Opinion ID: 2159195
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Omission of a Limiting Instruction

Text: Defendant contends that his death sentence should be reversed because of the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on the limited relevance of evidence of defendant's past conduct, asserting that the absence of any such cautionary instruction leaves undiminished the prejudicial impact of this testimony. The State's response is that no such instruction was requested by defense counsel; in any event, the State argues that the trial court's general instructions to the jury in the penalty phase were adequate. We need not resolve the question whether defense counsel made sufficiently clear their request for a limiting instruction concerning this testimony, although it is self-evident that on an issue of such critical importance there should be no cause for understatement or ambiguity. We hold, in view of the repetitive and highly inflammatory quality of the evidence of defendant's past misconduct that came before the jury in the penalty phase, both derivatively through the guilt phase and in the cross-examination of defendant's penalty phase witnesses, that the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on the limited relevance of this evidence was so clearly prejudicial that it requires defendant's death sentence to be set aside. We have already reviewed in detail the evidence of defendant's past conduct to which the jury was exposed in both the guilt and penalty phases of the case. During the guilt phase the jury heard evidence of defendant's apparent racially-tinged motivation for purchasing the sawed-off shotgun as well as evidence of defendant's defiant possession and threats to use the shotgun during the schoolyard incident. Supra at 473, 483-487. On the prosecutor's motion, this evidence was before the jury in the penalty phase. Through cross-examination of defendant's expert witnesses in the penalty phase, the jury heard evidence (or references by the prosecutor) concerning past misconduct by defendant in high school, in the army, and in jail. Supra at 496. In addition, the jury heard extensive testimony and provocative references by the prosecutor to defendant's acts of physical violence toward his former girlfriends. Supra at 492-494; 497-498. The expert witnesses were also interrogated about the schoolyard incident and defendant's reason for buying the shotgun. Supra at 491, 494-496, 498. Virtually every character witness, other than defendant's relatives, was questioned aggressively by the prosecutor about defendant's tendency to beat up women. In addition, the cross-examination of some character witnesses included references to defendant's prior misuse of the shotgun. All of this evidence of defendant's past conduct, to the extent it was admissible at all, was admissible only for a limited purpose. In the guilt phase, evidence of the schoolyard incident was admissible under Evidence Rule 55 to prove absence of mistake or accident; if admissible at all, evidence of defendant's reason for buying the shotgun was admissible for the same purpose. Supra at 485-490. In the penalty phase, evidence of defendant's past conduct was relevant to test the credibility and the conclusions of the expert witnesses, and in the case of the character witnesses was material to rebut their testimony to demonstrate defendant's good character as a mitigating factor. The jury was never told about the limited relevance of any of this testimony. Evidence Rule 6 provides as follows: When relevant evidence is admissible as to one party or for one purpose and is inadmissible as to other parties or for another purpose, the judge shall restrict the evidence to its proper scope and instruct the jury accordingly. [Emphasis added.] When evidence is admissible for one purpose, but not for another, a limiting instruction is the appropriate device through which to restrict the jury's use of such evidence. See State v. Lair, 62 N.J. 388, 391 (1973); see also United States v. Gilliam, 484 F. 2d 1093, 1096 (D.C. Cir.1973) (trial court is required to give, sua sponte, a cautionary instruction and    failure to do so constitutes reversible error); accord Jones v. United States, 385 F. 2d 296, 300 (D.C. Cir.1967); McCormick, supra, at 134-36. In the penalty phase of a capital case, the function of the jury has been sharply defined by the Legislature. The jury must determine if the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of any aggravating factors, and if the defendant has proved the existence of any mitigating factors. The jury must then weigh only the aggravating factors against only the mitigating factors. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(3). The jury is not permitted, in its weighing process, to add other evidence of defendant's past conduct to the weight it assigns to the aggravating factors, nor to consider other evidence of defendant's past conduct, except to the extent offered to rebut mitigating factors, as detracting from the weight it assigns to the mitigating factors. [11] In this case, however, the jury was totally unguided concerning the uses to which it could put the abundant evidence of defendant's past conduct that was adduced at trial. We therefore have no confidence that the jury did not consider such evidence improperly in the course of its weighing process. We concede that there is no way to assure that a jury adheres scrupulously to the mandate of a limiting instruction. But in a death penalty context, and in the face of such abundant and inflammatory evidence of defendant's past conduct, the necessity for a careful and precise limiting instruction to this jury was clear and compelling. Its omission from the charge was prejudicial beyond a reasonable doubt and compels the reversal of defendant's death sentence.