The New Jersey Supreme Court vacated the defendant’s convictions, finding that the trial court erred when it denied her suppression motion. Defendant waived her Miranda rights and agreed to an interview with the police after their discovery that a child, whom the defendant babysat, had unexplained injuries. During the interview, before the defendant made any incriminating statements, a detective said that if the defendant lied, “[t]he situation is going to get worse.” The defendant then asked, “But now what do I do about an attorney and everything?” The detective responded, “That is your decision. I can’t give you an opinion about anything,” and added that the defendant would “have a better option by telling the truth.” The defendant then confessed to shaking, swinging, hitting, suffocating, and throwing the one-year-old. The defendant moved to suppress her statements, arguing that she invoked her right to counsel. The trial court denied the motion, and a jury found the defendant guilty of child abuse charges. The Appellate Division affirmed, and the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed and vacated the convictions. The Court ruled that the defendant’s question about the attorney was an ambiguous invocation of her right to counsel. Therefore, the detective was required to stop questioning and clarify whether the defendant requested counsel during the interview. And because the State played the defendant’s recorded statement at trial and read the defendant’s apology note — written at the detective’s suggestion — to the jury, the error in failing to suppress that evidence was harmful. Furthermore, the trial court’s admission of the State’s expert witness’s testimony was plain error because the expert based her testimony on inadmissible evidence.
