STATE OF NEW JERSEY v. KARIM T. SAMPSON

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-0

STATE OF NEW JERSEY,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

KARIM T. SAMPSON,

Defendant-Appellant.

_________________________________

July 20, 2015

Submitted May 20, 2015 Decided

Before Judges Ashrafi and Kennedy.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Mercer County, Indictment No. 09-03-0234.

Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (Jacqueline E. Turner, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, of counsel and on the brief).

Angelo J. Onofri, Acting Mercer County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (Dorothy Hersh, Special Deputy Attorney General/Acting Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief).

PER CURIAM

Defendant Karim Sampson appeals from his conviction by guilty plea following denial of his motion to suppress evidence, see R. 3:5-7(d), and also from his twelve-year sentence of imprisonment. We affirm.

Defendant was alleged to be member of the Sex Money Murder sect of the Bloods street gang. He and three others were indicted on a first-degree charge of conspiring to murder another member of the gang named Arrel Bell because Bell had implicated defendant in the commission of two armed robberies.1 Bell was found murdered on May 1, 2008, by two gunshots to the back of his head. The police investigation revealed that Bell had been in the company of defendant and other gang members shortly before he was shot. In addition, police reviewed the MySpace social networking pages of defendant and others, which tied them to Bell and confirmed their gang affiliation.

The police obtained the evidence that defendant sought to suppress through the execution of four successive warrants. Defendant does not challenge the sufficiency of probable cause for any of the warrants. Instead, he argues the seizure of his personal computer during the execution of the second warrant was beyond the scope of that warrant.

The police obtained the first warrant on May 20, 2008. It authorized defendant's arrest for an unrelated crime of receiving stolen property based on an earlier offense. During the execution of the arrest warrant at defendant's residence, the police saw a box protruding from under defendant's bed that contained two bullets and several shotgun shells. In this appeal, defendant does not challenge the first warrant or the police actions in executing it at his residence.

Using their observations in defendant's bedroom, the police obtained the second warrant on the same day authorizing a search of defendant's residence for evidence pertinent to Bell's murder. In the course of executing the second warrant, the police seized a personal computer from defendant's room as well as other items of potential evidential value in the murder investigation.

On May 28, 2008, the police obtained the third warrant, a communications data warrant for stored electronic information on the MySpace web pages of defendant and others implicated in the murder. Defendant does not challenge the third warrant.

On June 5, 2008, defendant and others were charged with conspiracy to murder Bell. In March 2009, a Mercer County grand jury indicted defendant and three others for first-degree conspiracy to murder Bell, N.J.S.A. 2C:5-2 and N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(a)(1), and fourth-degree conspiracy to retaliate against a witness, N.J.S.A. 2C:5-2 and N.J.S.A. 2C:28-5(b).

The search of the contents of defendant's personal computer did not occur until almost two years after it was seized in 2008, and that, too, was pursuant to a warrant. The fourth warrant in this case was issued on March 19, 2010, and permitted the police to review and seize information contained on the computer that was already in their possession.

Defendant and his co-defendants moved to suppress evidence seized pursuant to the search warrants, in particular, from defendant's computer. The trial court denied the motions by oral decision on February 28, 2012.

Subsequently, defendant entered into a plea agreement with the State and pleaded guilty to the first-degree conspiracy charge. On August 23, 2013, he was sentenced in accordance with the State's recommendation in the plea agreement to twelve years imprisonment, with eighty-five percent of the term to be served before parole eligibility and five years of special parole supervision pursuant to the No Early Release Act (NERA), N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.2.

On appeal, defendant argues

POINT I

THE TRIAL JUDGE ERRED IN DENYING THE DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS THE EVIDENCE AS THE COMPUTER SEIZED FROM MR. SAMPSON'S BEDROOM WAS BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THE SEARCH WARRANT. U.S. CONST. AMENDS. IV, XIV; N.J. CONST. ART. I, PARA 7.

POINT II

THE DEFENDANT'S SENTENCE IS EXCESSIVE.

Defendant contends the second search warrant did not authorize seizure of the computer, and thus the police's seizure and possession of the computer before they obtained the fourth search warrant violated his Fourth Amendment and State constitutional rights. We reject this contention for the reasons stated in the oral decision of Judge Thomas Sumners on February 28, 2012. We briefly add the following.

The second search warrant was issued for the purpose of obtaining evidence related to the murder of Bell. It listed items that could be seized from defendant's residence, but the list did not include the word "computer." Nevertheless, it included "other devices capable of storing images of video, photographs, video tapes, digital media storage devices . . . ." Also, the list ended with the general designation of "any other items evidential in nature."

In accordance with State v. Reldan, 100 N.J. 187, 196 & n.2 (1985), the seizure of defendant's computer was authorized by this language in the warrant. The description of the items that the police could seize was not so broad as to render the warrant an unconstitutional general warrant. See State v. Jones, 308 N.J. Super. 15, 33-34 (App. Div. 1998).

The police action in seizing the computer on the authority of the second search warrant was objectively reasonable conduct that did not violate defendant's Fourth Amendment or State constitutional right to privacy in his personal belongings. See State v. Maristany, 133 N.J. 299, 305 (1993); State v. Bruzzese, 94 N.J. 210, 221 (1983), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1030, 104 S. Ct. 1295, 79 L. Ed. 2d 695 (1984). In particular, as confirmed by the fourth search warrant for the contents of the computer, the police had probable cause to believe that the computer contained evidence related to the murder of Bell, and the second search warrant authorized them to seize such evidence from his residence.

With respect to defendant's challenge of his sentence, defendant was nineteen years old at the time of his 2008 arrest on the charges of this case. When he was sentenced in August 2013, his criminal record already included three prior indictable convictions. There was no error in the court's finding that aggravating factors three, six, and nine applied to the sentence, N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1(a)(3), (6), (9), as well as aggravating factor five, N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1(a)(5), based on his affiliation with the Bloods street gang.

Nor is there any merit in defendant's argument that the sentencing court disregarded mitigating factors that applied to the sentence pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1(b). As the court stated, only the limitations of the plea agreement prevented it from imposing a more severe sentence than twelve years imprisonment under NERA. There was no abuse of discretion in the imposition of the sentence recommended in the plea agreement. See State v. Roth, 95 N.J. 334, 364-65 (1984).

Affirmed.

1 Defendant had also made admissions implicating himself in the commission of the robberies.