Opinion ID: 1935115
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Aftermath of the Murders

Text: Defendant and Alexander returned to the Krouches' home around noon. Violet Krouch informed defendant that an employee of the car dealership had called and wanted defendant to call back when he returned home. Defendant stated that he was going out to McDonald's and would stop by the dealership on his way. Violet Krouch testified that defendant had later returned with a bag of food from McDonald's and spent the afternoon installing a radio in his car. Defendant informed Krouch that he had gone to a Radio Shack in Bangor because he was having trouble with the installation. The State produced witnesses who corroborated that account. An assistant manager from McDonald's testified that Brown, who had just started working for the restaurant, had come there that afternoon and had seemed depressed, a departure from his usually upbeat personality. He mumbled that a family tragedy had occurred. In addition, the State produced an employee from the Radio Shack store who testified that defendant had purchased a $170 car stereo that afternoon and had returned later because he was having difficulty with the installation. Finally, the salesperson from the car dealership testified that he had called the Krouch residence that morning and had left a message for defendant to call back the dealership. The following night, October 11, defendant went out with Robert Lohman and another acquaintance. According to Lohman, defendant appeared to be uneasy while the three were outdoors drinking beer, at one point peering into the surrounding woods with a flashlight. Defendant then showed Lohman a passport and asked him if he wanted to go to Canada to look for a new atmosphere. Lohman declined the offer. Police discovered the bodies of Alice Skov and John Bell on October 11. Their first contact with defendant, Coleen Alexander, and the Krouches occurred the following evening, on October 12, when officers from the Warren County Prosecutor's Office went to the Krouch home and informed them of the murders. The officers briefly questioned the group and were told by defendant and Alexander that they had visited the Skov home approximately two weeks before. The police asked if defendant and Alexander would submit to fingerprinting so that police could eliminate their prints if they were found at the scene. Defendant and Alexander agreed and were fingerprinted at the local police station. The police also requested that they go to the Warren County Prosecutor's Office to make statements. Defendant and Alexander asked to go in the following morning because Violet Krouch had seemed too upset to put Alexander's children to bed. The following morning, October 13, Stephen Krouch drove his wife, defendant, Alexander, and her two children to the Warren County Prosecutor's Office. Alexander gave police a statement claiming that on October 10, the day of the murders, she and defendant had gone to Bethlehem for defendant's drug test. Alexander testified at trial that that was the alibi that defendant had instructed her to offer. Alexander also told police that she and defendant had been to the Skov house together on only one occasion. She left the Prosecutor's office at approximately 3:00 that afternoon. In the meantime, defendant had given police a statement offering the same alibi. He subsequently agreed to take a polygraph test administered by officers from the State Police. The test involved a sequence of interviews, during which one of the detectives took copious notes. The detective testified about the contents of the interviews, although the jury was not informed that the interviews had occurred during a polygraph test. In the course of those interviews defendant revised his claim that he had been at the Skov home only once before, and admitted to a subsequent visit during which Alexander had stolen money. The detective informed defendant that he had been seen at the Skov home in the past week. He then suggested a scenario in which defendant and Alexander had gone to the house and a struggle had ensued with John Bell, perhaps even after Bell had threatened defendant with a BB gun that Bell owned. Defendant neither denied nor agreed with the detective's suggestions. In the early evening, after the interview had been proceeding for approximately five to six hours, both detectives were out of the room discussing whether Alexander should be brought back to the office for further questioning. When one of the detectives reentered the room, defendant was crying pretty hard. Defendant then confessed to the detectives that he had in fact been involved in the crime along with Robert Lohman, his acquaintance from Bangor, Pennsylvania. Defendant's general version of the crime, as told to detectives in that interview, a subsequent videotaped statement to police, and a tape-recorded conversation with the Krouches at the Prosecutor's office, was that Lohman had overheard defendant and Coleen Alexander at the Sportsman's bar discussing the money in the Skov house. Lohman allegedly approached defendant and demanded that defendant help him steal the money or Lohman would harm the Krouches, Alexander, and her children. Defendant claimed that that threat had compelled him to help Lohman. Defendant's version of the crime was that he drove Lohman to the Skov house, but that Lohman did the shooting and stealing. Although defendant's original account placed him outside the house while Lohman committed the murders inside, defendant eventually admitted to having witnessed the shooting of John Bell. Indeed, the State used defendant's detailed description of Lohman's purported shooting of Bell as evidence that defendant was personally familiar with the circumstances of that shooting, including the manner in which Bell fell and the gunshot wound that he suffered. Following defendant's confession, the police resumed the questioning of Coleen Alexander. Realizing that her original alibi no longer was credible, Alexander told police that she had left the house with defendant on the morning of the murder but that he had dropped her off at the home of Sheri Manger, a friend in the Bangor area. Alexander testified at trial that