State v. Carter

• Decision Date: 10 December 1974
• Citation: 136 N.J.Super. 271,345 A.2d 808
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff, v. Rubin CARTER and John Artis, Defendants. (Criminal), New Jersey
• Court: New Jersey County Court

Page 271

136 N.J.Super. 271

345 A.2d 808

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff, v. Rubin CARTER and John Artis, Defendants.

Passaic County Court,

Law Division (Criminal),

New Jersey.

Dec. 10, 1974.

John P. Goceljak, Asst. Prosecutor of Passaic County, and Joseph D. J. Gourley, Prosecutor of Passaic County, for the State of New Jersey.

Paul J. Feldman, Asbury Park, for defendant Rubin Carter.

John W. Noonan, Newark, for defendant John Artis.

Stanley C. Van Ness, Public Advocate, Trenton, and Richard Newman, Newark, of counsel, for defendants.

LARNER, A.J.S.C.

After a lengthy trial at which I presided during April and May 1967 defendants were convicted by a jury of murder in the first degree with a recommendation of life imprisonment. Life sentences were accordingly imposed on June 29, 1967. The convictions were affirmed by the New Jersey Supreme Court (54 N.J. 436, 255 A.2d 746 (1969)) and Certiorari denied by the United States Supreme Court, 397 U.S. 948, 90 S.Ct. 969, 25 L.Ed.2d 130 (1970).

On or about October 1, 1974, approximately 7 1/2 years after the completion of the trial, defendants moved for a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence. R. 3:20. The application was founded upon affidavits of two state witnesses, Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley, recanting significant portions of their trial testimony relating to the identification of defendants at the scene of the murder. The court thereupon granted an evidentiary hearing to permit defendants and the State to present at a plenary proceeding all the available evidence relevant to the determination of whether a new trial should be granted.

Prior to the evidentiary hearing defendants expanded in their brief upon the asserted grounds for a new trial by alleging that they had been denied due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution because the State had permitted without correction the same witnesses to perjure themselves in testimony relating to promises of leniency in sentencing on unrelated criminal charges pending against them.

Testimony was adduced on the two facets of attack and the court will deal with both issues herein.

In order to place the new trial application in proper focus it is necessary to review the operative facts as developed at the trial in 1967. First there will be summarized the evidence without consideration of the testimony of the recanting witnesses.

I

On June 17, 1966, at approximately 2:30 a.m., two black men entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill located at the corner of Lafayette and 18th Streets in the City of Paterson, with one man brandishing a revolver and the other a shotgun. Without provocation and without a clear motive they proceeded to shoot at all the occupants of the bar, as a result of which three persons died and one was severely injured. Because of the nature of his injury and the accompanying shock the lone survivor was unable to describe the assailants beyond the fact that they were Negroes.

Patricia Graham Valentine lived in an apartment on the second floor of the building in which the tavern was located. The noise of the shots awakened her, whereupon she ran to the window facing on Lafayette Street. She saw two black men running on the sidewalk below toward a white car parked about a car width from the curb. She could not see their faces. However, she observed that it was a white car with a license plate which had a dark blue background with yellow or gold lettering. In addition, she testified that the rear lights had the unusual shape of tapering triangles. When the vehicle took off with the two men she hurried to the tavern, saw the horrible bloody scene and called the police. When she reached the door of the bar she saw the witness Bello and subsequently attempted to give succor to the victims.

When the police arrived shortly thereafter she told them what she saw, including the description of the automobile and providing a sketch of the tail lights. Shortly thereafter a white vehicle was returned to the scene which was identified by Mrs. Valentine as the one she had been earlier. Further corroborative identification of the tail lights and the license plates took place at the police garage later.

Another neighbor across the street ,Ronald Ruggiero, also heard the shots and when he looked out the window, he saw the witness Bello running on Lafayette Street from 18th Street toward 16th Street. He also heard the screech of tires and saw a car shoot past his window with two colored men in the front seat.

As a result of an alert to look for a white car with out-of-state license plates and 'butterfly' rear lights, and with two black occupants, within a half hour the police located a car in Paterson with defendants in the front seat. The vehicle was owned by Avis Rent-A-Car and had been rented some time before by defendant Carter. It was a 1966 white Dodge with New York license plates and had the odd 'butterfly' tail lights described by Mrs. Valentine.

