Opinion ID: 2382857
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Precedent-Seeking Approach of Comparative Proportionality Review

Text: The final step, then, is the familiar judicial process of case-by-case comparison of life-sentenced and death-sentenced similar cases. (Life-sentenced cases include, under some systems of analyses, plea bargains and other non-capital dispositions.) This is the second of the methods outlined in the National Center for State Courts' Report. As noted, we see it operating in functional relationship to the frequency approach. To return to our analogy, having taken the cards containing similar cases from the file, we must determine what information on the cards we should consider in evaluating whether the sentence is disproportionate. The Master suggests a comparison of similar cases according to the defendant's criminal culpability. His model uses non-statutory case characteristics defined in terms of three basic elements: (1) a defendant's moral blameworthiness, (2) the degree of victimization, and (3) the character of the defendant. A sketch of the Master's precedent-seeking model is: ---------------------- | Defendant's | | criminal culpability | -------------------------------------- | | ---------------------- | | Circumstances of the | | | crime | | |----------------------| | | | | ----------------------- ------------------------- ------------------ | Defendant's | | Degree of victimization | | Character of the | | moral blameworthiness | | | | defendant | ----------------------- ------------------------- ------------------ 1. Motive 1. Violence and brutality 1. Prior record 2. Premeditation of the murder 2. Other unrelated 3. Justification or 2. Injury to nondecedent acts of violence excuse, e.g., victims 3. Defendant provocation cooperated with 4. Evidence of mental authorities disease, defect, 4. Defendant remorse disturbance, or 5. Capacity for 5. Knowledge of rehabilitation helplessness of victim 6. Knowledge of effects on nondecedent victim(s) 7. Defendant's age, maturity, etc. 8. Defendant's involvement in planning the murder The Public Defender believes that the Court should not undertake a subjective moralistic judgment[] based on non-statutory factors. Rather, he argues in favor of what he describes as an objective analysis focusing on the facts underlying the statutory aggravating and mitigating factors. Recall that in sorting out the cases, the Master had taken note of and recorded on the index cards fed into the computer both statutory and non-statutory factors that appeared to reflect the deathworthiness judgments of juries. We agree that courts are ill-fitted to make moralistic judgments about who should live or who should die under a capital-sentencing scheme. We have no intention of translating concepts that fall outside the Code of Criminal Justice into the capital-sentencing structure. However, we believe that we can examine the data on the cards to see whether there is evidence of objective factors (beyond the listed c(4) statutory aggravating factors) that will assist us in determining why a jury has regarded one defendant as more deathworthy than another. We understand the basic premise of the counter-argument. The Legislature has given us a list of factors (the statutory aggravating factors that made the murder death eligible, for example, c(4)(a) (a prior murder) or c(4)(c) (aggravated assault/torture)) that it deems relevant to the death-sentencing process. See Trimble v. State, 300 Md. 387, 478 A. 2d 1143, 1167 (1984) (We see no bright line by which this Court can say when death shall be imposed. Moreover, we believe the guidelines established by the legislature represent the clearest course of action in attempting to resolve this problem.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1230, 105 S.Ct. 1231, 84 L.Ed. 2d 368 (1985). If factors beyond the statutory factors are given weight, the Capital Punishment Act will lose all structure and revert to the wholly-random pre- Gregg process under which sentences were imposed randomly and freakishly. We think that argument misperceives the function of statutory aggravating factors. Those factors perform the function of categorical narrowing, Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 879, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 2744, 77 L.Ed. 2d 235, 251 (1983), to channel the discretion of juries. Once channeled, deathworthiness requires that an individualized assessment of the defendant be undertaken. Ramseur, supra, 106 N.J. at 331, 524 A. 2d 188 (citing Lockett v. Ohio, supra, 438 U.S. at 605, 98 S.Ct. at 2965, 57 L.Ed. 2d at 990). If we did not consider the circumstances of the case beyond the c(4) aggravating factors in a search for disproportionality, we would be ignoring the reality of the situation and perhaps disadvantaging defendants. For example, if we had a defendant with a previously-blameless