Morillo v. Torres

• Decision Date: 13 July 2015
• Docket Number: A-88 September Term 2013, 073978
• Citation: 117 A.3d 1206,222 N.J. 104
• Parties: Eric MORILLO, Plaintiff–Respondent, v. Monmouth County Sheriff's Officer Alexander TORRES, Monmouth County Sheriff's Officer Thomas Ruocco, Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, and Monmouth County Sergeant Steven Cooper, Defendants–Appellants, and Old Bridge Township Assistant Municipal Court Administrator Susan Bruchez, and Old Bridge Township Municipal Court, Defendants.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

222 N.J. 104

117 A.3d 1206

Eric MORILLO, Plaintiff–Respondent

v. Monmouth County Sheriff's Officer Alexander TORRES, Monmouth County Sheriff's Officer Thomas Ruocco, Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, and Monmouth County Sergeant Steven Cooper, Defendants–AppellantsandOld Bridge Township Assistant Municipal Court Administrator Susan Bruchez, and Old Bridge Township Municipal Court, Defendants.

A-88 September Term 2013, 073978

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued March 16, 2015.

Decided July 13, 2015.

John C. Connell argued the cause for appellants (Archer & Greiner, attorneys; Mr. Connell, Christine G. Hanlon, and Benjamin D. Morgan, Haddonfield, on the briefs).

Joel I. Rachmiel, Springfield, argued the cause for respondent.

Opinion

Justice LaVECCHIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

The doctrine of qualified immunity shields law enforcement officers from personal liability for civil rights violations when the officers are acting under color of law in the performance of official duties. This protection extends to suits brought under 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 and under New Jersey's analogue, the Civil Rights Act, N.J.S.A. 10:6–1 to –2. As both federal and state case law on this immunity doctrine recognize, members of law enforcement must be permitted to perform their duties without being encumbered by the specter of being sued personally for damages, unless their performance is not objectively reasonable. Thus, the defense's protection is denied only to officers who are plainly incompetent in the performance of their duties or who knowingly violate the law.

In this appeal, we must address whether, on the basis of qualified immunity, three police officers were entitled to dismissal of an action brought by plaintiff. The action sought to impose personal liability on the officers for alleged civil rights violations arising from a charge brought against plaintiff for unlawful possession of a weapon under N.J.S.A. 2C:39–5(b)(1). The charge was later administratively dismissed.

For the reasons expressed herein, we hold that the civil rights causes of action against the officers should have been dismissed based on the affirmative defense of qualified immunity that the officers asserted. It cannot be said as a matter of law that no reasonably competent officer would have believed that probable cause existed to charge plaintiff with unlawful possession of a weapon. Under the facts and circumstances involved in charging plaintiff with a violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:39–5(b)(1), there was neither a knowing violation of law nor a transgression of the competence standard demanded of law enforcement officers for qualified immunity to provide a shield from personal liability for alleged civil rights violations arising from the performance of their duties.

The judgment of the Appellate Division is reversed.

I.

A.

Plaintiff was charged with unlawful possession of a handgun under N.J.S.A. 2C:39–5(b)(1), which provides: “Any person who knowingly has in his possession any handgun, including any antique handgun, without first having obtained a permit to carry the same as provided in [N.J.S.A. ] 2C:58–4,¹ is guilty of a crime of the second degree.” The next section of that chapter provides an exemption from prosecution for unlawful possession of a handgun, which states that

[n]othing in subsections b., c. and d. of [N.J.S.A. ] 2C:39–5 shall be construed to prevent a person keeping or carrying about his place of business, residence, premises or other land owned or possessed by him, any firearm, or from carrying the same, in the manner specified in subsection g. of this section, from any place of purchase to his residence or place of business, between his dwelling and his place of business, between one place of business or residence and another when moving, or between his dwelling or place of business and place where such firearms are repaired, for the purpose of repair. For the purposes of this section, a place of business shall be deemed to be a fixed location.

[N.J.S.A. 2C:39–6(e) (emphasis added).]

In this matter, we review the combined involvement of sheriff's officers and their supervisory officer, after soliciting advice from a representative of the county prosecutor's office, in the decision to charge plaintiff with a violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:39–5(b)(1). The relevant facts as contained in the summary judgment record are summarized as follows.

