Law Lessons from STATE v. SLOTA, Appellate Division, A-42-05T5, October 11, 2006:
In State v. Finamore, 338 N.J. Super. 130 (App. Div. 2001), the Court emphasized the importance of a finding that a defendant intentionally violated a domestic violence FRO, particularly where the FRO is unclear in its prohibitions against contact between the parties.
The Domestic Violence Act affords critically needed protections in appropriate situations. It was not intended to attempt to regulate and adjudicate every loss of temper, angry word, or quarrel between persons connected by a familial relationship.” State v. Wilmouth, 302 N.J. Super. 20, 23 (App. Div. 1997).
In this case, the original FRO barred the defendant from contacting her husband and her son, “except as per parenting time and phone calls” to her son, and the amended FRO allowed her to have supervised visits with her son and “telephone contact”; the defendant was charged with harassment and violating the amended FRO because she repeatedly called her husband during a 50-minute period; the husband testified that the defendant had cursed him and had threatened to kill herself; the defendant testified that she had called to speak to her son, as authorized by the amended FRO, but that her husband would not let her do so; the trial court’s conclusion that it could not determine which witness was truthful “fatally” undermined the conviction; although it was not “a model of clarity,” the FRO “plainly contemplated” that the defendant would have to call her husband to speak to her son; if the defendant was trying to speak to her son, she was not intentionally violating the FRO; the trial court’s factual findings warranted, at most, an admonition to the defendant to seek court intervention if her husband would not let her speak to her son in the future.
Print This Post
NOTE: My legal and mediation services are offered to Polish-speaking and other clients in Union, Middlesex, Somerset, Essex, Hudson, Bergen, and Morris counties in NJ.
Technorati Tags: , and easy technorati tags for wordpress plugin
Leave a comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.