State v. Buonadonna
| Citation | 122 N.J. 22,583 A.2d 747 |
| Parties | , 59 USLW 2495 STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Saverio Wayde BUONADONNA, Defendant-Respondent. STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael TALOTTI, Defendant-Respondent. STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff, v. Norman GRIST, III, Defendant. |
| Decision Date | 08 January 1991 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey) |
Jack J. Lipari, Asst. Prosecutor, for plaintiff-appellant (Jeffrey S. Blitz, Atlantic County Prosecutor, attorney).
Leonard S. Baker, for defendant-respondent Saverio Wayde Buonadonna (Agre & Baker, attorneys).
Lowell Espey, Designated Counsel, for defendant-respondent Michael Talotti (Wilfredo Caraballo, Public Defender, attorney).
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
Norman Grist, Jr. (Grist) was shot four times by Michael Talotti while in his warehouse office. Although seriously injured, Grist was not killed. Several hours after the shooting, Grist's son, Norman Grist, III (Norman), gave a statement to the police implicating himself, as well as respondents Talotti and Saverio Wayde Buonadonna. All three were indicted on various charges arising from the shooting.
Knowing that Norman did not intend to testify, the State reviewed his statement and concluded that the statement could not be effectively redacted to omit references to his codefendants. 1 Accordingly, the State moved pursuant to Rule 3:15-2(a) and under Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), to sever Norman's trial from the trial of his two codefendants. Defense counsel stipulated off the record that the cases did not require severance. The trial court, therefore, allowed the three codefendants to be tried together. Norman did not testify but his statement was admitted in evidence. All three defendants were convicted.
In his appeal to the Appellate Division, Buonadonna contended for the first time that he was entitled to a new trial because of ineffective assistance of counsel. One of the grounds asserted for his ineffective-assistance claim was that trial counsel "was grossly ineffective for stipulating that his case need not be severed."
The Appellate Division found that counsels' waiver violated defendants' rights under Bruton because "[s]uch a fundamental constitutional right should not have been found [by the trial court] to have been waived by counsel alone." This appeal, therefore, concerns whether defense counsels' waiver of the severance rights of Buonadonna and Talotti, without respondents themselves assenting to the waiver on the record, constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. The resolution of that question depends on the characterization of a Bruton right in relation to the Constitution and the appropriate level of judicial scrutiny that attaches to the waiver of such a right.
We granted the State's petition for certification, 118 N.J. 192, 570 A.2d 957 (1989), and now reverse.
Grist, the victim, owned and operated a family moving-storage company as well as a family farm. At the time of the shooting, the Grist family consisted of Grist, his wife, Mary (Mrs. Grist), and four children. Norman, three weeks short of his eighteenth birthday, his younger sister, Evelyn, sixteen, and his brother, Edward, fourteen, all lived at home with their parents. An older sister had married and moved away from home.
Long before the shooting, Grist and Norman had a bad relationship, characterized by the father's abusive behavior toward his son. In 1978, Grist developed a rare blood disease that, according to his wife, caused Grist to become even more abusive toward Norman than he had been previously.
Grist's violent and aggressive nature was discussed frequently during the trial following the shooting. Grist testified that he collected guns and always kept them loaded. A member of the National Rifle Association, Grist often advised his children that "an unloaded gun is a useless gun." Mrs. Grist testified that during conflicts with Norman, Grist "would hit him, curse him, belittle him and on several occasions ... pulled a knife, a gun." She described her husband as "cruel" and "very harsh" to her son. Grist, as well as other witnesses, also testified that Grist had aimed guns at his son during arguments and had threatened to shoot. Mrs. Grist testified that Norman, although physically imposing (6'4"', 240 pounds), would walk away from Grist's outbursts. She testified as well that her husband routinely said that he wanted to kill somebody--"It was just his manner of speaking."
Other members of the Grist family also described Grist's belligerent nature at trial. The youngest daughter, Evelyn, testified that "plenty of times" she, her brothers, and her mother had complained of Grist's violent and mean nature, and had said of Grist, "I wish he were dead."
