State v. Moorman

• Decision Date: 25 January 1996
• Citation: 670 A.2d 81,286 N.J.Super. 648
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Sharon MOORMAN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

Page 648

286 N.J.Super. 648

670 A.2d 81

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Sharon MOORMAN, Defendant-Appellant.

Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division.

Submitted Nov. 13, 1995.

Decided Jan. 25, 1996.

Susan L. Reisner, Public Defender, for appellant (Thomas Menchin, Designated Counsel, of counsel and on the brief).

Edward F. Borden, Jr., Camden County Prosecutor, for respondent (Robin A. Hamett, Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief).

Before Judges PETRELLA, P.G. LEVY and EICHEN.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

PETRELLA, P.J.A.D.

A jury convicted defendant Sharon Moorman of second degree manslaughter, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(b), as a lesser included offense of a charge of first degree murder of her twenty-two-month-old daughter. The trial judge sentenced Moorman to ten years in prison, three years without parole eligibility. A $500 Victims of Crimes Compensation Board penalty was also assessed.

On appeal, filed nunc pro tunc, Moorman raises the following issues:

I. Highly prejudicial "other crimes" evidence was improperly admitted during the trial.

(A) The court erred in finding sufficient evidence that defendant was responsible for the prior offenses, assuming arguendo that there were prior offenses.

(B) The court erred in concluding that the probative value of the evidence outweighed its potential for prejudice.

II. There is no basis in the record for recognition of battered child syndrome, at least as defined by the State's expert, and he should not have been permitted to offer an opinion that the deceased was a battered child.

III. The sentence of ten years with a parole ineligibility of three years was excessive.

Predicated on the proofs presented during the trial, the jury could well have found the following facts. At about 8:00 a.m. on January 21, 1990, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) arrived at Moorman's residence at 1559 Norris Street in Camden. They observed a toddler, later identified as Labria Moorman, defendant's twenty-two-month-old daughter, lying face up on the living room floor. Her body was described as stiff, her skin cool and cyanotic. She was in cardiac arrest, neither breathing nor having any pulse. Attempts to resuscitate Labria both before and after her transportation to a nearby hospital were unavailing. At the hospital, Dr. Attawell concluded that she had been dead for a considerable length of time and that further attempts at resuscitation were futile.

Upon examination, the doctor noticed multiple bruises about Labria's torso, arms, abdomen, lower belly and chest, as well as a circular, non-healing ulcer on the top of her left foot. She also discovered scarring on Labria's left and right buttocks and on her left inner elbow and lower arm, as well as bruising from the base of her right thumb to her right shoulder. The bruising and scarring appeared to be of varying colorations. Chemical analysis of an incontinent stool found in Labria's diaper revealed blood in her feces, indicating an abnormality in the bowel causing blood to flow into it.

Dr. Attawell concluded that the trauma suffered by the infant was of suspicious origin and queried Moorman about Labria's condition. Moorman indicated that Labria had been suffering from a fever and cold symptoms during the five days before January 21, 1990. In response to the doctor's inquiry about any injury which might have caused the bruising and scarring, Moorman replied that two days earlier Labria had fallen down a flight of stairs, but "seemed okay" after the fall. Moorman also said that Labria had fallen down a flight of stairs about a month earlier and was treated at a different hospital. When the doctor informed Moorman that her daughter had died, she became upset.

The county medical examiner was advised of the doctor's suspicions. The police then went to the hospital to interview Moorman. Moorman, who was not then in custody or under arrest, told the officers that Labria had fallen down the stairs in their home on January 18, but was not taken to the hospital because she did not appear to require medical attention. She also told the police that Labria had fallen down the stairs two or three weeks earlier and was admitted to an emergency room for examination and treatment.

Moorman told the police that she and her live-in boyfriend, Rodney Rogers, had had a heated argument on January 20 about his leaving her residence to socialize later that night. After Rogers left, she fell asleep on the sofa with Labria next to her. Moorman indicated that when she awoke, Labria was not on the sofa but lying on the floor. Although Labria was cold, Moorman said she thought the child had a faint heartbeat. Consequently, she ran to a neighbor's home to telephone the police, which resulted in the EMTs' arrival.

