State v. Camey
| Decision Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Docket Number | 080574,A-73 September Term 2017 |
| Citation | 217 A.3d 106,239 N.J. 282 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Rafael CAMEY, Defendant-Respondent. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
Lila B. Leonard, Trenton, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for appellant (Gurbir S. Grewal, Attorney General, attorney; Lila B. Leonard, of counsel and on the brief, and Christopher W. Hsieh, Paterson, Chief Assistant Passaic County Prosecutor, on the brief).
Stefan Van Jura, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for respondent (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; Stefan Van Jura, of counsel and on the brief, and Laura C. Sutnick, Hackensack, Designated Counsel, on the brief).
Alexander Shalom argued the cause for amicus curiae American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Foundation, attorneys; Alexander Shalom, Tess Borden, Edward Barocas, and Jeanne LoCicero, on the brief).
In this case, defendant Rafael Camey stands charged with murder. The police discovered the victim's lifeless body behind a supermarket in Passaic and swabbed it for DNA evidence. The victim had been brutally beaten and was partially disrobed; the cause of her death was blunt force trauma and drowning.
The ensuing investigation led the police to search for a particular violent individual with whom the victim had been seen. To try to solve the crime, the police swabbed multiple individuals for DNA including defendant. His DNA profile matched the DNA found in the victim. In this interlocutory appeal, we review two key pre-trial determinations involving the DNA evidence from defendant.
First, after the trial court granted defendant's motion to suppress DNA results from a buccal swab obtained on the basis of invalid consent, which the State no longer contests, the State sought admission of the excluded DNA results on the basis of inevitable discovery. The State argued that it could have obtained a buccal swab from defendant under N.J.S.A. 53:1-20.20 or through an application for investigative detention under Rule 3:5A-4. The trial court agreed to employ an inevitable discovery analysis and ruled the results from that buccal swab inadmissible under either inevitable discovery argument. The Appellate Division affirmed the suppression of the results from that swab.
Second, the State filed a separate application under Rule 3:5A-4 to take a second buccal swab from defendant. The court again turned to the framework of an inevitable discovery analysis and rejected the application. The Appellate Division again affirmed.
Like the trial court and the Appellate Division, we hold that the police violated the Fourth Amendment in the way they obtained defendant's DNA. As a result, the results from that search cannot be used.
DNA evidence, however, is immutable. It is unlike a completed search of a home in which the police already removed contraband -- a search that cannot be repeated. After a person is swabbed for DNA, of course, his DNA remains intact. It will be the same ten years from now as it was several years ago. The application for a second buccal swab from defendant calls into question the standard to which the State should be held when making an application for a judicially sanctioned swab as part of an investigative detention, see R. 3:5A-4, after the State's previous swab -- secured through an unconstitutional search and seizure -- was excluded. Notwithstanding the immutability of DNA information, the second buccal swab does not lose its character as a second search and seizure merely because the new buccal evidence will provide the same uniquely identifying information available from an individual's DNA that the initial buccal evidence provided.
The appeal thus raises a novel question: Under what circumstances, if any, may the police apply to conduct a new search for immutable evidence like DNA? Is a suspect's DNA off-limits to law enforcement for all time if an initial search was invalid? Or, are there situations in which law enforcement may seek a new buccal swab to examine a person's DNA?
We conclude that a traditional inevitable discovery "look-back" analysis for alternative reasoning to support admission of already-seized evidence is a poor fit for the analysis needed in these circumstances. Instead, we draw from the independent source doctrine to analyze the question and frame an appropriate test. To apply for a new buccal swab for DNA evidence under Rule 3:5A, we conclude that the State must demonstrate probable cause for the new search. That showing may include evidence that existed before the initial invalid search, but the showing cannot be tainted by the results of the prior search. In addition, to deter wrongdoing by the police, the State must show by clear and convincing evidence that the initial impermissible search was not the result of flagrant police misconduct. The approach adopted protects a suspect's constitutional rights and recognizes the legitimate public interest in a fair assessment of whether a second buccal swab sample should be allowed.
In sum, we affirm the suppression of DNA evidence from the first buccal swab. We hold that the trial court's thorough and detailed reasons for denying admission of this evidence, under either of the State's two inevitable discovery arguments, are clearly sustainable on appeal. However, the State's application for a second buccal swab calls for a remand. We vacate the Appellate Division's affirmance of the denial of the State's application to take a new buccal swab from defendant and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion and the new test set forth herein.
