Opinion ID: 1898380
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 31

Heading: Was there insufficient evidence to justify a flight charge?

Text: This issue involves another discretionary ruling. Flight of an accused is admissible as evidence of consciousness of guilt, and therefore of guilt. State v. Johnson, 216 N.J. Super. 588, 612, 524 A. 2d 826 (App. Div. 1987) (quoting United States v. Ballard, 423 F. 2d 127 (5th Cir.1970)). Mere departure, however, does not imply guilt. State v. Sullivan, 43 N.J. 209, 238, 203 A. 2d 177 (1964), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 990, 86 S.Ct. 564, 15 L.Ed. 2d 477 (1966). Flight requires departure from a crime scene under circumstances that imply consciousness of guilt. Ibid. There is a thin line in some cases between the defendant's right to presumed innocence and the right of a jury to infer guilt from conduct. Here the court charged the jury that if it found that defendant fled, it might infer from the flight a guilty state of mind. The charge presented a totality-of-the-circumstances test, and did not suggest that departure alone implied guilt. The court charged: I want to tell you about flight, because there has been some testimony in the case    from which you may infer that the defendant was avoiding apprehension. Now, you may feel that he was not. And if he was not, then fine. You may feel that he was. If you feel that he was, then you have to stop and think if he was doing that in order to avoid apprehension and was it from a consciousness of guilt. Or was it just because he was afraid or had something else to do. But the point is, again, that there's a principle of law that says that you may, if you find he, in fact, was fleeing, infer from that a consciousness of guilt because all along, not only are you going to be assessing credibility, but when you get into deciding the individual counts, you're going to have to ascertain in your own mind what the defendant's state of mind was.    You define a person's state of mind from everything that you see and hear and the circumstances in which a given set of events occurs. Enough said. That's flight. The facts were marginally sufficient to support a flight charge. Defendant testified that he had gone to New York even though he knew he was wanted by the Atlantic City police. Knowing he was wanted, he failed to turn himself in for two weeks. See State v. Johnson, supra, 216 N.J. Super. at 613, 524 A. 2d 826 (two-week-long failure of suspect to report to police is fair comment on issue of consciousness of guilt). Two witnesses testified to defendant's furtive and nervous behavior in the days following the crime. However, other evidence contradicted an inference of flight. Defendant remained in Atlantic City for a few days after the shooting, visited a New Jersey prison on December 18, 1982, and voluntarily surrendered. Such evidence does not necessarily require omission of a flight charge, but does require reflection in the charge that flight is just a circumstance tending to show consciousness of guilt. State v. D'Amato, 26 N.J. Super. 185, 187-88, 97 A. 2d 741 (App.Div. 1953). The flight charge adequately conformed to that requirement.