State v. Taylor

1

STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. BRYANT D. TAYLOR, a/k/a BRYAN D. TAYLOR, BRYAN M. TAYLOR, RONALD TAYLOR, BRYON TAYLOR, DWAYNE BRYANT, and DUANE TAYLOR, Defendant-Appellant.

No. A-1122-21

Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division

March 19, 2024

This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court ." Although it is posted on the internet this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited. R. 1:36-3.

Argued January 9, 2024

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division Burlington County, Indictment No. 19-081129.

Tamar Yael Lerer, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender attorney; Tamar Yael Lerer, of counsel and on the brief).

Alexis R. Agre, Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for respondent (LaChia L. Bradshaw, Burlington County Prosecutor attorney; Alexis R. Agre, of counsel and on the brief).

Appellant filed a pro se supplemental brief.

Before Judges Sumners and Perez Friscia.

PER CURIAM

After a jury trial, defendant Bryant Taylor appeals from his convictions for causing the drug-induced death of Shane Cullens, controlled dangerous substance (CDS) offenses, and witness tampering. Defendant challenges the Law Division's denial of his motions to suppress, admission and denial of certain evidence at trial, denial of new counsel, jury instructions, sentence imposed, and denial of his applications for acquittal and a new trial. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for the reasons expressed in this opinion.

I.

We discern the following facts from the record. On June 20 2017, Shane Cullens passed away from a heroin and fentanyl overdose. Cullens lived with his mother and stepfather in Browns Mills and had struggled with drug addiction. At the time of his passing, he had a young son and was expecting a child with his girlfriend.

On June 17, Cullens had contacted his friend Robert Piersanti, who had previously resided with Cullens and considered him to be like a brother, to join him in using heroin. Heavily addicted to heroin himself, Piersanti testified at trial that he agreed to Cullens's offer to pay, despite his belief that Cullens had stopped using drugs. They had used drugs together many times.

Piersanti contacted defendant, an "acquaintance" he knew as "B Rup," to purchase heroin. Cullens and Piersanti drove to defendant's home in Pemberton. After waiting for defendant, he arrived and Cullens purchased six packets of heroin from him for $40. The packets were stamped with a skull and "black writing." Piersanti had "never seen" the marking "prior to that or after." Cullens kept four packets and gave Piersanti two. They declined defendant's offer to sell them methamphetamine ("meth").

While parked in defendant's driveway, Cullens used heroin. He then pretended to suffer an overdose before laughing and telling Piersanti he "got [him]. "They went to Piersanti's house so he could change clothes before meeting with friends. While home, Piersanti used heroin, became "pretty high[,] and [took] awhile "to leave. On their way, Cullens and Piersanti stopped at a Dollar Tree. Piersanti testified Cullens left the store first, and when he got to car, Cullens was there motionless. He initially thought Cullens was joking again, but noticed he had blue lips, was foaming from his mouth, and appeared not to be breathing. Piersanti feared Cullens had overdosed. He lowered Cullens's car seat and performed CPR, which he said took "forever, like at least a half hour or so," before Cullens regained consciousness.

Piersanti drove Cullens home, where they stayed until Cullens felt well enough to drive home. Piersanti did not call 9-1-1 or take Cullens to the hospital, as Cullens asked Piersanti not to tell anyone about his overdose.

The next day, Cullens contacted Piersanti for defendant's phone number. He allegedly had a friend looking to buy "ice," a street name for meth. Piersanti testified he initially refused to give Cullens the number because he thought Cullens was lying and wanted more heroin. However, persuaded Cullens was telling the truth, Piersanti ultimately gave him defendant's number.

According to his mother, Cullens left home around 3:00 p.m. Video surveillance showed him entering the Pemberton Wawa at approximately 4:24 p.m. Ten minutes later, Pemberton Township Police Officers Perry Doyle and John Hall responded to a call about a man, later identified as Cullens, lying unconscious in the bathroom. Cullens was found with a pulse and breathing. Doyle testified he observed what looked like needle marks on Cullens's arm, but he "didn't have any idea" what was wrong. Cullens had no drug paraphernalia or identification on his person, but he had a car key fob.

