State v. Szemple
| Decision Date | 23 June 2021 |
| Docket Number | 084182,A-70 September Term 2019 |
| Citation | 247 N.J. 82,252 A.3d 1029 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Craig SZEMPLE, Defendant-Respondent. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
John McNamara, Jr., Chief Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for appellant (Robert J. Carroll, Acting Morris County Prosecutor, attorney; John McNamara, Jr., on the briefs).
Paul Casteleiro, argued the cause for respondent (Paul Casteleiro, Hoboken, on the briefs).
Paul H. Heinzel, Somerset County Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for amicus curiae County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey (Esther Suarez, President, County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey, attorney; Paul H. Heinzel, Trenton, of counsel and on the brief).
Carol M. Henderson, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae Attorney General of New Jersey (Gurbir S. Grewal, Attorney General, attorney; Carol M. Henderson, Trenton, of counsel and on the brief).
Hannah M. Thibideau, of the New York bar, admitted pro hac vice, argued the cause for amici curiae the Innocence Project and the Exoneration Initiative (Donald Yannella and Schulte Roth & Zabel, attorneys; Donald Yannella, Hannah M. Thibideau, Gary Stein, Hackensack, of the New York bar, admitted pro hac vice, and Amanda B. Barkin, of the New York bar, admitted pro hac vice, on the brief).
Nicholas Mirov disappeared in 1975. Four months after his disappearance, police discovered a body in the woods. Police did not identify the body until 1991, after defendant's brother, when questioned about a separate homicide, revealed that defendant Craig Szemple had admitted to killing Mirov.
Defendant was charged in 1991 with the first-degree murder of Mirov. At his first trial in 1992, after the State rested, Michael Boyle (Michael), defendant's then father-in-law, produced a letter (the Boyle letter or the letter) believed to be written by defendant to his then-wife, Theresa Boyle Szemple (Theresa), admitting to Mirov's murder. Michael gave the letter to the prosecutor, who turned it over to the court and defendant. The trial judge admitted the Boyle letter into evidence over defendant's objection. The trial ended in a mistrial but, following a retrial, the jury convicted defendant of first-degree murder, and the court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment.
In 2018, forty-three years after Mirov's murder and nearly twenty-five years after defendant's conviction, defendant moved to compel the State to produce any statements or reports memorializing interviews with Theresa following her father's production of the letter. In doing so, defendant claimed the discovery sought might support a motion for a new trial.
The motion court characterized defendant's request as "a second petition for post-conviction relief" and therefore barred by Rule 3:22-4. The Appellate Division reversed, concluding that the State's obligation to produce discovery continued post-conviction under Rule 3:13-3(b)(1)(F) and (G) and the constitutional requirement to disclose exculpatory evidence under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963).
In this appeal, we are called upon to determine whether the State can be compelled to search its file to determine the existence of information in this post-conviction context. Because defendant was aware of the Boyle letter and the circumstances relevant to this appeal for nearly twenty-five years, yet provides no evidence -- and made almost no effort to uncover evidence -- that police interviewed Theresa after production of the letter, we find that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's post-conviction discovery request. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division requiring that the State comply with defendant's discovery request.
The trial, appellate, and PCR records reveal that Nicholas Mirov disappeared in 1975. Shortly after he went missing, defendant told members of Mirov's family that he had driven Mirov to a bus station so that Mirov could go to New York City. Four months after Mirov disappeared, police discovered a body in the woods, partially covered by a tarp. Police did not identify the body until sixteen years later, when defendant's brother, under questioning about a different homicide, revealed defendant's prior admission to killing Mirov.
A Morris County grand jury indicted defendant in 1991 for the first-degree murder of Mirov.1 During defendant's first trial, after the State rested its case, defendant's father-in-law, Michael, provided the State with the letter he claimed to have discovered in April 1991 while helping his daughter move out of the home she had shared with defendant until his arrest for a different murder in Warren County.2 The Boyle letter reads in part:
My first hit was an act of treachery, the ultimate deceit. 4 bullets in the back 1 in the neck and a broken promise made at the parting of the oncoming river. I never did tell his mother what happened to him. The second I pulled that trigger I became larger than death to all of my associates. CFS passed into a league as he left his "punk" former do or die buddies for bigger and better.
