State v. Buda

• Decision Date: 23 June 2008
• Docket Number: No. A-4 SEPT.TERM 2007.,No. A-5 SEPT.TERM 2007.,A-4 SEPT.TERM 2007.,A-5 SEPT.TERM 2007.
• Citation: 949 A.2d 761,195 N.J. 278
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant and Cross-Respondent, v. Ryan BUDA, Defendant-Respondent and Cross-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

949 A.2d 761

195 N.J. 278

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant and Cross-Respondent, v. Ryan BUDA, Defendant-Respondent and Cross-Appellant.

No. A-4 SEPT.TERM 2007.

No. A-5 SEPT.TERM 2007.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued February 5, 2008.

Decided June 23, 2008.

Samuel J. Marzarella, Senior Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for appellant and cross-respondent (Marlene Lynch Ford, Ocean County Prosecutor, attorney; Mr. Marzarella and Roberta DiBiase, Assistant Prosecutor, on the briefs).

Jean M. Hartmann, Designated Counsel, argued the cause for respondent and cross-appellant (Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney).

Robert E. Bonpietro, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae Attorney General of New Jersey (Anne Milgram, Attorney General, attorney).

Leslie A. Stolbof Sinemus, South Orange, argued the cause for amicus curiae Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (Ms. Sinemus, attorney; Gina Mendola Longarzo, Florham Park, on the brief).

Justice RIVERA-SOTO delivered the opinion of the Court.

This appeal, and three additional cases also decided today,¹ require that we address and apply the holding of the Supreme Court of the United States in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), that, under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, "[t]estimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial have been admitted only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine." Id. at 59, 124 S.Ct. at 1369, 158 L.Ed.2d at 197.

Specifically, this appeal requires that we determine whether two separate hearsay statements made by a severely beaten three-year-old boy — one to his mother that "Daddy beat me[,]" and a later one to a representative of the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) that "Dad says nobody beat me. I fell when I was sleeping in my room." — are "testimonial" within the meaning of Crawford and, hence, cannot be admitted without the child/declarant testifying at and being subjected to cross-examination during trial.

We conclude, as the Appellate Division did, that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in determining that the child's statements to his mother and the DYFS worker were properly admitted into evidence as "excited utterances" under N.J.R.E. 803(c)(2). We also conclude that, in the circumstances presented, the child's separate statements to his mother and to the DYFS worker were not testimonial and, hence, their admission at trial did not run afoul of the Confrontation Clause.

I.

A.

In November 1998, while still a teenager living with her parents, Christine gave birth to a son, N.M.² Christine and her son remained with Christine's parents until 2002, when she began a serious romantic relationship with defendant Ryan Buda. As that relationship blossomed, Christine and N.M., by then three years old, moved into defendant's home. At that time, defendant insisted that N.M. call defendant "Dad" or "Daddy." In early July 2002, shortly after the move and during a morning drive to her parents' home, where Christine's sister served as N.M.'s babysitter while Christine worked, N.M. blurted out from the back seat that "Daddy beat me." Christine asked N.M. when that had happened and he replied: "the nighttime." Later that day, Christine's mother telephoned Christine at work and told her that N.M. had an injury to his buttocks; Christine's mother thought the injury to N.M.'s buttocks looked like a handprint. Christine's mother and sister took photographs of N.M.'s bruises.

That evening, Christine asked defendant about N.M.'s bruises. According to defendant, N.M. had fallen in the bathtub and that fall caused the bruises. Christine accepted defendant's explanation.

Approximately two months later, Christine returned home from work and defendant informed her that N.M. again had fallen getting out of the bathtub and had bruised his head. Christine again accepted that explanation. The next day, Christine's father — N.M.'s grandfather — noticed the bruises and photographed them. When Christine arrived at her parents' home to pick up N.M., she and her parents argued: they asserted that defendant was beating N.M., while Christine refused to credit her parents' accusations. Christine's parents refused to return N.M. to Christine for several days, a demand to which Christine acquiesced.