Doyle located and unlocked Cullens's Nissan Rogue with the fob. After entering the vehicle looking for identification, Doyle found Cullens's driver's license. Next to the license, Doyle observed a hypodermic needle and an unused "heroin packet" stamped in black and red with the word "Overtime" and a picture of a skull and crossbones. He had never seen that stamp on a drug packet. Doyle ran into the Wawa to advise Hall and the emergency medical personnel he had found CDS. The medics administered the drug Narcan to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

Hall secured the needle and packet. The police marked the needle for destruction and did not further examine it. A chemist at the Burlington County Forensic Science Laboratory testified that the contents of the packet contained heroin mixed with fentanyl. Piersanti confirmed the packet in the vehicle was similar to those purchased from defendant the day before.

An ambulance transported Cullens to the hospital, where he was stabilized and then transferred to a critical care facility. At the hospital, Cullens's mother and stepfather retrieved his personal belongings and gave Doyle Cullens's cell phone. They also gave the police four triangular pills, later identified as 150 milligrams of Trazodone,^[1] found in Cullens's wallet.

Cullens passed away on June 20. Medical examiner Dr. Ian Hood testified blood samples taken from Cullens less than an hour after he was found at the Wawa contained heroin and fentanyl. Dr. Hood opined Cullens's cause of death was an anoxic brain injury caused by a heroin overdose. Further, the blood levels of morphine and fentanyl would not be considered high if taken for therapeutic, medical purposes, but Cullens had no reason for the CDS in his system. At trial, Kristopher Graf of NMS Labs also confirmed that the blood samples sent to the toxicology lab contained heroin and fentanyl.

Burlington County Prosecutor's Office detectives extracted from Cullens's cell phone the text conversation between Piersanti and Cullens regarding defendant's phone number. The day of Cullens's overdose, he had texted and called defendant, as well as other people, seeking drugs. Defendant and Cullens exchanged calls from 3:50 p.m. to 4:17 p.m. The last call was seven minutes before Cullens entered the Wawa.

FBI Special Agent John Hauger testified as an expert for the State on cellular tracking and positioning. He analyzed Cullens and defendant's location phone data, explaining his analysis revealed "the general geographic area" the phone was in and not "the exact spot." He also explained location data of this type is generated when a user makes a call or sends a text, and that "if there is a gap in time" between such activity, "we don't know where the phone is." However, he relayed it was possible to narrow down a phone's location to a specific tower sector. In his expert opinion, based on the data collected, on the evening of June 17, Cullens's phone was located within the same tower sector as defendant's home. On June 18, Cullens was again located in the same sector as defendant's home when he made his final call to defendant.

Defendant's expert Gerald R. Grant, Jr., a digital forensics investigator, testified to conducting his own analysis of the cell phone location information. Cullens's phone pinged multiple cell towers in Pemberton near defendant's home on June 18, including one it had also pinged on June 16 when Cullens texted someone in his contact list called "Sos" stating, "Yo, I'm out front." On crossexamination, Grant stated his cellular plotting of the towers revealed the same June 18 location as Hauger analyzed. He stated the "best conclusion" one could reach was that the phone "was within the coverage of" a given sector, and he "couldn't say where it was within that sector."

About seven months after Cullen's died, Detective Danielle Hann interviewed defendant about the death. Defendant recalled spending time with Piersanti and "another guy" at his house on June 17. This was the only portion of defendant's statement played for the jury at trial.

At trial, defendant testified he was friends with Piersanti, and they frequently spent time together. He also acknowledged "call[s] back and forth "with Cullens on June 18, but denied ever selling Cullens or Piersanti CDS. On cross-examination, he admitted to several past criminal convictions.

Piersanti testified defendant's acquaintance contacted him in June 2019 through Facebook under the name "BigRich Sosa." At the time, defendant was detained and awaiting trial. He wanted Piersanti to sign an affidavit that his previous statements to the police implicating defendant were made "under duress."

The following month, while incarcerated, defendant asked Lieutenant Enrique Hernandez to print a document from a shared USB flash drive he used to save and print files. Hernandez testified he printed the document for defendant and saw it was titled...