The State moved to reopen its case and present the Boyle letter, as well as an admission made by defendant while in jail to a Minister of Visitation.3 Defendant argued that the marital-communications privilege barred the Boyle letter and that the priest-penitent privilege barred his admission to the Minister of Visitation. The trial court rejected defendant's arguments and granted the State's motion to admit into evidence both admissions. Claiming unfair surprise, defendant then moved for mistrial, which the trial court denied.
"On interlocutory appeal, the Appellate Division reversed the trial court's denial of defendant's motion for a mistrial" but upheld the trial court's evidentiary rulings over a dissent. State v. Szemple, 135 N.J. 406, 411, 640 A.2d 817 (1994).4 Upon defendant's appeal as of right, we affirmed his conviction. Ibid.
At defendant's re-trial in 1994, the State admitted into evidence the Boyle letter, testimony by a handwriting expert that defendant authored the Boyle letter, the .32 caliber bullets found lodged in the victim's neck and the base of the tree where the victim's remains were found, and the testimony of defendant's brother that (a) his family kept a .32 caliber handgun in the family store where defendant worked, and (b) that defendant confessed to shooting the victim.5 The testimony of defendant's brother included that defendant -- during the middle of the summer in 1975, and without making specific reference to the victim -- asked him whether shooting someone twelve times would kill them or not, and whether covering a body with lime or a tarp would impact decomposition. Later that summer, defendant admitted to his brother that he had lured Mirov into the woods, shot him six times, reloaded, and shot again; that he had to kill the victim because he owed the victim too much money; and that if he, defendant's brother, did not watch his step, he would "take a ride like Nicky did."
The jury convicted defendant of first-degree murder, and he received a life sentence. The Appellate Division affirmed in 1997, and we denied certification. State v. Szemple, 151 N.J. 76, 697 A.2d 548 (1997).
After his unsuccessful direct appeal, defendant filed a pro se petition for post-conviction relief (PCR) in 1999, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and arguing that his trial counsel's loss of confidence in his innocence amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel. Defendant further argued that trial counsel failed to hire a handwriting expert and neglected to test for fingerprints or DNA on the Boyle letter. The PCR court denied defendant's petition without an evidentiary hearing, finding trial counsel was a highly experienced criminal attorney who chose to impeach the letter as a forgery and not seek expert opinions that may have implicated defendant; the Appellate Division affirmed, and this Court denied certification. State v. Szemple, 208 N.J. 369, 29 A.3d 742 (2011).
In 2016, nearly twenty-five years after disclosure of the Boyle letter and defendant's conviction, defendant's attorney wrote to the Morris County Prosecutor's office requesting copies of any statements or reports memorializing interviews with Theresa following Michael's production of the Boyle letter. The State responded that under State v. Marshall, 148 N.J. 89, 690 A.2d 1 (1997), defendant had no right to post-conviction discovery.
More than two years after the State's response, and twenty-seven years after disclosure of the Boyle letter, defendant filed what he titled "Notice of Motion to Compel Disclosure of Exculpatory Evidence Necessary for Defendant to File a Motion for a New Trial" in December 2018. Defendant claimed that good cause existed to compel the State to produce "any and all notes, reports, statements or other type of writings memorializing any interviews, talks, discussions, etc., with Theresa Boyle following the June 24, 1992 production of [the Boyle] letter ... through the conclusion of defendant's trial in July, 1994," because, in 1991, three years before defendant's re-trial, detectives interviewed Theresa regarding an unrelated investigation of a business defendant owned. Noting that the State had provided defendant with a redacted nine-page copy of Theresa's 1991 interview in post-indictment discovery, the court denied defendant's request.
Emphasizing the need for finality, the court viewed defendant's motion as "a second petition for post-conviction relief" and found that it was procedurally barred by Rule 3:22-4 because defendant could have raised the issue in his first PCR petition but neglected to do so. The court also acknowledged that defendant's motion could be construed as a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, which may be filed at any...
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