State v. Cole

• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: JUSTICE PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court.
• Citation: State v. Cole, 229 N.J. 430, 163 A.3d 302 (N.J. 2017)
• Decision Date: 27 June 2017
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Anthony K. COLE, Defendant–Respondent.

229 N.J. 430

163 A.3d 302

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.Anthony K. COLE, Defendant–Respondent.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued January 17, 2017

Decided June 27, 2017

Joie D. Piderit, Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for appellant (Andrew C. Carey, Middlesex County Prosecutor, attorney).

Susan Brody, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for respondent (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney).

Jennifer E. Kmieciak, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae Attorney General of New Jersey (Christopher S. Porrino, Attorney General, attorney).

JUSTICE PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this appeal, we review an evidentiary ruling made by the trial court during defendant's trial for attempted murder and other offenses.

Several months after a municipal employee was assaulted and seriously injured during a public event, defendant Anthony K. Cole was linked by DNA analysis to evidence found at the scene. Police officers arrested defendant, transported him to police headquarters, and interrogated him in two sequential conversations, both video-recorded. Advised that the officers had forensic evidence linking him to the crime, defendant maintained his innocence, provided an alibi, and asked to be released. When the officers were in the room, defendant was gregarious and engaged. When briefly left alone during three breaks from the questioning, however, defendant adopted a starkly different demeanor; he muttered to himself, mouthed obscenities toward the location where the officers had been sitting and the video camera, and placed his hand inside his pants.

The trial court denied defendant's motion to bar the admission into evidence of the three segments of the video recordings in which defendant appeared alone in the interrogation room. The court ruled that the contested portions of the video recordings were relevant to the credibility of defendant's statement denying involvement in the crime and that they met the standard of N.J.R.E. 401. The court rejected defendant's argument that the evidence was unduly prejudicial and should be excluded under N.J.R.E. 403.

At trial, the State presented the video recordings in their entirety, along with substantial evidence of defendant's guilt, including DNA analysis and the testimony of witnesses who contradicted defendant's statement. The trial court offered to give the jury a limiting instruction about the video-recorded evidence upon defendant's request; defendant did not seek such an instruction. In summation, the prosecutor not only urged the jury to consider the video recording in assessing defendant's credibility, but also suggested that defendant's behavior when the officers were out of the interrogation room signified his guilt. The jury convicted defendant of all charges.

An Appellate Division panel reversed defendant's conviction. The panel did not determine whether the trial court had properly admitted the video-recorded segments at issue as relevant to the credibility of defendant's statement to police. It held, however, that those segments were inadmissible as consciousness-of-guilt evidence.

We do not concur with the Appellate Division's analysis of this case. The trial court admitted the disputed video-recorded segments not because they constituted proof of defendant's consciousness of guilt, but by virtue of their relevance to defendant's credibility when he denied involvement in the crime immediately before and after those segments were recorded. We conclude that the trial court properly exercised its broad discretion when it applied N.J.R.E. 401 and 403 to the contested evidence and admitted the video recordings in their entirety. We further hold that the lack of a limiting instruction and the prosecutor's comment on the evidence did not constitute plain error.

Accordingly, we reverse the Appellate Division's judgment and remand this matter to the panel for a determination of the issues raised by defendant on appeal that remain unresolved.

I.

We derive our account of the facts from the trial record.

On the evening of September 7, 2009, David Donatelli, a supervisor employed by the Borough of South Plainfield Department of Public Works, was on duty in Spring Lake Park, preparing for the Borough's annual Labor Day fireworks display. As he stood in the northeast portion of the park near its tennis courts and an adjacent walking path, looking up to examine a light stanchion, Donatelli sensed someone brushing up against his shoulder. He felt as if his neck were struck by "a whip," began to bleed, and realized that he had been slashed with a sharp object. Donatelli implored his fellow employees to help him, laid down on the ground, and went into shock.

