STATE OF NEW JERSEY, PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, v. BRIAN TIER, DEFENDANT-RESPONDENT.
Supreme Court of New Jersey
Argued January 30, 2017-Decided May 2, 2017
159 A.3d 388 | 229 N.J. 555
Alison S. Perrone argued the cause for respondent (Law Office of Robin Kay Lord, attorney; Ms. Lord on the brief).
Sarah E. Ross, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae Attorney General of New Jersey (Christopher S. Porrino, Attorney General, attorney; Lila B. Leonard, on the brief).
JUSTICE TIMPONE delivered the opinion of the Court.
This appeal raises an issue of first impression for this Court: What are a defendant‘s post-indictment reciprocal discovery obligations to the State regarding a defense witness‘s oral statements?
Defendant Brian Tier was charged with the kidnapping and attempted murder of his girlfriend, C.L. In response to a discovery request, defendant produced only a list of the names of the three witnesses the defense intended to call at trial, with no additional information. The State countered with a request that defendant amend the disclosure to include dates of birth and addresses, as well as a proffer of each witness‘s expected testimony. Defendant refused. The trial court ordered the
It is a longstanding principle that the preference for “mutually broad discovery” in civil cases “is generally unobtainable” in criminal matters, in which we must strike a careful balance between the interests promoted by discovery and the need to preserve a defendant‘s constitutional rights. State v. Cook, 43 N.J. 560, 563, 206 A.2d 359 (1965).
We find that a plain reading of
I.
This matter comes to us by interlocutory appeal; no trial has commenced. The underlying allegations have been gleaned from the State‘s briefing.
On March 7, 2012, officers from the Hamilton Police Department responded to a report from a neighbor that C.L. and defendant were in a physical struggle outside her residence near her red Toyota Scion. When the officers arrived, they found the Scion but no signs of a struggle.
Officer Aaron Kulak, accompanied by Officer Ryan Bitner, knocked on her front door. Kulak heard what sounded like a small dog barking and knocked again, directing the occupants of the residence to open the door. Kulak then heard the sound of a woman screaming, “Help! Help! He‘s trying to kill me!” In re-sponse to the continuing screams for help, Kulak kicked down the door. Upon entry, Kulak and Bitner observed defendant on top of C.L., his hands around her throat, strangling her. The officers arrested defendant and, while en route to the hospital, obtained a detailed statement from C.L. regarding the events.
On May 16, 2012, a Mercer County grand jury returned an indictment, charging defendant with first-degree kidnapping,
At a status conference held on September 25, 2015, the State took issue with the witness list defendant produced because it listed the names of three men but did not provide identifiers, addresses, or synopses of their anticipated testimony-which the State alleged was in violation of
The trial court, in an oral decision, ordered the defense to produce witness synopses and to create them if they had not previously been drafted. The court specifically ordered defense counsel to provide the State with the “reason why they‘re on [defendant‘s] witness list[,] [a]nd[,] if they are character witnesses, how long that witness has known the defendant and what kind of relationship or under what circumstances did they” know defendant.
On February 17, 2016, on an interlocutory appeal, the Appellate Division summarily reversed the trial court‘s order, reasoning that, unlike the broad discovery obligation in civil cases, a criminal defendant‘s disclosures are carefully limited by the strictures of
II.
A.
The State submits that the Appellate Division‘s order narrowed the confines of
B.
Defendant contends that the court rules relating to criminal prosecutions, as written, are carefully balanced between the dual goals of truth seeking and protection from false prosecution. Defendant notes that ensuring proper balance has led to a significant limitation of prosecutorial discovery from the defense. With that backdrop, defendant concludes the trial court erred in attempting to level the playing field by imposing identical discovery obligations on the State and the defense, when constitutional and procedural rights are purposefully skewed in a defendant‘s favor. Defendant concludes that requiring the creation of a statement or summary for prosecutorial use both infringes on his constitutional rights and impairs his ability to make tactical judgments.
C.
The Attorney General reiterates the State‘s practicality argument against limiting defendant‘s obligation under the Rule, theorizing that a defendant would hereinafter be encouraged to take only oral statements from potential witnesses. The Attorney General also contends that: (1) such a decree places an onerous burden on the State to investigate every witness on the defense‘s list, contrary to the principle that the outcome of litigation should depend on its merits; (2) a narrow reading of the Rule will result in delays in trial calendars, resulting from the State‘s increased investigative need and inability to raise issues before trial; (3) this outcome is best served by limited discovery, which should be the exception and not the rule; and (4) recent precedent from this Court has expanded the State‘s discovery obligations, so a defendant‘s obligation should likewise expand.
III.
Inherent in this Court‘s “power to make rules concerning the administration, practice and procedure of the courts of this State” is the broad power to interpret court rules. State v. Leonardis, 71 N.J. 85, 108-09, 363 A.2d 321 (1976). Our review of the meaning or scope of a court rule is de novo; we do not defer to the interpretations of the trial court or Appellate
A.
