State v. O'Neill

• Decision Date: 20 December 2007
• Docket Number: A-79 September Term 2006.
• Citation: 193 N.J. 148,936 A.2d 438
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Michael A. O'NEILL, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

936 A.2d 438

193 N.J. 148

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Michael A. O'NEILL, Defendant-Appellant.

A-79 September Term 2006.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued September 10, 2007.

Decided December 20, 2007.

Stephen W. Kirsch, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant

(Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney).

Deborah C. Bartolomey, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (Anne Milgram, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney; Ms. Bartolomey and Karen L. Fiorelli, Deputy Attorney General, on the briefs).

Justice ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court.

Forty years after Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), no rule of law is better understood by law enforcement officers than the duty to advise a suspect subject to custodial interrogation of his right to remain silent and his right to the assistance of counsel.¹ Indeed, the term "Miranda rights" is now so familiar that it is part of our popular vocabulary and culture. Significantly, Miranda's guiding principles inform New Jersey's privilege against self-incrimination.

In this case, two homicide detectives subjected defendant Michael A. O'Neill to a ninety-five minute interrogation while he was in official custody, eliciting from him incriminating statements that linked him to the killing of Luis Tenezaca, a taxi cab driver. Only then, for the first time, did the detectives advise defendant of his Miranda rights. Without any significant break, the detectives resumed the interrogation, questioning the nineteen-year-old defendant for nearly five more hours, taking two taped statements, which, singly and together, directly connected him to the shooting death of the cab driver.

At defendant's murder trial, the State only sought to admit defendant's statements made after the initial ninety-five minute unwarned interrogation. The trial court denied defendant's motion to suppress statements he made after receiving the Miranda warnings. The prosecution used defendant's own words — his statements to the detectives — to convict him of felony murder and related offenses. The Appellate Division upheld those convictions, finding that defendant knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his Miranda rights on the heels of the damning admissions elicited from him during the initial ninety-five minute unwarned interrogation.

Because of the unsettled state of federal law construing the two-stage interrogation technique under the Fifth Amendment, and because our state law against self-incrimination accords New Jersey's citizens broader protection than afforded under the Federal Constitution, we will decide this issue on state law grounds. We now conclude that the "question-first, warn-later" interrogation procedure in this case violated defendant's state law privilege against self-incrimination. That privilege was rendered illusory because the detectives exploited defendant's admissions from the initial unwarned questioning, undermining his ability to knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waive the Miranda rights later given to him. We therefore are compelled to suppress defendant's post-warning statements, reverse his convictions, and order a new trial.

I.

A.

The trial court conducted a pre-trial hearing to determine the admissibility of defendant's statements to Union City Police Detective Michelle Luster and Detective Robert Bava of the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office.² Detective Luster was the only witness to testify at that hearing.

Unwarned Statement

At the time of Tenezaca's killing in the early morning hours of April 26, 2003, Detective Luster was assigned to the Hudson County Prosecutor's Homicide Unit. On April 28, 2003, at approximately 3:10 p.m., she and Detective Bava arrived at the Harrison Police Department to question defendant O'Neill, who had been arrested on an outstanding warrant unrelated to the Tenezaca homicide. The two detectives had information that defendant possessed a handgun within the timeframe of that homicide.

Detectives Luster and Bava identified themselves to defendant, who was in a holding cell, and questioned him through the bars. Without informing defendant of his Miranda rights, they asked him to account for his whereabouts for the period between 11 p.m. on April 25 and 3 a.m. on April 26. Defendant responded that he had been babysitting for a friend, Jamie Noack, who lived in Harrison. When the detectives told him that they intended to verify that information, he recanted, stating that he had left the Noack house at approximately 11 p.m. and had walked around the neighborhood for the next two hours. Defendant denied that he had been in the area of the Solda Espana bar in Kearny where the victim had picked up his last fare. However, when the detectives displayed his photograph to him and asked whether anyone would place him in the bar once shown that photograph, defendant recanted again, admitting, "Well, yes, I did go there to meet a friend."

