State Of New Jersey In The Interest Of A.S.
| Citation | 999 A.2d 1136,203 N.J. 131 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey in the Interest of A.S. |
| Decision Date | 29 July 2010 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey) |
Leslie-Ann M. Justus, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for appellant (Paula T. Dow, Attorney General, attorney; Ms. Justus, of counsel; Ms. Justus and Paul A. Heinzel, Deputy Attorney General, on the briefs).
Jay L. Wilensky, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for respondent (Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney).
Joseph F. Suozzo, First Assistant Child Advocate, submitted a brief amicus curiae on behalf of the Office of the Child Advocate of New Jersey.
A.S., a fourteen year old with an I.Q. of 83 and who could read only at a third-grade level, was adjudicated delinquent for conduct that, if committed by an adult, would constitute first-degree aggravated sexual assault. On appeal, she challenged the circumstances under which she was provided her constitutional warnings and then was subjected to police interrogation. The Appellate Division found that although A.S.'s adoptive mother was present for the interrogation, the mother's presence did not provide any buffer of protection and assistance to A.S. in the exercise of the juvenile's rights due to the mother's conflicted interest and concern for the victim, her four-year-old biological grandson. The Appellate Division nevertheless held that the admission of A.S.'s confession was harmless due to the trial court's statements about the quantum of other evidence in the record. However, the panel expressed the view that, in the future, when such conflicts of interest occur due to close family relationships among juvenile-offense suspects and victims, legal counsel should be brought in for the juvenile. Based on that pronouncement, the State petitioned for certification, which we granted, and A.S. cross-petitioned, which we also granted.
We hold that that A.S.'s confession was secured under circumstances that, in their totality, rendered her statement involuntary. In State v. Presha, 163 N.J. 304, 315, 748 A.2d 1108 (2000), we said that a parent should be present, if at all possible, during the interrogation of a juvenile and, further, we said that that presence would be considered a significant factor in an assessment of the totality of the circumstances when determining the voluntariness of a child's confession. We agree with the Appellate Division that A.S.'s confession cannot be safely regarded as a voluntary waiver of her constitutional rights. The police placed A.S.'s mother in the role of their helper from the outset of the interrogation process by making her read the child her rights. The police also failed to correct the mother's later misstatements about those rights, and failed to stop the inquiry when A.S. was making imperfect, child-like efforts to assert her right to silence that were overcome by her mother's badgering of her in the police presence. Under a totality of circumstances analysis, a confession secured by such means must be suppressed. However, with that shared finding we part company with the Appellate Division.
Although the trial court stated that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the delinquency adjudication with or without consideration of A.S.'s statement, the nature of the constitutional deprivation here-where the adult present to protect the juvenile became a de facto agent of the police-demands a prophylactic remedy. In the limited circumstances presented, there must be a new delinquency hearing, before another judge who will not have been exposed to the tainted statement by A.S. Only by resort to that less-than-desirable remedy can we be assured that the State does not benefit from the inappropriate police practice followed in this matter. We also reject the practice of having a child's parent be responsible for reading to the child his or her constitutional warnings.
That practice set A.S.'s interrogation down a wrong and problematic path-one that was exacerbated by her mother's aggressive interactions with her. Our purpose in establishing in Presha a preference for parental presence for a child facing questioning by police was to assist the child in the exercise of his or her constitutional rights; it was not to provide the police with an assistant.
That said, we see no need to embrace the bright-line, and broad, new legal representation requirement proposed by the appellate panel below. It does not appear practical or necessary always to replace parents with legal counsel in a particular category of circumstances. Rather, we caution police interrogators to use common sense, to remember their duty to ensure that a child being interrogated understands his or her right to terminate an interrogation by exercise of the right to silence and, further, to adhere to the duty to scrupulously enforce that right, even when exercised imperfectly, as a child, understandably, might express such a desire.
A.S. was the adoptive daughter of F.D.1 A.S. and F.D. lived in one-half of a duplex; the other half was inhabited by F.D.'s daughter T.B., and T.B.'s four-year-old son C.J., who was F.D.'s grandson. While A.S. was home with C.J. on the night of November 25, 2007, she allegedly performed fellatio on the boy for a period of approximately ten minutes. Although A.S. told C.J. not to tell anyone about the incident, after his bath the next night around midnight, C.J. told his mother that A.S. was “kissing on my balls and sucking on my tinky.”
T.B. had her mother, F.D., come over and T.B. repeated what she heard had happened the previous day. F.D. confronted A.S., who became upset, denied the allegations, and claimed that C.J. had been saying similar things earlier that day and that he had learned it from someone in school. F.D. accused A.S. of lying and said, F.D. grew so angry with A.S. that T.B. felt the need to have a friend present to ensure that there was not an altercation between F.D. and A.S. Later that night, T.B. contacted the police and at some point during the following day, while still at home, A.S. apparently confessed to the act in the presence of T.B. and F.D., stating that she did not know why she did it.
That day, C.J. and A.S. were interviewed by detectives at the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office. A detective interviewed A.S., with F.D. present. Although the interview was videotaped, a transcript or verbatim record of the tape was not admitted into evidence at trial; however, the actual VHS cassettes were introduced into evidence.2 Thus, our recitation of the interview is based on our own transcription of the videotapes, but we must acknowledge that the poor quality of the tapes complicates that task.
At the outset of the interview the detective requested that F.D. read to A.S. her Miranda3 rights. F.D. read the Miranda form in its entirety, without any clarification, and asked A.S. if she understood her rights. A.S. nodded and said “umm hmm.” That entire exchange took less than one minute. F.D. then read aloud the portion of the form dealing with her rights as a parent, calling it “double-talk” and a “two-folded question” because of the way that it was worded.4 The detective attempted to clarify F.D.'s rights as a parent, and blamed her confusion on the fact that the form was written by a lawyer. That exchange took almost three minutes. At that point, the following conversation occurred:
Shortly thereafter, the discussion continued:
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