Opinion ID: 1972056
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Collateral Attack: Motion for Post-Conviction Relief

Text: On August 5, 1991, defendant filed a timely motion for post-conviction relief. Defendant's principal contentions in his post-conviction-relief motion were that the charge on diminished capacity went beyond the limits established in Breakiron, supra, 108 N.J. 591, 532 A. 2d 199 and Zola, supra, 112 N.J. 384, 548 A. 2d 1022, both of which were decided after defendant's trial but before the filing of defendant's appellate brief; that the trial court's charge on diminished capacity at trial also violated Humanik, supra, 871 F. 2d 432; and that appellate counsel's failure to raise those trial-court errors on his direct appeal constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Although defendant's trial counsel and his appellate counsel were notified by defendant that ineffective assistance of counsel was going to be raised in the post-conviction hearing, neither attorney was subpoenaed and neither of them was questioned regarding his or her actions during the post-conviction-relief proceedings. Defendant did not testify regarding his claim. During the post-conviction-relief hearing, the trial court stated that defendant's appellate counsel should have requested a rehearing from the Appellate Division on the basis of Humanik and should have raised the Humanik issue in defendant's petition for certification. Nevertheless, the trial court denied defendant's motion for post-conviction relief, finding that the record failed to disclose any underlying psychosis or some other mental disease or defect during the course of these incidents. [The record] reveals largely ... a man who was jealous, angry, out of control and probably somewhat affected by PCP and heroin and marijuana. Again, this is not diminished capacity. Because the evidence did not support a diminished-capacity instruction, it should not have been submitted to the jury; therefore, any error in the charge given was harmless. The Appellate Division reversed in an unpublished per curiam opinion. Though acknowledging that it was unclear whether Humanik would apply to motions for post-conviction relief, the Appellate Division found that the jury instructions were clearly inconsistent with the dictates of Breakiron and Zola.  Therefore, the Appellate Division found that it had to decide whether defendant was deprived of effective assistance of counsel because his attorney did not raise the issue on direct appeal. The Appellate Division formulated that issue not [as] whether the judge should have given the diminished capacity charge [but as] whether the erroneous instructions which were given may be deemed harmless on the theory that they should not have been given at all. The Appellate Division then likened this case to State v. Galloway, 133 N.J. 631, 628 A. 2d 735 (1993), a decision issued four years after defendant's direct appeal and a year and a half after the trial court denied defendant's post-conviction-relief motion. In Galloway we held that [f]orms of psychopathology other than clinically-defined mental diseases or defects may affect the mental process and diminish cognitive capacity, and therefore may be regarded as a mental disease or defect in the statutory or legal sense as contained in N.J.S.A. 2C:4-2. 133 N.J. at 643, 628 A. 2d 735. With that as background, the Appellate Division concluded: While an error in not charging diminished capacity properly under Humanik can be deemed harmless if the proofs suggest no such charge should have been given, the same is not necessarily true when, as here, the charge also violated Breakiron and Zola and put a burden on defendant which was clearly unconstitutional under our State pre- Humanik interpretation of the constitution. Thus, here the failure to raise the issue clearly affected the result of the direct appeal. Consequently, the Appellate Division reversed and granted defendant a new trial. The State thereafter filed a petition for certification, which we granted. 138 N.J. 265 (1994). We now reverse.