State v. Rose
| Decision Date | 22 September 1988 |
| Citation | 548 A.2d 1058,112 N.J. 454 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Teddy ROSE, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
Matthew Astore, Deputy Public Defender, II, and Patricia A. Kern, Designated Counsel, East Orange, for defendant-appellant (Alfred A. Slocum, Public Defender, attorney).
Hilary L. Brunell, Asst. Prosecutor, for plaintiff-respondent (Herbert H. Tate, Jr., Essex County Prosecutor, attorney; Hilary L. Brunell, Elizabeth A. Duelly, Marc J. Friedman, Frederick Gerson, Virginia M. Lincoln, Donald J. Sears, Asst. Essex County Prosecutors, on the brief).
Leslie Faye Schwartz, Deputy Atty. Gen., for amicus curiae, Atty. Gen. (W. Cary Edwards, Atty. Gen. of N.J., attorney).
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
Defendant, Teddy Rose, was tried by an Essex County jury for the murder of Irvington police officer Anthony Garaffa. He was convicted and sentenced to death. He appeals directly to this Court as of right. R. 2:2-1(a)(3). We affirm his convictions for murder and for the related offenses.
The fairness of the sentencing proceeding in this case was marred by a series of prejudicial errors. These include the lack of a limiting instruction by the trial court concerning evidence of defendant's past conduct elicited by the State during cross- examination of defense witnesses, several instances of improper conduct by the Essex County Prosecutor, and the absence of any clarifying instructions to the jury concerning its function in weighing two aggravating factors, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(f) and (h), based on identical evidence. We therefore set aside the death sentence and remand the matter to the trial court for a new sentencing proceeding.
I.
This case involves the shocking and senseless killing of an Irvington police officer. The uncontested evidence adduced during the guilt phase of the trial demonstrated that on August 8, 1984, at approximately 11:45 p.m., defendant, Rose, shot and killed Irvington police officer Anthony Garaffa with a sawed-off shotgun.
Earlier that evening defendant had been out with a friend, returning to his home in Irvington shortly after 11:00 p.m. He was approached by two acquaintances, Gerry Cuccolo and Paul Palermo. They told Rose they planned to burglarize a pizza restaurant and asked to borrow some of Rose's tools. Rose loaned them the tools, but the testimony at trial was contradictory about Rose also agreeing to act as a lookout. Cuccolo and Palermo proceeded to the pizzeria; however, the burglary plan was aborted when Cuccolo was observed in the hallway leading to the pizza parlor. The two returned a pry bar to
Rose, and Palermo, with Rose's consent, retained possession of the other tools.
Rose returned from his car to the corner of Springfield Avenue and 40th Street with Palermo, carrying a white canvas bag over his shoulder. In the bag was a sawed-off shotgun he had purchased a few weeks earlier in Pennsylvania. They joined Cuccolo and two other young men, Michael O'Keefe and a person known as "Mark." It was then about 11:30 p.m.
Palermo and Mark departed, and Cuccolo, O'Keefe, and Rose started walking down 40th Street. Rose took the lead and Cuccolo followed about five to seven feet behind, with O'Keefe to his right. An Irvington police car passed by. Rose waved to the driver and told Cuccolo that he thought it was someone he knew. The patrol car passed Cuccolo, O'Keefe, and Rose and pulled up to the corner. The driver then backed up the patrol car, stopping abreast of Cuccolo, O'Keefe, and Rose who stood by the curb.
Irvington Police Officer Anthony Garaffa was driving the patrol car. After stopping the car beside Cuccolo, O'Keefe, and Rose, he got out and approached them. Officer Garaffa held a flashlight in his hand. He shined the flashlight on the white canvas bag still over Teddy Rose's shoulder and inquired about its contents. According to the testimony of Cuccolo and O'Keefe, Rose responded that the bag contained a "rocket." As he was responding to Officer Garaffa's question, he removed the bag from his shoulder and placed it on the ground. Officer Garaffa asked to see what was in the bag. At that point, Rose put his hand in the bag, raised it up, said "and this," held the bag to Officer Garaffa's stomach and fired the shotgun. Officer Garaffa was knocked five or six feet into the street, flat on his back.
