Opinion ID: 1522122
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trial Court Comments on Evidence

Text: Defendant contends that the trial court violated his right to a fair trial and a trial by jury by making one-sided comments on the evidence and by inaccurately summarizing defense testimony during the jury charges at both the guilt and sentencing phases. He did not object below to the charges. However, we have considered his objection on appeal and find it to be without merit. A trial court has the right, and oftentimes the duty, to review the testimony and comment upon it, so long as [it] clearly leaves to the jury the ultimate determination of the facts and the rendering of a just and true verdict on the facts as [the jury] finds them. State v. Laws, 50 N.J. 159, 177 (1967) (minor inaccuracies in court's review of testimony cured by instructing jurors that their own recollection of testimony governs), reargued, 51 N.J. 494, cert. den., 393 U.S. 971, 89 S.Ct. 408, 21 L.Ed. 2d 384 (1968). In passing on the propriety of a trial court's charge, an appellate court reviews all that was said on the particular subject being challenged, State v. Brown, 46 N.J. 96, 101 (1965), and if on reading the charge as a whole, prejudicial error does not appear, then the verdict must stand. State v. Council, 49 N.J. 341, 342 (1967); see also State v. Thompson, 59 N.J. 396, 411 (1971) (trial court not bound to instruct jury in language requested by a party if subject matter adequately covered in charge). Here, defendant contends that the trial court specifically focused on the State's evidence to the exclusion of the defense's evidence and so conveyed to the jury a prejudice against the defendant. It is true that during the guilt phase, the trial court focused on evidence of defendant's prior crimes and violent acts, but this was only to explain to the jury the limited purposes for which this evidence could be considered, i.e., as the basis for the opinion of the State's experts that defendant was not insane nor suffering from diminished capacity when he committed the crime. Similarly, during the sentencing phase, the charge necessarily focused on the fact that the murder had been committed in the presence of the victim's grandchildren. The court explained to the jury that it could consider this fact only as evidence of defendant's depravity of mind, and that it could not consider the effect of the crime on those children, something to which the prosecutor had alluded in his opening statement. These specific references were proper and necessary. If the court had not so focused on these two elements of the evidence, the jury might have misused them to defendant's disadvantage. Taken as a whole, the charge is evenhanded. It does not purport to survey either side's evidence. Moreover, the court repeatedly advised the jury that its recollection and judgment of the evidence, rather than the court's or either counsel's, were to be determinative. Defendant also contends that the trial court inaccurately summarized the testimony of his experts by stating that they relied, in part, upon evidence of prior violent acts as disclosing a lack of insight. Defendant states that these experts testified that brain damage caused his lack of insight, and that brain damage probably caused his prior violent acts. He contends that the trial court's misleading identification of prior violence as the basis of his experts' diagnosis negated the potentially positive impact of their testimony. This contention is patently frivolous in that defense counsel specifically asked the trial court to include the statement defendant now challenges in the charge. [66] The defendant cannot ... request the trial court to take a certain course of action, and upon adoption by the court, take his chance on the outcome of the trial, and if unfavorable, then condemn the very procedure he sought and urged, claiming it to be error and prejudicial. State v. Pontery, 19 N.J. 457, 471 (1955). To justify reversal on the grounds of an invited error, a defendant must show that the error was so egregious as to cut mortally into his substantive rights.... . State v. Harper, 128 N.J. Super. 270, 277 (App.Div.), certif. den., 65 N.J. 574 (1974). The statement complained of here was inaccurate in such a minor way that it cannot be said to have prejudiced Ramseur's defense. This is especially certain in light of the trial court's repeated direction to the jury that its own recollection of the evidence, and not the court's summary of it, should control deliberation. See State v. Laws, supra, 50 N.J. at 177. Reviewing the trial court's entire charge and numerous instructions to the jurors concerning their responsibility as factfinders, we hold that the charge neither constituted an abuse of discretion nor violated the defendant's fundamental right to a fair trial and to a trial by jury.