The Assistant County Medical Examiner, Dr. Robert L. Catherman, performed an autopsy on January 21, 1990. Photographs were taken during the autopsy. The examination revealed that blunt force had caused the sheering of the mesentery of Labria's bowel, resulting in a lack of blood flow to the bowel and the eventual failure of the heart. The police were told that the type of injuries that were observed in the autopsy could not have occurred by a fall down stairs.

A follow-up interview was conducted on January 22 with Moorman after she was advised of her Miranda ¹ rights. Moorman indicated that she understood each of her rights, and signed the back of a card from which a police officer had read those rights to her. The officer then dated the card and entered the time as 2:30 p.m. When the officer informed Moorman that Labria's death had been ruled a homicide, Moorman cried and repeated that Labria had twice fallen down the stairs. Moorman also described an incident in which she had picked up Labria by the waist and had shaken her after she had disobeyed an instruction not to leave the sofa because a nearby table had been sprayed with furniture polish. Moorman became upset and spontaneously told the officers that she had neither intended to hurt Labria nor wanted her to die.

Moorman agreed to give the police a tape-recorded statement of what she had just told them, and the police again advised her of her Miranda rights. She repeated her understanding of those rights and gave a recorded statement consistent with her unrecorded statement. Moorman was then charged with and arrested for murder. The statement, as well as the autopsy photographs (converted into slides), were admitted into evidence at trial. ²

The trial judge held a Rule 104 hearing on the State's request to allow its medical expert to render an opinion as to whether Labria had suffered from the "battered child syndrome" in order to support the admission, as prior acts evidence under N.J.R.E. 404(b), of Moorman's prior abuse of the child. This testimony was allowed. Although the judge conceded that the slides were unsightly, he determined that any explanation of Labria's injuries would be incomplete without relevant pictorial aids. The judge had asked the jurors during voir dire whether they could look at graphic medical photographs without being inflamed, with those responding negatively being excused.

At the hearing, after a thorough voir dire, the court recognized the assistant county medical examiner as an expert in the Battered Child Syndrome (BCS). ³ The doctor stated that BCS, which referred to the physical, mechanical abuse of children, had gained acceptance in the medical community over the past two or three decades, noting that the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the National Association of Medical Examiners have both recognized BCS. The doctor described the "classic" case of BCS as one in which the victim exhibits multiple injuries of varying ages to the head or abdomen. ⁴

Dr. Catherman's testimony before the jury essentially tracked that at the voir dire hearing. He reviewed the various autopsy slides, which showed the extent of the injuries to Labria, including old and new bruises and scars. He explained that the non-healing ulcer on Labria's left foot was a traumatic-type injury. He further attributed the creation of five separate abdominal bruises to blunt force. Likewise, Dr. Catherman diagnosed scarring across both of Labria's buttocks as caused by a healing traumatic injury, rather than diaper rash. The doctor also noted that the interior of the abdominal walls was bruised. The slide of the interior of Labria's chest and abdomen showed where some sixteen inches of mesentery was stripped from the bowel due to the force of a fairly substantial trauma, and how blood had found its way into the child's stool through the tear.

As a result of his autopsy on Labria, Dr. Catherman opined that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the cause of the child's death was multiple injuries to her abdomen, and the manner of death was homicide. Dr. Catherman concluded that blunt force trauma had caused the abdominal injuries to Labria, which tore mesentery from her bowel and started internal bleeding that led to her death. The doctor testified that Labria's abdominal injuries, when viewed in the context of her other injuries and in light of his experience and training, were indicative of BCS. He rejected the hypothesis that the injuries could have been caused by a fall down stairs. He said that, in his more than twenty years of experience, the overwhelming majority of abdominal injuries suffered by children had resulted from abuse, not accidents.

The judge instructed the jury that it could only use the expert testimony of prior injuries as evidence that Labria's death was not caused by a fall down stairs, and not as evidence of any predisposition by Moorman to commit the crime. The judge advised the jury that it was not bound to accept the doctor's testimony as credible evidence as to whether or not Labria's death was accidental. The judge cautioned the jury that even if it concluded that Labria was a...