Rose dropped the gun and fled. Cuccolo attempted to aid Officer Garaffa, then tried to summon help with the patrol car radio but received no response. Cuccolo left the scene in an effort to obtain assistance, and found Irvington Police Officer
Robert Williams who was in the vicinity investigating the aborted burglary of the pizza parlor. Officer Williams ran toward Officer Garaffa's patrol car. He found Officer Garaffa in the street behind the vehicle, semi-conscious and severely wounded. Officer Williams immediately radioed for assistance. Other police officers arrived at the scene. Garaffa's pulse was rapid and weak, and his breathing was labored. The police began supplying him with oxygen, and emergency medical technicians arrived. Before Officer Garaffa could be placed in an ambulance, he experienced cardiac arrest, and the medical technicians had to administer cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
In the ambulance Officer Garaffa regained consciousness and was able to breathe without assistance. He had severe pain in his legs and lower back and had to be restrained by a paramedic. He arrived at College Hospital in Newark at about 12:00 a.m. According to Doctor Thomas Corbyons, the head of the College Hospital Trauma Team, when Officer Garaffa arrived in the emergency room, he had "no blood pressure" and a low heart rate. Preliminarily, steps were taken to assist his breathing and restore his blood pressure and heart rate. He was then transferred to an operating room. Doctor Corbyons described his injury as "enormous." Approximately three-quarters of the aorta was "shot away," and the vena cava was lacerated over "almost its entire length." The wadding of the shotgun shell was imbedded in the spinal column. Despite the surgeon's efforts, Officer Garaffa's heart stopped beating during surgery, and the medical team was unable to resuscitate him. He was pronounced dead at 3:05 a.m.
In the meantime, defendant had driven to his aunt's house in Monmouth Junction. He told his aunt that he had shot a police officer in Irvington. From his aunt's house, he called Debby Wolfe, the woman he had been with earlier that evening, and told her that he had shot Officer Garaffa. Defendant and his aunt, Helen Pyne, drove to the Princeton Barracks of the New Jersey State Police between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. Defendant told Sergeant Gary Knight of the State Police that he had shot
a police officer in Irvington, and that he wished to confess in order to ease his conscience. Sergeant Knight contacted the Irvington Police Department to confirm that an Irvington police officer had in fact been shot, and that defendant was wanted in connection with the shooting. When Rose began to tell Sergeant Knight what had occurred, Knight interrupted to give him Miranda warnings. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Knight then administered Miranda warnings a second time to be certain the defendant understood his rights.
Sergeant Knight testified at the guilt phase about defendant's statement to him:
Q. What did he tell you happened?
A. He said that he had taken a gun out of the trunk of his car and bringing it into the house into where he lived and that he was confronted by a police officer. He had the gun in a sack and that when he was confronted by the police officer, the police officer had stated to him what was in the sack. He stated that he had a bottle rocket.
The police officer then asked him--the police officer then asked him to take the object out of the bag. At that time Mr. Rose stated to me that when he took the weapon out the sack--
Q. Did he tell you he reached into the sack?
A. Yes.
Q. All right.
A. He reached into the sack and when he pulled it out of the sack it apparently had cocked and when it came out of the sack the gun went off striking the police officer in [the] abdomen.
Defendant was sweating and nervous when he spoke to Sergeant Knight; he was "pale, ashen," and frightened. He expressed the hope that Officer Garaffa would recover.
Detective Eugene Czaplinski and two other officers from the Irvington Police Department arrived at the Princeton Barracks sometime after 2:00 a.m. Miranda warnings were administered, and Rose signed a waiver-of-rights form. Detective Czaplinski then interrogated defendant, recording both the questions and answers on a typed statement that defendant signed. In his statement defendant gave this account of the shooting:
[A]s I reached into the bag I cocked the shotgun by pulling back the hammer with my thumb. I just looked at him and I just fired the gun.
Rose told Officer Czaplinski that he knew the gun was loaded with a 12-gauge, 7 1/2 shot shell when he cocked and fired it. He stated that he shot Officer Garaffa because he "panicked, did not want to get caught."
The police officers took the defendant back to Irvington that night. After another Miranda warning, Rose gave a second written statement in which he made a positive identification of the shotgun, denied taking any drugs or alcohol before the shooting, and stated that he had received "very good" treatment by the police from the time he had turned himself in. This statement was completed and signed by the defendant at 6:34 a.m., August 9.
An Essex County grand jury indicted defendant for (1) the purposeful or knowing murder of Irvington Police Officer Anthony Garaffa; (2) possession of a sawed-off shotgun; (3) possession of a sawed-off shotgun with a purpose to use it unlawfully against the...
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