After a police officer rendered first aid, an ambulance transported Donatelli to a trauma center. Physicians conducted emergency surgery to close a laceration on the side of Donatelli's neck; the laceration measured six to eight inches in length and was deep enough to expose, but not to sever, his carotid artery and jugular vein. Donatelli was left with a permanent scar and loss of sensation in the affected area. He never returned to his job.

Two witnesses who had been in the park to attend the fireworks display generally described a man whom they had seen running near the path in the vicinity of the assault. Police officers searched the area but did not locate a suspect. A K–9 dog led its handler along a scent trail near the path but stopped abruptly on a nearby street, signaling that an individual may have exited the park and departed in a vehicle.

The following morning, during a search of the path near the location where Donatelli had been attacked, a police officer found two matching black-and-gray gloves, one on the ground and the other suspended from a tree thirteen feet above the ground. The gloves were secured and delivered to the New Jersey State Police forensic laboratory for DNA testing.

For several weeks, the investigation stalled as officers interviewed various individuals but ruled them out as suspects. Five weeks after the assault, however, the State Police laboratory advised South Plainfield officers that blood identified by DNA analysis as Donatelli's had been found on the outside of the glove, on the index finger portion of the glove. State Police forensic scientists then swabbed the interior of both gloves and detected skin cells. They submitted samples of those cells for comparison with the statewide database of known DNA profiles. That comparison revealed a match between DNA extracted from the skin cells found in the gloves and defendant's DNA profile in the database.

On December 16, 2009, the State Police forensic laboratory advised the South Plainfield Police Department that DNA evidence connected defendant to the gloves. Several of the Borough's officers were acquainted with defendant through encounters with him at the Police Athletic League (PAL) facility, where defendant regularly lifted weights. An officer contacted defendant by cellphone to determine his location. Several officers arrested defendant and brought him to police headquarters.

Defendant stated that he wanted to talk to police officers and was immediately escorted to an interrogation room, where video-recording equipment documented the proceedings.

After waiving his rights under Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed. 2d 694 (1966), defendant was interviewed by two officers for approximately two hours. Defendant was talkative and responsive during the conversation; he addressed the officers in a familiar and friendly tone, invoking his prior contacts with them while lifting weights at the PAL facility. He admitted that he was in Spring Lake Park the night of the incident but denied that he was in the section of the park where the attack on Donatelli occurred. Defendant told the officers that he was alone in the park that evening and that he did not encounter anyone he knew. He stated that as the fireworks were beginning, his mother called him and said that she needed him to come home "to cut some boxes or something stupid and take them out for recycling," and that he "just left." Defendant gave the officers an incorrect cellphone number for his mother.

Shown a photograph of gloves similar to the gloves found in Spring Lake Park the morning after Donatelli was attacked, defendant denied ever owning or wearing gloves of that type. He offered to prove that contention by retrieving his own pair of gloves from his home and bringing them to the officers. At the officers' request, defendant provided a DNA sample by buccal swab.

As the interview progressed, the officers revealed to defendant that "scientific" evidence connected him, as well as the victim, to the gloves found in the park. Late in the interview, an officer showed defendant an excerpt of the DNA testing results provided by the State Police laboratory. Defendant challenged the DNA evidence, reiterated his innocence, and insisted that he should be permitted to leave the police station. The officers declined to release defendant, offered to resume the conversation at defendant's request, and left the room.

The video recording then displayed an abrupt change in defendant's demeanor. After a few seconds of silence, defendant began to mutter to himself in an agitated manner. He put his hand inside his pants and mouthed obscenities in the direction of the seats where the officers had been sitting, and in the direction of the camera. Approximately five minutes later, defendant stood up and summoned an officer by knocking on the door. When an officer responded, defendant addressed him in a collegial manner. Defendant was escorted from the room. At that point, the first of the two video recordings ended.

Minutes later, defendant spotted South Plainfield's Chief of Police, with whom he was acquainted, and asked to speak with him. Defendant, the Chief of Police, and another officer entered the interrogation room and the...