The pertinent facts from the pre-trial applications and related evidential proceedings involve the State's investigation into the death of a woman whose body was discovered in a secluded area of Passaic and the narrowing of the investigation to defendant.
A little after 6:00 p.m. on September 30, 2013, the Passaic Police Department received a 9-1-1 report of a body in a wooded area near a river bank behind a ShopRite store. Sergeant Bordamonte, the lead detective in the matter, testified that the deceased -- later determined to be a woman named Katie1 -- had been "beaten very, very brutally" and was partially disrobed. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma and drowning.
Bordamonte was familiar with Tina, the person who placed the 9-1-1 call. The police knew she was a prostitute who frequented the area where Katie's body was located and that she had provided useful information in other police investigations.
Bordamonte interviewed Tina the day after Katie's body was found. Tina told Bordamonte that Katie was "the new girl on the block" and that she saw Katie with a person she described as a "violent Mexican male" (the violent male) at about 11:00 p.m. on the night before Katie's death. Tina said that she had been choked by the same man during a paid sexual encounter. She also said that the man had assaulted another woman, Ashley, and that a friend, Dennis, would be better able to describe this man because Dennis "definitely knows who he is."2 Bordamonte showed Tina photographs from the police database and later drove her around in the hope that she might recognize the man she recalled seeing with Katie. Neither effort produced an identification, and Tina agreed to contact the police if she saw the man again. According to Bordamonte, Tina appeared to be under the influence of an intoxicating substance during this initial interview.
Later that day, police obtained a statement from Katie's husband, Martin. According to Martin, Katie was a prostitute and drug addict. He said that he had not seen her for one or two days and that it was not uncommon for her to "disappear for days at times." Bordamonte later learned, through a criminal history search, that Martin had been arrested for aggravated sexual assault and kidnapping and that there had been a domestic violence incident between him and Katie.
Three days after finding Katie's body, Bordamonte conducted a second interview with Tina in which she repeated that she last saw Katie with the violent male the night before her body was found. During this interview, Tina again appeared to Bordamonte to be under the influence of drugs.
That same day, police officers conducted on-scene interviews with approximately sixteen homeless individuals who were in the vicinity of where Katie's body was found and from whom the police received consent to take buccal swabs. None of the individuals whom the police interviewed and swabbed were able to provide information related to Katie's death. Beforehand, police had administered buccal swabs to at least four other homeless individuals who were in the area near where Katie's body was found.
On October 8, 2013, police interviewed a friend of Katie's, Penny, who reported that Katie and Martin were having "marital problems." Penny also stated that, on the night before Katie's body was found, she saw her with a man named Richard and she believed Richard was involved in the murder because he had not been back since that night. Richard was subsequently interviewed, and he confirmed that he saw Katie the night before her body was found. Others interviewed by Bordamonte included a woman who reported that she had acted as a lookout for Katie while Katie had a sexual encounter with a Polish man the day she was killed. According to this report, Katie and that man were alone for a long time.
On October 18, 2013, Tina was interviewed for a third time. She reiterated that she last saw Katie walking away from others toward a more secluded area with the so-called violent male and added that the "rumor in the street" was that someone called "Blaze" killed Katie.3 Two days after this interview, Tina called police to report that she saw the violent male about whom she had been telling them. Police responded to...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Caronna
...if the illegal conduct had not taken place" rather than to "punish the prosecution by putting it in a worse place." State v. Camey, 239 N.J. 282, 302, 217 A.3d 106 (2019) (citing Sugar II, 100 N.J. at 237, 495 A.2d 90 ). The State must demonstrate that:(1) proper, normal and specific invest......
-
State v. Scott
...a worse place." Caronna, 469 N.J. Super. at 500, 265 A.3d 1249 (alteration in original) (emphasis omitted) (quoting State v. Camey, 239 N.J. 282, 302, 217 A.3d 106 (2019) ). That is an important principle—one that is consistent with the need to balance the purposes of the exclusionary rule ......
-
State v. Poole
...enforcement's unconstitutional conduct if that evidence would have been discovered in the absence of that unlawful conduct." State v. Camey, 239 N.J. 282, 301 (2019). Under doctrine, the State bears the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that (1) proper, normal and specific ......
-
State v. Fuqua
...is a high bar, requiring active disregard of proper procedure, or overt attempts to undermine constitutional protections." State v. Camey, 239 N.J. 282, 310 (2019) State v. Smith, 212 N.J. 365, 398 (2012)). We leave for the trial court to decide in the first instance whether the use of the ......