State v. Golotta
| Decision Date | 24 October 2002 |
| Citation | 808 A.2d 135,354 N.J. Super. 477 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Salvatore GOLOTTA, Defendant-Respondent. |
| Court | New Jersey Superior Court |
Wayne J. Forrest, Somerset County Prosecutor, attorney for appellant (Tara L. Johnson, Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief).
Miller, Meyerson, Schwartz & Corbo, attorneys for respondent (Leonard Meyerson, Jersey City, and David H. Baskind, of counsel; Mr. Baskind, on the brief).
Before Judges SKILLMAN, CUFF and LEFELT.
The opinion of the court was delivered by CUFF, J.A.D.
We granted the State's motion for leave to appeal an order granting defendant's motion to suppress. Defendant responds that the police lacked an articulable suspicion to stop his vehicle and further contends that the appeal is barred by principles of double jeopardy. We affirm.
On November 5, 2000, defendant Salvatore Golotta was driving northbound on Route 206 when he was stopped by the Peapack-Gladstone police. Following the administration of a breathalyzer, defendant was charged with driving while intoxicated contrary to N.J.S.A. 39:4-50. Defendant filed a motion to suppress the results of the breathalyzer test. Following an evidentiary hearing on his motion, the municipal court judge denied the motion. Defendant entered a conditional plea of guilty and filed a timely appeal in the Law Division. Following a de novo review of the record of the motion to suppress, the Law Division judge granted defendant's motion. He found the officer observed no activity by defendant which would warrant a stop but detained defendant solely based on the information from an anonymous caller. Therefore, he vacated the guilty plea and entered a judgment of acquittal.
The factual record is scanty. The municipal court judge appropriately confined the testimony to the information received by the officers from the dispatcher and the observations of defendant's operation of his motor vehicle. From that record we learn that at approximately 9:30 p.m. on November 5, 2000, the Peapack-Gladstone police received a telephone call from an anonymous caller reporting an erratic driver traveling northbound on Route 206. Officers Stephen Ferrante and Frank French were dispatched to locate the motor vehicle. Each officer was driving a patrol car.
Ferrante testified that the dispatcher told him the vehicle was driving erratically, that it was out of control and weaving back and forth. He was informed that he was looking for a blue pick-up truck bearing the license plate VM407B. At the intersection of Pottersville Road and Route 206, Ferrante observed a blue truck. He testified as follows:
A. I approached 206 at the crest of the hill. At the traffic light, as I approached, I witnessed the blue ... a blue pick-up truck pass in front of me. Officer French then was northbound on 206 behind this vehicle. And we initiated the stop at the same time.
Q. Did Officer French actually initiate the stop?
Officer French did not testify.
The stop initiated by Officers French and Ferrante was an investigatory stop. To justify the stop, the officers required "specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts," give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal or quasi-criminal activity. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 906 (1968). The reasonable suspicion required to justify an investigatory stop is lower than the probable cause required for an arrest. State v. Stovall, 170 N.J. 346, 356, 788 A.2d 746 (2002).
Recently, in State v. Rodriguez, 172 N.J. 117, 796 A.2d 857 (2002), the Supreme Court addressed whether the information provided by an anonymous tip, standing alone, may form a reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal or quasi-criminal activity. The Court held that typically some verification or corroboration of the anonymous tip must be obtained. Justice Veniero wrote:
Generally, "if a tip has a relatively low degree of reliability, more information will be required to establish the requisite quantum of suspicion than would be required if the tip were more reliable." [Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325,] 330, 110 S.Ct. [2412,] 2416, 110 L.Ed.2d [301,] 309 [1990]. Stated differently, courts have found no constitutional violation when there has been "independent corroboration by the police of significant aspects of the informer's predictions[.]" Id. at 332, 110 S.Ct. at 2417, 110 L.Ed.2d at 310. The analysis in any given case turns ultimately on the totality of the circumstances. Id. at 330, 110 S.Ct. at 2416, 110 L.Ed.2d at 309.
[Id. at 127-28, 796 A.2d 857.]
In Rodriguez, the Court found that the police decision to escort defendant to the patrol office at a bus terminal based on nothing more than that he fit the description provided by an anonymous caller was not justified by a reasonable articulable suspicion of criminality. Id. at 131, 796 A.2d 857.
We reach a similar conclusion in this case. Here, defendant was stopped for no other reason than he was driving northbound on Route 206 in a blue pick-up truck. Neither officer observed any action by defendant which would confirm that he was operating the vehicle erratically.
The State urges that the tip received in this case is particularly reliable because it was given by a citizen rather than a confidential informant who might be engaged in criminal activity. In support of its argument, the State relies on State v. Lakomy, 126 N.J.Super. 430, 315 A.2d 46 (App.Div. 1974). There, a named citizen informer called the police to report that an armed person was on the premises of a business. The informer met the police, led the police to the washroom and identified defendant as the armed man. Id. at 432, 315 A.2d 46. While this court acknowledged that some verification of an informant's disclosure of criminal activity and a demonstration of the informant's trustworthiness is necessary to establish the informant's credibility, id. at 434, 315 A.2d 46, the involvement by the citizen informer provided a measure of reliability to the uncorroborated tip. Id. at 436, 315 A.2d 46. This circumstance, coupled with the potential for violence due to the presence of a gun, justified the stop and frisk of defendant. Ibid.
Similarly, in Stovall, supra, 170 N.J. at 371, 788 A.2d 746, the Court found that information from an identified airline ticket agent conveyed to an experienced narcotics investigator provided reasonable articulable suspicion for the investigator to conduct an investigatory stop of an arriving passenger. Notably, in Stovall, the ticket agent raised concerns about the validity of the identification documents used by two passengers and the investigator at the airport...
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