At about 8:30 p.m. on December 15, 2010, Monmouth County Sheriff's Officers Alexander Torres and Thomas Ruocco arrived at a Matawan address to execute a child-support warrant on plaintiff Eric Morillo. The address was the one listed on the warrant. While Torres went to knock on the front door, Ruocco went around the side of the home and discovered plaintiff sitting in an idling car parked toward the rear of the side driveway of the residential home at the listed address,² which, it turned out, was his mother's. Although the car's engine was running, its headlights were off. Other cars were also parked in the side area of the property.

As Ruocco approached the car, he observed plaintiff in the passenger seat smoking what appeared to Ruocco to be a marijuana “roach,” described as being not a “full marijuana cigarette.” Ruocco opened the passenger-side door. He stated that the smell of burnt marijuana emanated from the vehicle's interior.

When Ruocco asked plaintiff if he had any other drugs on him, plaintiff told Ruocco that he was carrying a loaded weapon tucked in the right side of the waistband of his pants. Ruocco ordered plaintiff and the person seated in the driver's seat to raise their hands to the car's ceiling. Ruocco seized the weapon and called Torres on his hand-held radio to come and assist. Plaintiff and his companion were removed from the vehicle and patted down. Plaintiff was arrested on the child-support warrant.

While still at the scene, Ruocco phoned his supervisor, Sergeant Steven Cooper, to alert him to the circumstances involved in executing the warrant and the seizure of the weapon. He advised Cooper that while he and Torres were executing the child-support warrant, they discovered plaintiff, carrying a loaded handgun concealed in his waistband, smoking marijuana while seated inside a car, with its motor running, parked at the home.

Although Ruocco did not ask plaintiff at the scene whether he had a permit to carry the gun, while en route to police headquarters, plaintiff informed the officers that the handgun was registered to him and that he had “paperwork” for it. Plaintiff told the officers that he was involved in gang activity and was carrying the handgun because he feared retaliation. Plaintiff also told Ruocco that the home was his mother's and that he had lived in different places. That said, according to Ruocco, he assumed that plaintiff was living at the home at the time the warrant was executed because the officers found plaintiff there.

Under questioning, Ruocco and Torres admitted that they never asked plaintiff at the scene whether the firearm paperwork was in the house, but when they arrived at headquarters they told Sergeant Cooper that plaintiff claimed to have such paperwork. They also indicated that they were operating on the belief that the address at which plaintiff was found was the location where he was presently residing, essentially because it was the address listed for him for child-support purposes and the location where plaintiff was found when executing the warrant. The officers' confusion over whether to charge plaintiff with unlawful possession arose as a result of the circumstances in which plaintiff was found with the loaded gun concealed in the waistband of his pants. As Cooper emphasized in his response to questioning, plaintiff was not found inside the house; he was located in the driveway portion of the property, in an idling car with its lights off. Cooper also cited the information plaintiff provided to the officers about being a gang member, that plaintiff said he feared retaliation, and that he was smoking marijuana at the time he was carrying the concealed weapon outside the house—whether or not it was his mother's home and, at the time, his residence.

Sergeant Cooper telephoned a representative of the prosecutor's office, seeking advice whether, under the circumstances, plaintiff should be charged with a weapons offense. Cooper's initial inquiry to one assistant prosecutor resulted in his referral to another. He spoke ultimately, by telephone, with Assistant Prosecutor Sean Brennan, outside the presence of Ruocco and Torres.

Cooper informed Brennan that, during the execution of a child-support warrant issued for plaintiff, plaintiff was found in possession of a concealed, loaded handgun while seated inside an idling vehicle located at the warrant's address for plaintiff. Cooper relayed to Brennan the additional facts that the officers had represented: that plaintiff had revealed that he was a gang member fearing retaliation, and that plaintiff had been smoking marijuana in the car in which he had been located. Brennan advised Cooper that plaintiff could be charged with second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun, N.J.S.A. 2C:39–5(b)(1), which provides: “Any person who knowingly has in his possession any handgun ... without first having obtained a permit to carry the same ... is guilty of a crime of the second degree.” Plaintiff was so charged. The initial complaint charging plaintiff with that violation in Monmouth County was typed by Cooper and signed by Ruocco. That complaint was dismissed on the discovery that the home where plaintiff was found was actually located in Middlesex County. Torres signed the subsequently prepared complaint charging plaintiff in Middlesex County. Cooper, Ruocco, and Torres later prepared reports detailing their respective involvement in arresting and charging plaintiff.

Plaintiff posted bail on the child-support warrant, but he could not cover the bail set on the weapons charge. On January 14, 2011, plaintiff's family posted...