STATE OF NEW JERSEY VS. ANTOINE WILLIAMS (18-02-0353 AND 18-02-0354, MIDDLESEX COUNTY AND STATEWIDE)

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE
APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION
SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY
APPELLATE DIVISION
DOCKET NO. A-5648-18T4
STATE OF NEW JERSEY,
APPROVED FOR PUBLICATION
Plaintiff-Respondent,
December 2, 2019
v. APPELLATE DIVISION
ANTOINE WILLIAMS,
Defendant-Appellant.
_________________________
Argued October 29, 2019 – Decided December 2, 2019
Before Judges Fisher, Gilson and Rose.
On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey,
Law Division, Middlesex County, Indictment Nos. 18-
02-0353 and 18-02-0354.
Joseph M. Mazraani argued the cause for appellant
(Mazraani & Liguori LLP, attorneys; Joseph M.
Mazraani, of counsel; Jeffrey S. Farmer, of counsel
and on the briefs).
David Michael Liston, Special Deputy Attorney
General/Acting Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause
for respondent (Christopher L.C. Kuberiet, Acting
Middlesex County Prosecutor, attorney; Joie D.
Piderit, Special Deputy Attorney General/Acting
Assistant Prosecutor, on the brief).
The opinion of the court was delivered by
FISHER, P.J.A.D.
Defendant was indicted for attempted murder and weapons offenses on
February 23, 2018. He has been incarcerated since December 1, 2017. Under
the Criminal Justice Reform Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:162-15 to -26, an incarcerated
defendant is entitled to a speedy trial within a set period of time "not counting
excludable time for reasonable delays." N.J.S.A. 2A:162-22(a)(2)(a). What
constitutes excludable time is circumscribed by N.J.S.A. 2A:162-22(b) and
Rule 3:25-4. We granted defendant's motion for leave to appeal to examine
interlocutory orders that declared both the amount of excludable time
warranted by certain pretrial motions and, of greater interest here, the range of
dates during which that excludable time applied. Because the motion judge
ran the excludable time periods back to back, and not in accordance with the
unambiguous declarations in the Act and applicable court rule, we reverse and
remand.
In particular, we examine orders granting excludable time arising from
two pretrial motions, one filed by co-defendant Pinson and the other by the
State. Pinson's suppression motion was filed on September 5, 2018, and
decided on May 14, 2019,1 while the State's joinder motion was filed on
1
By way of another opinion also filed today, we reverse an order granting the
suppression motion. See State v. Pinson, __ N.J. Super. __ (App. Div. 2019).
A-5648-18T4
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November 16, 2018, and decided on February 26, 2019. As these filing and
disposition dates reveal, the motions overlapped; for a time – from November
16, 2018, to February 26, 2019 – both motions were pending simultaneously.
On January 9, 2019, the trial judge entered two orders. In one order, the
judge allowed sixty days – from November 9, 2018, to January 7, 2019 – as
excludable time for the State's joinder motion. In the other, the judge found
forty-four days – from January 8, 2019, to February 20, 2019 – as excludable
time for the suppression motion. By way of a later order, the judge allowed an
additional forty-five days – from February 27, 2019, to April 12, 2019 – as
additional excludable time for the suppression motion. In short, rather than
declare that the excludable time periods commenced on each motion's filing
date, the judge applied those periods in installments, not starting one until the
other was completed.
Defendant's quarrel with these orders is not with the amount of time
found excludable, but with the judge's stacking of the excludable time by
disregarding that the motions were, for a while, pending at the same time.
Stated another way, defendant argues that the statutory and rule-based fixing
of excludable time for an eligible pretrial motion commences when the motion
is "fil[ed]," as both N.J.S.A. 2A:162-22(b)(1)(c) and Rule 3:25-4(i)(3) declare.
See also State v. Forchion, 451 N.J. Super. 474, 479 (App. Div. 2017).
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Defendant argues that these authorities do not allow for a reservation of
excludable time that would have already run – but simultaneously with other
excludable time – for a later date in order to extend a defendant's time in jail.
We agree with defendant. There is a dearth of case law on this subject,
but that may only be because N.J.S.A. 2A:162-22(b)(1)(c) and Rule 3:25-
4(i)(3) unambiguously command that the excludable time begins to run with
the eligible pretrial motion's "filing" date. There can be no doubt about
defendant's entitlement to relief from the orders under review; the filing of
multiple, overlapping motions does not provide a trial court with the discretion
to stack excludable time periods so as to prolong the time within which a
defendant must be tried or released. See United States v. Rodriguez, 63 F.3d
1159, 1165 n.3 (1st Cir. 1995).
So, it is not surprising the State offers no contrary analysis of the
applicable statutes and rules. Instead, the State contends that the judge
declared this matter as a "complex" case, as if that designation absolves all
error about excludable time. To be sure, on September 25, 2018, the judge
entered an order that declared a period of excludable time from July 28, 2018
through November 8, 2018, based on a finding that "the case is a complex
case." The State interprets this to mean that the purported complexity
"obviates" all other excludable time issues and that whatever the judge did
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with the excludable time periods here in question "is immaterial." While we
have not been asked to consider the judge's recognition of the case as complex
in her September 25, 2018 order, it doesn't matter. The judge then found that
the matter's complexity justified a finding of excludable time only from July
28, 2018 through November 8, 2018. That determination has no bearing on the
fixing of excludable time for the suppression or joinder motions even if the
approximate last two months of the excludable time generated by the alleged
complexity overlapped with the approximate first two months of the
excludable time warranted by the suppression motion. 2
In short, the applicable statute and rule make clear that the State does not
get to bank an extra day of excludable time for every day of excludable time
generated by multiple excludable events. If there are two reasons to exclude a
given day from the period of time within which a defendant must be brought to
trial or released, the trial court did not have the authority to provide the State
with an extra day of excludable time at a later time.
***
2
In the graph appended, we compare the judge's stacking of the excludable
time periods with the way these excludable time periods should have been
sequenced. As can be seen, the judge's error mistakenly allowed the
prosecution eighty-two more days of excludable time than permissible.
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The orders that declared the excludable time for the suppression motion
commenced on any date other than its filing date – September 5, 2018 – are
reversed. We remand for the entry of an order fixing that filing date as the
start date of the excludable time for the suppression motion. We do not retain
jurisdiction.
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July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr.
2018 2018 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019 2019 2019
Suppression Order
Excludable Complex Order 44 days
Time per 104 days
7/28 11/8 11/9 1/7 1/8 2/20 2/27 4/12
Trial Judge's Joinder Order Suppression Order
Orders 60 days 45 days
253 days
Complex Order
Excludable 104 days
7/28 11/8
Time as Trial Suppression Order
Judge Should 89 days
Have Ordered 9/5 12/2
Joinder Order
60 days
11/16 1/14
171 days
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