Opinion ID: 1476426
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Double Counting

Text: Defendant argues that the trial court's charge to the penalty-phase jury violated this Court's instructions in State v. Bey that courts should tell jurors not to double count evidence when the State relies on the same evidence to prove multiple aggravating factors. 112 N.J. 123, 176, 548 A. 2d 887 (1988) ( Bey II ), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1164, 115 S.Ct. 1131, 130 L.Ed. 2d 1093 (1995). He contends that the State relied on the contents of his confessions to support both the aggravating factors relating to a murder for the purpose of escaping detection, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(f), and for a murder committed during the course of a robbery and/or burglary, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(g). Defense counsel did not request the double-counting instruction at trial. The State insists that no such instruction was required because different evidence supported the two aggravating factors. In Bey II, supra, the defendant argued that the State improperly used the same evidence concerning his sexual assault of the murder victim to support distinct aggravating factors. 112 N.J. at 174, 548 A. 2d 887. There, the State maintained that only the proof of the felony-murder aggravating factor relied on the sexual assault evidence. Ibid. Finding it unnecessary to resolve the dispute in light of our reversal on other grounds, we nevertheless set forth guidelines for future trials in which the same evidence supports more than one factor. Id. at 175, 548 A. 2d 887. Although we emphasized that [t]he determination whether to impose the death penalty... does not follow from the mere counting of the aggravating and mitigating factors to see which is the greater, we recognized that the side with the largest number of factors may have a practical advantage before a sentencing jury. Ibid. We, therefore, offered the following guidance: [T]he trial court [should] advise[ ] the jury that it should not simply compare the number of aggravating factors against the number of mitigating factors, that it is considering the same facts more than once, and that it should be cognizant that the same facts are being used to prove more than one aggravating factor. This result permits the jury to consider the evidence relevant to each aggravating factor, and should prevent it from giving undue weight to the number of factors when one aspect of the defendant's conduct supports multiple aggravating factors. [ Id. at 176, 548 A. 2d 887.] On several occasions, we have elaborated the circumstances requiring a double-counting instruction. The Bey II instruction is required when one practical fact, instead of overlapping inter-related facts, [is] doing double duty, State v. McDougald, 120 N.J. 523, 569, 577 A. 2d 419 (1990), or when the evidence proving the aggravating factors is identical, Martini I, supra, 131 N.J. at 289, 619 A. 2d 1208. Generally, trial courts should give the Bey II instruction when the State relies on the same conduct to prove two aggravating factors. Id. at 289, 619 A. 2d 1208. In contrast, when the factors do not rely on the same conduct or when they rest on different evidence, no such instruction is required. Cf. McDougald, supra, 120 N.J. at 569, 577 A. 2d 419. Turning to this appeal, we conclude that the trial court was not required to give a double-counting instruction because the State relied on different evidence to prove the 4(f) and 4(g) aggravating factors. Although defendant's multiple statements provided the proofs for both factors, the aggravating factors relied on different aspects of those statements. To prove the 4(f) escape detection aggravating factor, the State relied on defendant's statements that he suffocated Rosenthal because he figured she knew who [he] was and that killing her would guarantee that she ... [was] not going to say anything. Corroborative evidence that defendant worked and lived in Rosenthal's building also supported the State's theory that defendant killed her to prevent her from identifying him as the intruder. The State, however, relied on different comments and evidence to prove the felony-murder aggravating factor. It pointed to defendant's explanation that he entered Rosenthal's apartment, struck her at least once in her bed when she woke up, suffocated her, and stole eighty dollars from her pocketbook. The State, therefore, did not rely on the same evidence to prove the 4(f) and 4(g) aggravating factors. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in its instruction to the jury regarding the weighing of the aggravating factors.