Title: State v. Breane Starr Blakney

State: new-jersey

Issuer: New Jersey Supreme Court

Document:

(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized). On September 14, 1999, S.B., a six-month old infant, was brought to Jersey City Medical Center for symptoms related to shaken-baby syndrome. S.B. died four days later. At trial, the State presented evidence of other serious but not life-threatening injuries suffered by S.B. at the hands of his nineteen-year old mother, Breane Starr Blakney. The jury convicted Blakney of murder, second-degree aggravated assault, fourth-degree child abuse, and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child. Blakney was sentenced to several concurrent terms of imprisonment, including thirty years without parole eligibility on the murder charge. The Appellate Division affirmed and remanded for resentencing on a merger issue. Judge Weissbard dissented, taking the position that the trial court s inadequate limiting instructions on other-crime evidence, when combined with the prosecutor s inappropriate and inflammatory remarks in summation, had the clear capacity to undermine confidence in the integrity of the murder conviction and therefore cause an unjust result. HELD : We agree with Judge Weissbard substantially for the reasons expressed in his dissenting opinion. We therefore reverse defendant s murder conviction and remand for a new trial on that charge. In addition, we underscore the importance of well-crafted limiting instructions when the State introduces other-crime evidence pursuant to N.J.R.E. 404(b), and remind prosecutors of their obligation to keep their summation remarks within acceptable bounds of advocacy. When dealing with other-crimes evidence, a court must precisely instruct the jury that the proper use of such evidence is to prove a relevant issue in dispute and not to impugn the character of the defendant. Such instructions should be given not only at the time that other-crimes evidence is presented, but also in the final jury charge. On the whole, the other-crimes limiting instructions in this case failed the test required by our jurisprudence and were susceptible to misleading the jury in a closely-poised case in which the jury could easily have concluded that defendant was guilty of aggravated manslaughter as opposed to murder. (Pp. 4-8) The assistant prosecutor s highly emotional and personalized remarks in summation crossed the bounds of propriety and compounded the prejudice flowing from the inadequate other-crimes limiting instructions. The assistant prosecutor s duty is to prove the State s case based on the evidence and not to play on the passions of the jury or trigger emotional flashpoints, deflecting attention from the hard facts on which the State s case must rise or fall. (Pp. 8-10) The inadequate jury instructions combined with the prosecutorial excesses in summation, when cast against the less than overwhelming evidence supporting a murder conviction, cannot be viewed as harmless. (Pp. 10-12) The judgment of the Appellate Division is REVERSED and the matter is REMANDED for a new trial on the charge of murder. CHIEF JUSTICE ZAZZALI and JUSTICES LONG, LaVECCHIA, WALLACE, RIVERA-SOTO, and HOENS join in JUSTICE ALBIN s opinion. SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY A- 117 September Term 2005 STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. BREANE STARR BLAKNEY, Defendant-Appellant. Argued November 14, 2006 Decided December 20, 2006 On appeal from the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Alyssa A. Aiello, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney). Robyn B. Mitchell, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (Stuart J. Rabner, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney). JUSTICE ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court. In this appeal from a murder conviction, defendant claims that the trial court s defective limiting instructions on other-crimes evidence when combined with inappropriate, emotionally-charged remarks by the assistant prosecutor in summation denied her a fair trial. We agree and therefore remand for a new trial on the charge of murder. [Id. at __ (slip op. at 7) (Weissbard, J., dissenting).] Those defects, along with others detailed by Judge Weissbard, rendered the limiting instructions less than effective and susceptible to misleading the jury in a closely-poised case in which the jury could easily have concluded that defendant was guilty of aggravated manslaughter as opposed to murder. Id. at __ (slip op. at 5-10) (Weissbard, J., dissenting). There were no witnesses or direct evidence to shed light on the precise circumstances that led defendant to inflict the fatal injury on her son or on her state of mind at that time. The defense posited that others who cared for S.B. may have caused that injury and that, in any event, S.B. s death was likely caused by an act of recklessness. A statement that defendant gave to the police, however, suggested that she might have taken out her frustration and anger with her father, boyfriend, and work situation on S.B. Even if defendant acted out of frustration and anger in causing the death of her son, that still would not have answered whether she purposely or recklessly killed him. Whether defendant purposely or knowingly caused serious bodily injury resulting in death (murder) or recklessly caused death under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life (aggravated manslaughter) depended in large part on circumstantial evidence. That evidence mostly consisted of the injuries that S.B. had suffered earlier during his young life - the other-crimes evidence that the State offered to prove defendant s intent and absence of mistake and accident in committing the offense. For that reason, proper instructions on other-crimes evidence were essential to a fair determination of the murder charge in the cool light of reason. I m done. I could probably go on for, go on to lunch, maybe longer, but I can t look at these photos anymore. I just can t. The assistant prosecutor s personal feelings of outrage and revulsion were not relevant to the consideration of any issue in the case and were unnecessarily inflammatory. The assistant prosecutor also wrongly suggested that defendant should be condemned solely on the basis of her status as a mother who inflicted terrible injuries on her young son. He declaimed: Why the hell would you do that to a child? Why? Because you re frustrated? Because you don t want to be a mother anymore? I mean, what is most repulsive about this case is that we are confronted with the notion that a mother can do this to her child. We are repulsed by that. Motherhood, a more noble avocation you can t find. Those remarks in no way advanced a fair determination of the most serious charge before the jury -- whether defendant purposely or knowingly (as opposed to recklessly) caused serious bodily injury resulting in death. See footnote 2 We have often noted that [t]he primary duty of a prosecutor is not to obtain convictions, but to see that justice is done. State v. Ramseur, 106 N.J. 123, 320 (1987). We recognize that a trial is not a tidy affair and that emotions may run high, particularly in a trial involving the death of a child. State v. Bucanis, 26 N.J. 45, 56-57, cert. denied, 357 U.S. 910, 78 S. Ct. 1157, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1160 (1958). That being said, the assistant prosecutor s duty is to prove the State s case based on the evidence and not to play on the passions of the jury or trigger emotional flashpoints, deflecting attention from the hard facts on which the State s case must rise or fall. State v. Frost, 158 N.J. 76, 82 (1999) (recognizing that prosecutors are granted significant leeway to make forceful arguments in summation as long as their comments are reasonably related to the scope of the evidence ); State v. Marshall, 123 N.J. 1, 161 (1991) (commenting that although prosecutors may vigorously sum up, they must not make inflammatory and highly emotional appeals that possess[] the capacity to anger and arouse the jury and thereby divert them from their solemn responsibility to render a verdict based on the evidence ). SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY NO. A-117 SEPTEMBER TERM 2005 ON APPEAL FROM Appellate Division, Superior Court STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. BREANE STARR BLAKNEY, Defendant-Appellant. DECIDED December 20, 2006 Chief Justice Zazzali PRESIDING OPINION BY Justice Albin CONCURRING OPINION BY DISSENTING OPINION BY