State v. Sugar

527 A.2d 1377, 108 N.J. 151, 1987 N.J. LEXIS 354
Supreme Court of New Jersey·Decided July 28, 1987·Published·Cited by 62 cases

Opinions

PER CURIAM.

This case has been before this court twice before. On this third appeal we hold that the trial court erred when it suppressed the evidence derived from a search of defendant’s property, a search that resulted in the discovery of the victim’s body.

I.

On July 10, 1979, Dr. Harry D. Sugar reported the disappearance of his wife, Joan Sugar. On July 31, 1979, Dr. Sugar signed a form consenting to a search of his house and ground by the Vineland police. The search proved fruitless. On August 0, 1979, while Dr. Sugar was in California, Vineland police officers returned to the property and unearthed a shallow grave with the body of Joan Sugar. The body was found under a picnic table close to the house.

The next day, August 7, 1979, Dr. Sugar was arrested as a material witness to her homicide. During questioning, Dr. Sugar requested advice of counsel. The conversations he had with his lawyers were held in private in a room at the police station. Using microphones concealed in the room, Lieutenant Michael Joseph Tirelli, Detective Joseph Leon Soracco, and [154] Lieutenant Guy Buscemi eavesdropped on and recorded Dr. Sugar’s conversation with his lawyer. Detective William Walters and Detective John Mazzeo also heard portions of the conversations. See State v. Sugar (Sugar I), 84 N.J. 1, 4-7 (1980); State v. Sugar (Sugar II), 100 N.J. 214, 220-24 (1985).

The Vineland police used the information that was overheard to obtain a search warrant of Dr. Sugar’s home. The search conducted in August 1979 uncovered additional evidence corroborating the information overheard and further incriminating Dr. Sugar in the homicide of his wife.

Later, an informant told Dr. Sugar’s attorney that his conversation with his client had been bugged. When this disclosure was confirmed, the Attorney General removed the Vineland Police Department and the Cumberland Prosecutor’s Office from the case and assumed the investigation and prosecution directly. Appreciating that the surreptitious eavesdropping placed the prosecution in jeopardy, the Attorney General went ahead with the investigation, attempting to rely only on persons and evidence untainted by the illegal surveillance.

Dr. Sugar moved for dismissal of the charges against him on the ground that his constitutional rights had been violated. The trial court granted the motion. This Court reversed. We agreed that defendant’s constitutional rights had been violated but concluded that dismissal of the criminal charges was not mandated. Despite the egregious violations of constitutional guarantees involved in the police’s conduct,1 the Court ruled that if the prosecution was “carefully purged of all taint from [155] investigatory excess,” it could continue. Sugar I, supra, 84 N.J at 15. It further held that since the statements overheard did not “amount[ ] to a disclosure of trial strategy,” the prosecution would not violate Dr. Sugar’s Sixth Amendment rights. Id. at 22. The Court also noted that careful use of voir dire could eliminate the dangers of prejudicial publicity. Id. at 23. To redress the constitutional violations and to remedy the prosecution’s misdeeds the Court ordered that tainted witnesses and evidence would be excluded from the grand jury and at trial. Sugar I, 84 N.J. at 25-26.

The State was able to present the case to the grand jury, gain an indictment, and eventually secure a conviction of Sugar. On appeal, this Court reversed the conviction. We held that the trial court had erred in allowing Detective Mazzeo to be a witness for the State because he participated in and was tainted by the eavesdropping. Excluding him from being a witness was minimally required as a remedy for the official misconduct; it was also required because the defendant would have been effectively precluded from exposing that witness’ bias. Sugar II, supra, 100 N.J. at 226-32. We also reversed the trial court’s decision to deny defendant’s motion to suppress the admission of the victim’s body as evidence. The trial court’s decision was based on a theory that the search that uncovered this evidence was impliedly consented to by the defendant. However, the evidence for the claim of implied consent came mostly from Mazzeo; because Mazzeo’s testimony was inadmissible, the trial court’s ruling on admitting the body and derivative forensic test results as evidence was no longer tenable. Id. at 233-35. We left open the possibility that even if the search that uncovered the body was illegal, the body could be admitted into evidence under the “inevitable discovery” doctrine. Id. at 235-40.

On remand, the trial court held that the State had not produced sufficient competent, admissible evidence that Dr. Sugar had consented unequivocally, intelligently, and voluntarily to the search of his home on August 6. The trial court [156] further held that the State had not met its burden in proving that the body would inevitably have been discovered. Based on those conclusions, the trial court denied use of the victim’s body as evidence. The Appellate Division summarily affirmed the trial court’s decision. We reverse. We hold that the State has met its burden in showing that the victim’s body inevitably would have been discovered. Because we rule that the trial court should have admitted the body as evidence under the inevitable discovery doctrine, we do not reach the State’s contention, accepted by the concurring opinion, that the trial court should have admitted that evidence under a theory of implied consent to the search. We have strong reservations that the search conducted on August 6, 1979, which actually led to the discovery of the body, can be sustained under all of the circumstances as a consensual search. As pointed out in Sugar II, consent to a warrantless search not otherwise supported by probable cause or other clear exceptions to the warrant requirement must be shown to be unequivocal, voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. 100 N.J. at 233-35.

II.

The inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule was first elaborated in Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984). Evidence is admissible even though it was the product of an illegal search, “when ... the evidence in question would inevitably have been discovered without reference to the police error or misconduct, [for] there is no nexus sufficient to provide a taint.” Id. at 448, 104 S.Ct. at 2511, 81 L.Ed.2d at 390. The Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution had to prove inevitable discovery by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. at 444, 104 S.Ct. at 2509, 81 L.Ed.2d at 387.

In Sugar II, we adopted a restrictive formulation of the inevitable discovery doctrine:

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State v. Sugar, 527 A.2d 1377, 108 N.J. 151, 1987 N.J. LEXIS 354 (N.J. 1987).

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