On October 16, 2002, Christine again took N.M. to her parents' house to be babysat while Christine worked. Later that day, Christine's father brought N.M. to Christine's sister's home, to be babysat for the remainder of the day. Their routine was disrupted in another respect: instead of Christine picking up N.M., it was defendant who went to pick up N.M. and bring him home. When N.M. saw that defendant, and not his mother, was the person picking him up, N.M. became upset and started crying. Defendant and Christine's sister began yelling at each other, and Christine's sister accused defendant of being a child abuser. Eventually the police were called and, after a telephone call to Christine, defendant took N.M. home, but only after the police physically had to carry him out of the house against his will and place him into defendant's car.

Two days later, on October 18, 2002, Christine varied her routine. Instead of delivering N.M. to either her parents or her sister for babysitting while she worked, she left N.M. in defendant's care. When she returned home from work, she entered a darkened living room, lit only by a television set N.M. was watching; defendant was in the house, nearby. About an hour later, she checked on N.M. more closely and noticed "a big red mark on the back of [N.M.'s] neck." Christine "started panicking" and "yell[ed]" that "[w]e got to go to the hospital." Christine and defendant rushed N.M. to the local community medical center's emergency room, where he was immediately seen. While N.M. was being examined, Christine repeatedly asked defendant what had happened, and defendant responded that "[h]e had no clue what happened to [N.M.]" and that N.M. "must have fallen."

Because the medical professionals assessing N.M. concluded that N.M. exhibited signs of abuse, they contacted DYFS's Office of Child Abuse Control, and a member of its Special Response Unit, Miriam Nurudeen, promptly responded. After speaking with an investigator from the County Prosecutor's Office who, also having responded to a call, was already at the hospital, as well as the examining physician, Nurudeen interviewed N.M. Upon entering the room where N.M. was being examined in his grandparents' presence, she observed that N.M. was "very upset" and "was crying[,]" telling his grandparents that "they had to take care of him now, and he wants to go home with them." Nurudeen also observed N.M.'s bruises. After coaxing the grandparents to leave the room, Nurudeen interviewed N.M. alone. When asked what had happened, N.M. responded that "I fell down in my room. I want to go home to grandma." Nurudeen then "asked him if anybody beat him." N.M. replied: "Dad says nobody beat me. I fell when I was sleeping in my room." She explained that when "I tried to talk to him after that, [ ] he didn't want to answer anymore questions. And I didn't want to put anything in his mouth, so I stopped the interview."

Once N.M. was assessed, he was transferred via ambulance to Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where he remained hospitalized for two weeks due to the extent of his injuries and the internal bleeding resulting from them.

Dr. Steven Kairys, the Medical Center's Chairman of Pediatrics and the Director of the Child Protection Center, described N.M.'s condition shortly after his admission to the Medical Center as follows:

When I saw [N.M.] the day after admission, he had extensive injuries primarily to the head, the scalp, the eyes, the ears, the back of the neck. That's where really most of the injuries were. There was a combination of extensive bruising that [ ] covered large parts of his neck and scalp. Both eyes were bruised [and] were beginning to show what's called raccoon eyes, bleeding blood around the eyes. Both ears were swollen red. There was bruising both in the earlobes, themselves, as well as behind the earlobes. There was bruising along the neck. And that was the major area of his injuries.

He did have a couple of other areas of much, much lesser injury. He had a small bruise along his left flank. And he had two or three very small quarter-inch bruises on his scrotum, two on the right side, one on the left side.

He further explained that N.M. was suffering from "a significant amount of blood loss." He explained that "in [N.M.'s] case since it wasn't blood loss from the GI track or blood loss from [] a major gaping wound that was oozing blood, it was blood loss into the skin, into the scalp, and the neck[,]" or, in other words, internal bleeding. Dr. Kairys further noted that "[t]he pattern [of N.M.'s injuries] was very striking" because "it was fairly extensive bilateral and anterior, on both front and back injury to the head area." Based "on the pattern and the absence of bruising elsewhere in the body[,]" he opined that the injuries were not the result of a fall, and that they had been inflicted on N.M. on the day he was hospitalized and not before.

B.

Defendant was charged with three counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:24-4(a), and one count of third-degree aggravated assault, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:12-1(b)(7).³ At his trial, Christine, Christine's parents, Christine's sister, the DYFS worker, the investigator from the County Prosecutor's Office and Dr. Kairys testified on behalf of the State. Significantly, N.M. did not testify at defendant's trial. After defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal pursuant to Rule 3:18-1 was denied, defendant offered the testimony of several of his relatives.

J...