State v. Dorff

• Decision Date: 20 July 2021
• Docket Number: DOCKET NO. A-2485-19
• Citation: 468 N.J.Super. 633,260 A.3d 904
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Lauren M. DORFF, a/k/a Lauren Dorff, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

468 N.J.Super. 633

260 A.3d 904

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.Lauren M. DORFF, a/k/a Lauren Dorff, Defendant-Appellant.

DOCKET NO. A-2485-19

Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.

Submitted May 17, 2021

Decided July 20, 2021

Neil Law Practice, attorneys for appellant (John R. Stein, of counsel; Durann Neil, Jr., on the brief).

Jeffrey H. Sutherland, Cape May County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (Gretchen A. Pickering, Senior Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief).

Before Judges Fasciale, Mayer and Susswein.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

SUSSWEIN, J.A.D.

Defendant, Lauren M. Dorff, appeals from her guilty plea conviction for first-degree strict liability for drug-induced death. She contends the trial court erred by denying her motion to suppress statements she gave to police during two separate stationhouse interrogations. During the first interrogation session, defendant admitted she obtained money from the victim on the day he died but claimed she had borrowed the money and denied selling him drugs or having any involvement in his overdose death. Defendant contends her first interrogation statement was given involuntarily. During the second interrogation session, defendant eventually admitted she sold the victim controlled dangerous substances (CDS) prior to his fatal overdose. She asserts that admission was made only after the interrogating detectives failed to honor her repeated requests to speak to an attorney.

After carefully reviewing the record in view of the applicable legal principles, we affirm the trial court's ruling that defendant's first statement was voluntarily made and admissible. However, we conclude defendant's Miranda ¹ rights were violated during the second stationhouse interrogation when a detective told her that if she did not do anything wrong, she did not need an attorney. That offhand advice—made in the context of responding to defendant's uncertainty as to whether she should speak to an attorney—arrogated one of the fundamental tenets of Miranda and undercut the warnings that had been read to her at the start of the interrogation session by impermissibly burdening the right to counsel. We therefore are constrained to reverse that part of the trial court's order denying defendant's motion to suppress the statement given at the second interrogation.

I.

In October 2018, a Cape May County grand jury indicted defendant for third-degree possession of CDS with intent to distribute, N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5(a)(1) and 2C:35-5(b)(5), and first-degree strict liability for drug-induced death, N.J.S.A. 2C:35-9(a).² In April 2019, defendant moved to suppress statements she made to law enforcement during interrogations conducted on July 22, 2018 and August 10, 2018. On June 6, 2019, the trial court convened an evidentiary hearing at which the detectives who conducted the interrogations testified and the video recordings of the interrogation sessions were played back. On July 11, 2019, the trial court rendered a written opinion denying defendant's motion.

On November 21, 2019, defendant pled guilty to the count charging strict liability for drug-induced death.³ In exchange for the guilty plea, the State agreed to recommend a sentence of eight years in prison, subject to the No Early Release Act (NERA), N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.2.

We briefly recount the facts relevant to this appeal, focusing on portions of the second interrogation when defendant repeatedly referred to her right to consult with an attorney. On July 21, 2018, the victim, Eric Nolan, was discovered dead of an apparent drug overdose. Defendant and the victim shared a child together and had an on-off relationship spanning many years.

The first interrogation was conducted on July 22, 2018 at the Lower Township police station by a Lower Township Police Department (LTPD) detective and a Cape May County Prosecutor's Office (CMCPO) detective. The second interrogation was conducted on August 10, 2018 at the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office by those same detectives. Both stationhouse interrogations were electronically recorded in accordance with Rule 3:17. The detectives read defendant her Miranda rights and on both occasions presented her with a written form memorializing those rights.

During the first interrogation, defendant admitted that she and the victim had once been romantically involved, they had a child together, and they both suffered from opiate addiction. She also acknowledged she obtained money from the victim on the day of his overdose, though she claimed it was a loan and not the proceeds of a drug transaction. She denied any involvement in Nolan's death, and maintained she had not sold him the pills that led to the fatal overdose. At the end of the first interrogation, the detectives informed defendant they were taking her cellphone to search it. Defendant complied with their request for the passcode to unlock the phone and access its stored data.⁴

At the second interrogation, immediately after the Miranda warnings were administered, defendant made several references to the need for her to have an attorney. To facilitate our analysis, we excerpt and reproduce each reference and the colloquy that followed:⁵

First Reference

LTPD Detective: Okay. Today's date is August 10th, 2018. The time now is 07:02 hours. We're at the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office.

