rule until nearly four years later when Sanchez was decided. Ante at 254-256, 678 A.2d at 653-654. Thus, Sanchez represented a new rule that could not have been predicted.
I fail to see why a rule that served New Jersey well in assuring the reliability of confessions for thirty years under its existing constitution after Miranda was decided in 1966 should overnight be found so unreliable as to justify retroactive application of a new rule. The Court rationalizes its conclusion by conjecturing that law enforcement did not rely on Patterson. Ante at 256, 678 A.2d at 654. I disagree. It is hard to imagine a rule more deeply etched in the minds of law enforcement agents than the Miranda warnings and its progeny, of which Patterson is a part. Indeed, this Court said as much in State v. Hartley, 103 N.J. 252, 511 A.2d 80 (1986) when it stated, ‘We are confident that by now the police *264are intimately familiar with Miranda and what that case requires by way of warnings.” Hartley, supra, 103 N.J. at 255 n. 1, 511 A.2d 80. Agent Wilson had every right to rely on the United States Supreme Court’s Patterson rule when he interrogated defendant only sixteen months after Patterson was decided.
This is not a case in which law enforcement failed to scrupulously honor a previously invoked right of silence that would render defendant’s statement to be unconstitutionally compelled. Rather, the case involves the assertion, based on Sanchez, that defendant’s waiver was not knowing, intelligent and voluntary because he had been indicted. As such, the reliability of defendant’s statement would not be enhanced by application of the Sanchez rule.
I believe there was justifiable reliance by the law enforcement community on the Patterson rule. “Such justifiable reliance should not be punished by retroactive application of the [new] rule” established in Sanchez. State v. Catania, 85 N.J. 418, 447, 427 A.2d 537 (1981). The State’s agents should not be penalized for relying in good faith on United States Supreme Court constitutional law prevailing at the time defendant was interrogated by F.B.I. Agent Wilson.
I would therefore apply the Sanchez rule to cases in which Miranda warnings were given to indicted defendants after July 23, 1992, the date Sanchez was decided. In all other respects, I concur in the Court’s opinion.
Justice GARIBALDI, joins in this opinion.
For affirmance — Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN and STEIN — 4.
Concurring in part; dissenting in part — Justices GARIBALDI and COLEMAN — 2.