Based on those answers, twenty minutes into the interview, the detectives moved defendant from his cell to the patrol commander's office. There, the interrogation continued, and still no Miranda warnings were given. During the next hour and fifteen minutes, defendant told the detectives that, in fact, he had gone to the Solda Espana bar to purchase marijuana from a friend he knew only as "V". While at the bar, V, who was accompanied by a Hispanic male, directed defendant to take the next available cab to the intersection of Seeley and Columbia Avenues in Kearny. It was defendant's understanding that V and his friend planned to rob the cab driver after defendant lured him to the intersection. For his role, defendant expected to be paid in one of two currencies: money or marijuana.

Miranda Warnings

At that point, ninety-five minutes into the interrogation, at 4:45 p.m., the detectives gave defendant the Miranda warnings. Additionally, defendant read a standard Miranda form listing his rights and acknowledged receiving and waiving those rights by signing the form.³ Defendant then completed his account of the "planned robbery" of the cab driver. He explained that he caught a cab outside of the bar and directed the driver to take him to the intersection of Seeley and Columbia Avenues in Kearny. The driver, however, could not find the location.⁴ Defendant aborted the mission by advising the driver to stop and then exited the vehicle.

First Taped Statement

At approximately 5:20 p.m., at the detectives' request, defendant gave a taped statement. On the record, the detectives again advised defendant of his Miranda rights, and defendant agreed to talk. Detective Bava began the questioning by cueing him to his earlier unwarned interrogation: "Michael before we started this tape we spoke about this incident where the cab driver was shot is that correct?"

Defendant then recounted many of the same details he provided to the officers before being given the Miranda warnings. He repeated that he went to the bar looking for V, his marijuana supplier, and, once there, V told him to "take the next available cab" to the intersection of Seeley and Columbia in Kearny. As in his earlier unwarned statement, defendant admitted to having "a feeling [V] was gonna rob the guy." In return for his role, he expected payment of "four or five bags of weed" or "20, or 50 dollars whatever." As he did after receiving the Miranda warnings, defendant stated again that he abandoned the robbery scheme after the cab driver got lost, leaving the cab without paying the fare.

Defendant added that after the cab driver's shooting, "a big rumor was going around town that [he] had a pistol in [the Noack] house." He claimed that he had not "the slightest idea" how the rumor originated. Nonetheless, the rumor resulted in Mrs. Noack kicking him out of her home. The taped questioning lasted thirty minutes, concluding at 5:50 p.m.

Continued Off-Tape Questioning

During a ten-minute break, the detectives learned that a witness claiming to have seen defendant with a handgun was en route to headquarters. By 6 p.m., Detectives Luster and Bava returned to the commander's office and told defendant the news. Defendant then admitted that he had possessed and discarded a .40 caliber silver handgun that he had stolen a week earlier from a family friend in Virginia. He described throwing the weapon down a sewer at the intersection of Central and Davis Avenues in Harrison.

At 6:30 p.m., Detectives Luster and Bava transported defendant to the Hudson County Prosecutor's office in Jersey City. On the way, they stopped at the intersection where defendant had claimed to have disposed of the weapon. The handgun was never found. During that trip, the detectives advised defendant that they believed he was minimizing his involvement in the cab driver's death. Defendant responded by saying, "prove it."

At 6:45 p.m., defendant was placed in a holding cell in the prosecutor's office. Shortly afterwards, the two detectives learned that the Prosecutor's Homicide Unit had secured from the Noack family a bloodstained black jacket and a black glove, both reportedly worn by defendant.

At approximately 7:10 p.m., Detectives Luster and Bava confronted defendant, still in the holding cell, with the evidence. Defendant then confessed: "Okay, you got me. It was an accident and I'll tell you what happened." The officers next transferred defendant to an interview room, where he was questioned for an hour and a half before a second taped statement was taken. Defendant was not given Miranda warnings prior to that questioning.

Second Taped Statement

At 8:47 p.m., defendant gave a thirty-minute taped statement, covering the same ground plowed during the pre-tape interview. First, Detective Bava reminded defendant that his rights had been read to him earlier in the day. After acknowledging that he understood his rights, defendant provided an account of the events...