Detective Di Robbia searched the inside of the car at police headquarters at about 3:45 a.m. and found a 32-caliber Smith & Weston long live shell under the front seat. When he showed this to Carter the latter merely shrugged his shoulders. The evidence established without peradventure that all the spent bullets found in various areas of the tavern and in the bodies of some of the victims were 32-caliber Smith & Weston long ammunition. There were also retrieved from the bar a spent shotgun shell and many pellets and pieces of wadding. Similar pellets and wadding were removed from the body of one of the victims. The expert identified these as having come from a 12-gauge shotgun. During the search of the car Detective Di Robbia also found a live 12-gauge shotgun shell in the trunk. (This shell was excluded from evidence at trial, but was considered admissible by the Supreme Court, 54 N.J. at 450, 255 A.2d 746.)

The remaining significant evidence was developed by the testimony of Bello and Bradley.

II

Around the time of the shootings Bradley was in the process of attempting to break into the plant of the Ace Sheet Metal Co. at the corner of 16th and Lafayette Streets, and Bello was acting as the lookout for the police. Bello testified that while he was standing at the corner of Lafayette and 16th Streets he saw a white car with two colored men in the front seat. He thereafter walked across the street to the northwest corner of that intersection to get a can of soda from a machine located there. He then walked back and spoke to Bradley, who was having trouble opening the door of Ace Sheet Metal. He proceeded to carry on his lookout duties at a tree near the corner when he again saw the white car cruising at about five to ten miles an hour, turning from Lafayette Street onto 16th Street.

He testified that the car at that time had two colored men in front and perhaps someone in the rear. The passenger in the front seat had something between his legs which looked like a rifle or a shotgun. The witness identified the car as the Carter car from a photo shown to him in court. Bello continued his walking tour back to Bradley and then back to the corner, continuing down Lafayette Street toward 18th Street.

While walking toward the corner location of the Lafayette Bar and Grill for the purpose of getting cigarettes at the tavern he heard two shots and then two more shots. By that time he had reached the end of the building which housed the tavern. At that point he saw the white car parked on Lafayette Street and two colored men coming toward him from around the corner of 18th Street and Lafayette, talking loudly and laughing, with one carrying a shotgun and the other a pistol. They were 12 to 14 feet from him when he observed them. He also noticed a woman in the upstairs window.

He testified that the man carrying the shotgun was defendant Carter and that the other man with the pistol was defendant Artis.

Upon seeing the two armed men he turned and ran toward 16th Street and turned into an alleyway. While he was in this area he returned to the sidewalk. At that time he saw the same white car which had been parked proceeding toward 16th Street, and as it slowed down momentarily he noticed that it had New York license plates and triangle tail lights which tapered toward the outside.

Thereupon Bello proceeded to the bar and went in the side door located on Lafayette Street. He described the scene of the bodies in the tavern and also saw Mrs. Valentine enter for a moment and scream. He then went behind the bar to the cash register, saw one of the dead men lying there and helped himself to some of the cash in the register.

He subsequently left the tavern and joined his partner Bradley in an alley behind the Ace Sheet Metal building. He handed him the stolen cash and then returned to the bar and called the police.

Bello remained at the scene after the police arrived, and shortly other police cars pulled up with a white Dodge car and two black men. At that time and at police headquarters that morning he failed to identify either defendant, contending that he did not see their faces. However, he did tell police that very morning that the car brought to the scene was the same one he had seen earlier. He did not tell the police at that time about Bradley or the criminal mission being carried on by them, or the fact that he had removed cash from the register in the tavern. In his court testimony, however, he admitted his involvement with Bradley and the theft of the money. In addition, he testified that he recognized defendants Carter and Artis when they were returned to the scene in the white Dodge as the same men he had seen on the street coming around the corner from the entrance of the Lafayette grill with the guns in their hands.

After he was confronted with his failure to identify defendants in his oral statement to the police on June 17, 1966 his credibility was rehabilitated by a written statement given...