life who had impulsively killed a police officer with a single shot, we would be unable to say that his crime was less deathworthy than that of one with a similar past life who had premeditated a taunting, execution-style revenge killing of the officer. None of those is a statutory aggravating factor, yet it seems that they inevitably reflect on deathworthiness. Other examples of factors that would not make a murderer death eligible but that help to explain the jury judgments are the type of victimization that might not constitute a statutory aggravating factor  for example, the particularly vulnerable victims found in State v. Gerald, 113 N.J. 40, 549 A. 2d 792 (1988), and State v. Zola, 112 N.J. 384, 548 A. 2d 1022 (1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1022, 109 S.Ct. 1146, 103 L.Ed. 2d 205 (1989). In noting that such factors bear on relative deathworthiness, we impart no judge-made concepts of ethics or morality. We often have to give definition to the Capital Punishment Act. See Ramseur, supra, 106 N.J. at 210, 524 A. 2d 188 (defining the c(4)(c) depravity factor by the absence of recognized human emotions). Another example is the extent of mutilation. That can fall outside of the c(4)(c) factor because to prove that a defendant had an intent to inflict any more pain than that necessary to kill may be difficult. See State v. Harvey, 121 N.J. 407, 413-14, 581 A. 2d 483 (1990), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 1336, 113 L.Ed. 2d 268 (1991). Those are not subjective moralistic considerations. Many of the so-called non-statutory aggravating factors in the card index in fact appear to be recognized sentencing factors. For example, N.J.S.A. 2C:44-la(2), which prescribes the authority of a court in sentencing, specifically requires courts to consider the gravity and seriousness of harm inflicted on the victim, including whether or not the defendant knew or reasonably should have known that the victim of the offense was particularly vulnerable or incapable of resistance due to advanced age, ill-health, or extreme youth, or was for any other reason substantially incapable of exercising normal physical or mental power of resistance. [ Ibid. ] Surely, the other so-called non-statutory aggravating factors present in the data-collection system  such as the scene of the crime, that is, whether the crime involved an intrusion in the victim's home or a kidnapping, or whether the killing was with an axe, was a particularly brutal stomping or beating, or was a planned homicide  do not appear to us to present a subjective, value-laden approach. Yet, although we agree that one who protests one's innocence should not be faulted for a lack of remorse, the factor need not be discarded because its presence may be appropriate to consider in certain cases. Hence, we think that a proportionality comparison that limits itself to the presence of statutory aggravating and mitigating factors fails fully to explain the sense of proportion in the jury verdicts. The statutory aggravating factors do not encompass all of the characteristics that affect the blameworthiness or deathworthiness of persons who commit murders. At least the Public Defender appears to recognize the use of the factors mentioned by Justice Utter in his dissenting opinion in Jeffries, supra, namely, (1) the number of victims; (2) the conscious amount of suffering imposed on the victim; (3) the degree of premeditation; (4) the aggravating circumstances found; and (5) the personal background of the accused. 717 P. 2d at 745. Although those criteria are helpful in any attempt to explain a jury's verdict, they do not exhaust the logical objective criteria by which the deathworthiness of cases may be compared. Hence, in conducting a precedent-seeking comparative-culpability review we shall identify the relevant aggravating and mitigating factors in the comparison cases (including the so-called non-statutory factors). Examples of such an exercise in precedent-seeking are found in the dissenting opinions of Judge Davidson in Tichnell, supra, 468 A. 2d at 27, and Justice Utter in Jeffries, supra, 717 P. 2d at 742. We shall attempt to confine ourselves to objective criteria rooted in traditional sentencing guidelines. See N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1. By reference to those specifics in the comparison cases, we shall suggest which factors might reasonably explain the difference between a death-sentenced and a life-sentenced case and why the cases may be similar. As noted, supra at 153, 613 A. 2d at 1081, the higher the frequency of life sentences in the pool of similar cases, the more searching will be the inquiry to test whether comparison with the life-sentenced cases (or more culpable death-sentenced cases) suggests that Marshall's sentence was disproportionate in the sense of his having been singled out unfairly for capital punishment.