Grist himself admitted that his temper was at times uncontrollable. Fifteen years before the shooting that led to this trial, Grist had hit his wife, hospitalizing her and necessitating surgery to repair her eye.
While living with his family in January 1985, Norman left school and began working nights in a restaurant. Within a few months, he met Buonadonna, a resident of Philadelphia. Mrs Grist testified that she first became aware of Buonadonna when her son told her that he had agreed to sell drugs for Buonadonna in the Margate and Atlantic City areas. Norman told his mother that he owed money to Buonadonna for drugs, and that Buonadonna would stay with him as his "bodyguard" until Norman paid the debt. According to Mrs. Grist, Pat LaRotunda, a schoolfriend of Norman, testified that Norman had said he owed money to Buonadonna for "a loan shark thing." Mrs. Grist said that Norman "wanted to make a car payment, and if he took this drug and sold it he could make his car payment and it was like $1,500, but because you don't pay it on a certain time there was interest." Norman told his mother that he had flushed the drugs down the toilet and could not pay back Buonadonna. After that conversation, Mrs. Grist gave Norman $200 to give to Buonadonna and told her husband about the debt. Grist became enraged but ultimately gave Norman $300. Mrs. Grist testified that she then gave another $189 to Norman and finally that she paid $3,000 to Buonadonna in a Margate parking lot. In his testimony Buonadonna denied all allegations concerning drugs, drug dealing, and loan sharking.
Mrs. Grist also testified that "there was a nice side" to Buonadonna, and that after she paid the money, the two young men became friends. Buonadonna continued to spend time at the Grist home, often bringing with him Salena Brocco, who was his girlfriend and a friend of Norman and Talotti. All three became aware of Grist's combative nature. Brocco testified that Norman told her on various occasions that "[h]e never got along with his father and he didn't want him around and he wished he was dead." Brocco also said that she had overheard Norman tell Buonadonna and Talotti something similar approximately two weeks before the shooting. Evelyn Grist also overheard a conversation among the three codefendants during which one of them (she could not recall which one) said, "I could just kill him [Grist]." However, Evelyn testified that she did not take the conversation seriously, and described it to the court as "idle conversation" rather than a "serious plan."
Edward Grist, Norman's younger brother, overheard several conversations between Norman and Buonadonna in which the two discussed robbing and shooting Grist. Edward testified that the two asked him where the victim kept cash at the office. Edward told them that they could expect to find several thousand dollars stored in a can on top of a filing cabinet in the office of the warehouse where Grist ran the family moving business. According to Edward, the defendants told him that they planned to rob Grist at his warehouse by going there on the pretext of "buy[ing] furniture [for Talotti] to move and ... ask[ing] my father for an estimate [of the cost of moving Talotti]."
Edward further testified that Buonadonna and Norman discussed the fact that the Grist family owned real estate. In another conversation, all the defendants indicated they wanted to obtain properties belonging to the victim and sell them to buy a car. On at least three or four separate occasions, Edward heard Buonadonna say that he would like to kill Grist. Edward, however, did not take the conversations seriously.
At the trial, Grist, Buonadonna, and Talotti all testified that the day before the shooting, all three defendants had approached Grist to discuss buying furniture and moving Talotti's possessions from one place in Philadelphia to another. Grist told the defendants to meet him early the next morning, September 11, 1985, at the warehouse. He testified that he was apprehensive of the three young men and had brought a gun with him that morning. Grist accompanied the three defendants into the warehouse to discuss Talotti's moving requirements. Grist testified that within minutes, he ordered his son "in kind of rough terms" to leave because Norman looked "kind of bored and disinterested."
After Norman left, Grist sat behind his desk and began to make an estimate for Talotti's move. Talotti sat in front of Grist, and Buonadonna remained standing behind Talotti. Grist testified that Buonadonna and Talotti were not responding cooperatively to his questions and that he requested more information. At that moment, Grist made a series of movements that culminated in him reaching for his holster and Talotti firing five shots at him from close range.
Because Grist was referring to a photograph while testifying at trial, the record is not completely clear. Nonetheless, according to Grist:
So--and with that [telling the two he needed more information], and I was faced this way, so I swivelled back...
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