This case turns on the interpretation of
A defendant shall provide the State with all relevant material, including, but not limited to ... the names, addresses, and birthdates of those persons known to defendant who may be called as witnesses at trial and their written statements, if any, including memoranda reporting or summarizing their oral statements.
[
R. 3:13-3(b)(2)(C) .]
This Rule has not seen much review. Indeed, a lone published Law Division opinion discussed the breadth of discovery obligations under the Rule. See State v. DiTolvo, 273 N.J. Super. 111, 115-17, 640 A.2d 1230 (Law Div. 1994) (discussing same relevant language in prior version of Rule, which has since been renumbered). In DiTolvo, the State moved to bar a witness‘s testimony after the defendant refused to provide a written summary of the witness‘s proposed testimony. Id. at 113, 640 A.2d 1230. The defendant reasoned that because the witness never gave a written statement, there was nothing to produce. Ibid. The court found the Rule ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations, requiring the court to weigh the competing interests. Id. at 115-16, 640 A.2d 1230. The court reasoned that the criminal justice system generally had a strong interest in “broad and extensive discovery,” the purpose of which “is to prevent surprise, eliminate gamesmanship, and afford a party an opportunity to obtain evidence and research law in anticipation of evidence and testimony which an adversary will produce at trial.” Id. at 115, 640 A.2d 1230 (citing State v. Williams, 80 N.J. 472, 482 n.2, 404 A.2d 34 (1979) (Schreiber, J., dissenting)). Finding no competing interest in favor of defendant, and failing to discuss a criminal defendant‘s special constitutional status, the court ordered the defendant to produce a summary of the witness‘s proffered testimony or the court would bar the testimony. Id. at 117, 640 A.2d 1230.
While this Court has addressed the discovery obligations of a defendant in a criminal proceeding, we have yet to opine on the issue squarely before us. Williams, supra, dealt with a collateral issue: whether summaries already in existence were required to be disclosed if the defendant had no intention of using them at trial. 80 N.J. at 475, 404 A.2d 34. Because the request related to inculpatory evidence, we held that the defendant had no duty to produce those documents. Ibid. Clearly, a holding to the contrary would chill the defense‘s investigation and infringe on the defendant‘s right to effective assistance of counsel. Id. at 478, 404 A.2d 34.
In so holding, we recognized that “[e]vidential materials obtained in the exercise of [defense counsel‘s] professional responsibility are so interwoven with the professional judgments relating to a client‘s case, strategy and tactics that they may be said to share the characteristics of an attorney‘s ‘work product,‘” and that “[b]lanket discovery of the fruits of this kind of legal creativity and preparation may impact directly
In addition to the confidentiality concerns raised by disclosure of work product, one of the underlying principles on which our criminal justice system is based is that a defendant “has an absolute, unqualified right to compel the State to investigate its own case, find its own witnesses, prove its own facts, and convince the jury through its own resources,” and “[t]hroughout the process[,] the defendant has a fundamental right to remain silent, in effect challenging the State at every point to: ‘Prove it!‘” Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 112, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 1912, 26 L.Ed.2d 446, 483 (1970) (Black, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). A defendant who agrees to reciprocal discovery relinquishes the right to “do nothing.” This defendant agreed to reciprocal discovery, implicating the Rule and necessitating its review. See
B.
The concerns we expressed in Williams and the principles espoused by Justice Black infuse our discussion of
Contrary to the Law Division‘s holding in DiTolvo, supra, 273 N.J.Super. at 115, 640 A.2d 1230, we find the language in
The State urges that the Rule is ambiguous and therefore this Court must resort to rules of statutory interpretation. To this end, the State argues that the preliminary sentence in the Rule creates a presumption in favor of discovery, limited only by the subsections thereunder. Even if we found the Rule to be ambiguous, that argument fails. The preamble of subsection (b)(2) is general and reads “[a] defendant shall provide the State with all relevant material, including, but not limited to, the following.”
We stop short, however, of finding that the entire order was an abuse of discretion. Nothing in the court rules prevents the trial court from obligating defendant to identify a witness as either a character or fact witness. To the contrary, requiring a defendant to identify the category of witness not only alleviates some of the State‘s concern regarding the burden of investigating a never-ending list of potential witnesses, but falls in line with this Court‘s policy encouraging cooperation in the discovery process.
In sum, we find the portion of the trial court‘s order requiring the assemblage of witness statements to be an abuse of discretion as it was an apparent deviation from the applicable Rule. We approve, however, of the trial court‘s order requiring defense counsel to identify only the category of witnesses as fact or character. We encourage practitioners to participate in cooperative discovery in order to ease the burden on all parties involved.
IV.
The judgment of the Appellate Division reversing the trial court‘s discovery order is affirmed as modified, and the matter is remanded to the trial court for entry of a discovery order consistent with this opinion.
CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, PATTERSON, FERNANDEZ-VINA, and SOLOMON join in JUSTICE TIMPONE‘s opinion.