she had tendered that alibi because she knew from the Krouches that it was consistent with statements defendant had made concerning her whereabouts. While police were at the Krouch home, they asked whether the Krouches owned a gun. Stephen Krouch showed them the.22 caliber rifle that he kept in his bedroom closet. Officers briefly examined it and returned it to Krouch. They did, however, retain .22 caliber bullets that they found in the bedroom that Alexander and defendant shared. Robert Lohman, the man implicated by defendant, was arrested in the early morning hours of Sunday, October 14. Police confiscated a holstered .22 caliber handgun, which defendant had described as the murder weapon. The following day, however, when officers visited defendant at the Warren County Jail to interview him further, defendant told the officers that the statement he had given was not true and that he wanted a lawyer before he would speak to them. Apparently, defendant had decided to pursue other strategies. From defendant's arrest on October 13, defendant and Alexander were in constant communication by telephone as Alexander attempted to establish different alibis. On or about Wednesday, October 17, one week after the murders, Coleen Alexander travelled to the drug-test laboratory in Bethlehem and unsuccessfully attempted to obtain documentation stating that she and defendant had been to the laboratory on the day of the murders. In addition, she forged a letter purporting to be from an acquaintance of David Runyon that implied that Runyon had been involved in the Skov and Bell murders; she told an acquaintance that Robert Lohman had committed the murders; and she maintained defendant's innocence in repeated conversations with his mother. Police received the ballistics report on Robert Lohman's gun on November 1 and learned that it was not the murder weapon. They immediately went to the Krouch home and retrieved Stephen Krouch's .22 caliber rifle, as well as the T-shirt and stone-washed jeans that defendant had worn on the day of the murders. Alexander had already washed the shirt. On November 8, members of the State Police interviewed Alexander at the Prosecutor's Office regarding her activities on the day of the murder. She started out with the alibi regarding the drug-test visit in Bethlehem, and then offered numerous alternative alibis. According to Alexander, then after I couldn't deal with any more lies I came forth and told the truth. Bits and pieces of the truth in which I had at that time wanted them to know.    That [defendant] is the one who shot and killed both my aunt and uncle and stabbed my uncle. She also told the police that she had been at the scene. Following the interview, the police arrested Alexander. After her incarceration, Alexander continued to communicate with defendant by letter through the in-house prison mail system. Because defendant and Alexander knew that such letters were read by prison officials, the pair used code words to communicate. From the witness stand, Alexander read several of the letters that defendant had written to her and explained their meaning. A main theme of the letters, besides protestations of love and devotion, was that defendant wanted Alexander to assume responsibility for the murders so that defendant could gain his release, obtain Alexander's release with bail money from loan sharks that he knew in Trenton, and then flee with Alexander and her children. In addition, the State introduced statements made to police by two inmates, Michael Merlo and Peter Lesando, which recounted conversations that each had had with defendant around the time of Alexander's arrest. In those conversations, defendant allegedly stated that he had shot John Bell because the situation in the house had become agitated when defendant learned that the safe had been plastered over. Defendant purportedly told Merlo and Lesando that he had shot Alice Skov as she sat in her rocking chair, missing with the first shot and hitting her in the head with the second. Defendant allegedly stated that Coleen Alexander had stabbed John Bell, and noted as well that she had once stabbed her husband. Defendant also explained that because he did not know the location of the bullets for Alexander's father's rifle, she had obtained them from her parent's bedroom. Merlo reported that defendant had a notebook with information written in it, but the police found no such notebook in a search of defendant's cell. At trial, both Lesando and Merlo claimed that they could not recall having made such statements or having had such conversations with defendant. Following evidentiary hearings, the trial court determined that both were feigning their lack of recall, and permitted the State to introduce the statements as substantive evidence under the hearsay exception for prior inconsistent statements. On May 16, 1991, a Warren County grand jury returned a seventeen-count indictment charging both defendant and Coleen Alexander with murder in the deaths of John Bell and Alice Skov, alleging that both had purposely or knowingly killed Bell and Skov by their own conduct. The indictment also charged the pair with purposeful or knowing murder in the deaths of Bell and Skov, based on allegations that defendant and/or Alexander had purposely or knowingly killed or inflicted serious bodily injury on Bell and Skov while acting in the capacity of an accomplice or co-conspirator. Other counts charged defendant and Alexander with felony murder, two types of first-degree armed robbery, possession of the rifle for an unlawful purpose, possession of the scissors for an unlawful purpose, third-degree unlawful possession of the rifle, fourth-degree unlawful possession of the scissors, and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and first-degree robbery. The Warren County Prosecutor's Office supplied defendant's attorneys with a notice of aggravating factors on June 14, 1991. The notice set forth two factors that the State intended to prove with regard to the murder charges in the indictment: (1) that the murder had been committed to escape detection for another robbery and/or murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(f), and (2) that the murder had been committed in