Defendant: Do I need to get a lawyer?^[6]

LTPD Detective: That's up to you. I can't give you legal advice if you want an attorney or not. But we wanna speak to ya today about this so.

Second Reference

Defendant: I don't know how, how to trust you guys.

CMCPO Detective: Well how—(inaudible)—the story. Here's how it goes—

Defendant: That's why I feel I might need a lawyer.

CMCPO Detective: Well, I mean that's a decision you need to make.

Defendant: You know that scares me too.

CMCPO Detective: But if you didn't do anything, you certainly don't need to have, I mean that's—^[7]

Defendant: I didn't. I feel like I didn't do anything wrong.

CMCPO Detective: But that's how—(inaudible).

Defendant: But it's like still scary this whole situation. The fact that I don't know, you know like maybe I need a lawyer.

CMCPO Detective: That's, that's something you have to decide. That's a decision we can't influence you either way. But—(inaudible).

Third Reference

CMCPO Detective: You have two children you have to think about.

Defendant: Yeah and that's why I feel like I need a lawyer.

CMCPO Detective: You have to make that decision and you have to—and that's a decision before we move forward you have to make.

Fourth Reference

CMCPO Detective: And we already, we know what happened. I told ya we have—there's a lot and there's gonna be more information coming forward in the next short amount of time and you know that as well as I do. So this is, this is the most important part right now, is that you tell your side. And since—

Defendant: Am I supposed to do that without a lawyer though?

CMCPO Detective: Listen, I'm not going to talk about this lawyer anymore, you have to make a decision. You have to make a decision. I'm not—I can't answer for you one way or another.^[8] You understand that right?

Defendant: Yeah, I know.

CMCPO Detective: And this is, this is, this is the grown up world. So now you have to make a decision one or the other. And your decision, the minute you tell if you want an attorney, that's fine you know. All our conversations stop. You can tell us you want to continue to talk to us and that's fine. Then our conversation is you get to tell your story and it's as simple as that. I can't—again I'm being very honest.

Defendant: I can help as much as I can until I feel uncomfortable. Can I then get a lawyer?

CMCPO Detective: You can, you can do—yeah. Just like you were told in—just the way you read it. You can talk and you can stop whenever you want to. That's up to you. Do you want to talk to us?

Defendant: As much as I, as much as I feel comfortable with yeah, if that's okay?

CMCPO Detective: That's fine. This is—these are your decisions. I'm not here to influence you one way or another. So here's the story, if you want to talk to us without an attorney. Is that what you want to do right now?

Defendant: Yeah, at the moment yes.

Following this last exchange, defendant admitted in response to questions that she provided the victim with pills that she believed to be Percocet

, a CDS.

Defendant raises the following contentions for our consideration:

POINT I

THE TRIAL COURT ERRED IN DENYING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS HER STATEMENTS BECAUSE DEFENDANT DID NOT KNOWINGLY, INTELLIGENTLY, AND VOLUNTARILY WAIVE HER MIRANDA RIGHTS PRIOR TO CUSTODIAL INTERROGATIONS (raised below).

POINT II

THE TRIAL COURT ERRED IN DENYING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS HER SECOND STATEMENT BECAUSE THE DETECTIVES FAILED TO SCRUPULOUSLY HONOR DEFENDANT'S INVOCATION OF RIGHT TO COUNSEL (raised below).

II.

We first address defendant's contention she did not knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waive her Miranda rights at the first stationhouse interrogation on July 22, 2018, and that her statement was involuntary considering the totality of the circumstances. She argues she had a prior personal relationship with the LTPD detective. She also claims the detectives coerced her to talk by interrupting her as she was making a relevant statement and by changing the subject to her children as she was speaking. We reject those contentions and affirm the admissibility of the statement made during the first interrogation session substantially for the reasons stated by the trial court in its written opinion. We add the following comments.

When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress a statement, we apply a deferential standard of review to the trial court's findings of fact.

State v. S.S., 229 N.J. 360, 379, 162 A.3d 1058 (2017). We accept the trial court's factual findings unless they are not supported by sufficient credible evidence in the record. Id. at 381, 162 A.3d 1058 (citing State v. Gamble, 218...