the course of the commission of another felony, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(g). In the summer of 1992 Coleen Alexander entered into a plea agreement with the Warren County Prosecutor's Office. She agreed to plead guilty to two counts of felony murder, two counts of robbery, and one count of conspiracy to commit robbery. She also agreed to give interviews to the Prosecutor's office and to testify truthfully against defendant at trial. In return, the State agreed to recommend a sentence of thirty years without parole and to dismiss the remaining charges. Alexander entered a plea in accordance with the agreement on July 2, 1992, and the court sentenced her to the recommended term on August 14, 1992. Jury selection for defendant's trial began on November 2, 1992, and ended on November 18, encompassing nine days during that period. The nineteen-day guilt-phase trial began on December 1, 1992, and concluded on January 8, 1993, with the State presenting thirty-three witnesses and defendant presenting eight. After deliberating approximately eleven hours, the jury convicted defendant of the purposeful and knowing murders of Alice Skov and John Bell, and unanimously determined beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant had purposely and knowingly caused the deaths of Skov and Bell by his own conduct. In addition, the jury convicted defendant on the felony-murder, conspiracy, armed-robbery counts, and the weapons-possession counts concerning the .22 caliber rifle. It acquitted defendant of the weapons-possession counts regarding the scissors. Defendant presented three motions prior to the penalty-phase trial. First, he requested that the court set aside the jury's finding that he had committed the murders by his own conduct. The court denied the motion, determining that sufficient evidence existed to support the jury's determination that defendant had killed by his own conduct. Defendant next requested that the court empanel a new jury for the penalty phase, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(1), claiming that certain evidence presented at the guilt phase would be inadmissible and prejudicial in the penalty phase, including testimony that defendant had threatened and assaulted Alexander, photographs of the victims' bodies, testimony regarding the age and physical frailties of Skov, and testimony that defendant and Alexander had referred to themselves as Bonnie and Clyde. The court denied defendant's motion, determining that the evidence either was admissible to prove the aggravating factors alleged or that its admission in the guilt phase did not compel the empaneling of a new penalty-phase jury. Finally, defendant made several arguments regarding the aggravating factors. Generally, those arguments were based on the failure of the notice of aggravating factors to specify the murder to which each factor applied or the underlying felony on which each factor was based. Defendant also claimed that the factors constituted improper double-counting of the evidence. The court determined that the notice was not misleading regarding the murders and underlying offenses to which the factors applied, and that basing both factors on the same events was permissible provided the jury received an appropriate instruction regarding the weighing of the evidence in accordance with State v. Bey, 112 N.J. 123, 174-77, 548 A. 2d 887 (1988) ( Bey II). The penalty-phase proceeding spanned three days, January 12 through January 14. The State moved to admit its evidence from the guilt phase into the penalty phase and presented no new evidence. Defendant presented five witnesses and gave a brief statement in allocution. Jury deliberations took place primarily during the entire second day of the proceeding. On the morning of January 14, the jury returned a verdict in which it unanimously found beyond a reasonable doubt that in regard to the murder of Alice Skov the State had proved the existence of both aggravating factors, that each factor outweighed the mitigating factors, and that both factors outweighed the mitigating factors. Regarding the murder of John Bell, the jury unanimously found beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of only the c(4)(g) aggravating factor, that the murder had been committed while defendant was committing another offense. The jury decided that after due deliberation it could not agree on punishment, an option offered on the verdict sheet. In accordance with the jury's verdict, the court sentenced defendant to death for the murder of Alice Skov. After conducting a separate sentencing proceeding on April 13, 1993, concerning defendant's other convictions, the court sentenced defendant to a consecutive term of life imprisonment with a thirty-year period of parole ineligibility for the purposeful or knowing murder of John Bell. On the remaining counts, the court merged the felony-murder counts into the respective murder convictions, merged the armed-robbery counts into the felony-murder counts, and merged the weapons-possession offenses into the armed-robbery counts. Defendant appealed his conviction and death sentence to this Court, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3e. Defendant advances numerous contentions on appeal, some of which relate solely to his death sentence, others of which relate to his convictions as well, and one focussing on his sentence of imprisonment. The State cross-appeals, contending that merger of certain convictions was improper. Defendant concedes the State's claim. We affirm defendant's convictions, concluding that the alleged errors either did not constitute error or were harmless. We vacate defendant's death sentence because the trial court did not instruct the jury that it had the option of returning a non-unanimous verdict on the question whether defendant had committed the murders by his own conduct. Although we affirm defendant's prison sentence for the murder of John Bell, we remand the matter for resentencing in view of our decision vacating the death sentence and the court's improper merger of defendant's other convictions. We note that the State may again seek the death penalty for the murder of Alice Skov by retrying defendant on that charge.