Opinion ID: 2161340
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Is aggravated manslaughter reduced to manslaughter when committed in the heat of passion resulting from a reasonable provocation?

Text: To answer this question, it is necessary to review the development of the structure of the Code of Criminal Justice, N.J.S.A. 2C:1-1 to :98-4 and the Code's treatment of criminal homicide. [1] Chapter 11 of the Code of Criminal Justice provides that causing the death of another human being purposely, knowingly, or recklessly shall be treated as criminal homicide. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-2(a). The Code divides criminal homicide into three categories: murder, manslaughter, and death by auto. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-2(b). There are three forms of murder: purposeful, knowing, and in the course of committing or attempting to commit certain felonies. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(a). There are three forms of manslaughter: aggravated, reckless, and passion/provocation. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(a) and (b). Criminal homicide caused by one's driving a vehicle recklessly is death by auto. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-5. For purposes of sentence and punishment, the Code grades criminal homicide as follows: murder is a crime of the first degree. A person convicted of murder must be sentenced to a minimum term of thirty years before being eligible for parole. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(b). Certain murders are capital murders, which are subject to a separate proceeding to determine whether the defendant should be sentenced to death. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(c)(1). Aggravated manslaughter occurs when the actor recklessly causes death under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(a). It is a crime of the first degree. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(c). Reckless manslaughter and passion/provocation manslaughter are second-degree crimes. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(b) and (c). It is the definition of passion/provocation manslaughter that provokes the issue here since it is only murder under section 2C:11-3 that is expressly reduced to manslaughter if committed in the heat of passion resulting from a reasonable provocation. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(b)(2). In this case we deal only with purposeful and knowing murder. [2] An illustration may serve to show the verdicts, other than acquittal, that were available to the jury under the language of the Code and the degrees of punishment related thereto: Purposeful or Knowing Murder \ (first-degree; \ death or term up \ to life imprisonment \ with minimum 30-year \ parole ineligibility) \ committed in \ Aggravated heat of \ Manslaughter passion \ (first-degree; \ 20 to 10 year term \ of imprisonment with \ possible 10-year \ parole ineligibility) \ \ Reckless Passion/Provocation Manslaughter Manslaughter (second-degree; (second-degree; 10 to 5 year term of 10 to 5 year term of imprisonment with imprisonment with possible 5-year possible 5-year parole ineligibility) parole ineligibility) The Appellate Division found that [i]t would be contrary to pre-Code law and lead to [an] absurd result that a defendant charged with murder would be eligible to have the crime reduced to second-degree provocation/passion manslaughter but a defendant charged with the lesser offense of first-degree aggravated manslaughter would not. 199 N.J. Super. at 251 This argument has an inherent logic; nevertheless it conflicts with the language of the statute, and does not fully reflect other substantive changes in the development of the Code. The drafters of the New Jersey Penal Code proposed four categories of murder: (1) criminal homicide committed purposely, 2C:11-3(a)(1); (2) criminal homicide committed knowingly, 2C:11-3(a)(2); (3) criminal homicide committed recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life, 2C:11-3(a)(3); and (4) felony murder, 2C:11-3(a)(4). Final Report of the New Jersey Criminal Law Revision Comm'n (Oct. 1971), Vol. I, at 50. They described the nature of the proposed crime of reckless murder as follows: where recklessness should be assimilated to knowledge    [,] [t]he conception employed is that of extreme indifference to the value of human life. The significance of purpose or knowledge is that, cases of provocation apart, it demonstrates precisely such indifference. Whether recklessness is so extreme that it demonstrates similar indifference is not a question that, in our view, can be further clarified; it must be left directly to the trier of the facts. If recklessness exists but is not so extreme, the homicide is manslaughter. [ Final Report, Vol. II, at 156.] Under pre-Code law our statutes merely provided the punishment for manslaughter, N.J.S.A. 2A:113-5, repealed by L. 1978, c. 95, § 2C:98-2, leaving its definition to the common law. Under the common law of New Jersey, extreme indifference homicide was second-degree murder. State v. Gardner, 51 N.J. 444, 457-58 (1968). As originally enacted, the Code made no provision for any form of reckless murder; it provided for only reckless manslaughter. L. 1978, c. 95, § 2C:11-4(a)(1). Professor Knowlton, Chairman of the Commission, explained: The statute departs significantly from the commission report in two respects. The first is the elimination of reckless murder. This is highly desirable since a homicide is murder if it is committed knowingly. The element of recklessness requires personal awareness of the risk and a conscious disregard of it, while the term knowingly requires the actor to be practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result. These two factors codify degrees of culpability for homicide: the more stringent one of knowingly is more suitable for murder because of its greater sanction; recklessness killings are properly made manslaughter. [Knowlton, Comments Upon the New Jersey Penal Code, 32 Rutgers L.Rev. 1, 9 (1979) (footnotes omitted).] In the consensus amendments of 1979, section 2C:11-4 was amended to divide manslaughter between aggravated manslaughter and reckless manslaughter depending upon the presence of circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life. L. 1979, c. 178, § 2C:11-4(a). [3] However, the argument that it was merely a legislative oversight that passion/provocation is not explicitly available to mitigate aggravated manslaughter under the new Code may not fully reflect the accompanying changes that the Legislature made in reducing the offense from murder to manslaughter. The history of the Code also reveals that the Legislature made a very substantial departure from certain fundamental underlying premises of the Commission with respect to individual responsibility for criminal conduct. In some instances the Commission would have viewed penal responsibility in terms of individual or subjective levels of criminal consciousness. The Legislature, on the other hand, has tended to view criminal culpability on collective or objective levels of responsibility. Hence, the Code as enacted provides that criminal homicide constitutes manslaughter only when committed in the heat of passion resulting from a reasonable provocation, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4(b)(2), as opposed to the Commission's recommendation of under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance for which there is reasonable explanation or excuse. Final Report, Vol. I, at 51, § 2C:11-4(a)(2). In addition to expanding the mitigating mental or emotional disturbance to include unprovoked reactions, the manslaughter section proposed by the Commission would have provided that the reasonableness of the explanation or excuse would be determined from the viewpoint of a person in the actor's situation under the circumstances as he believes them to be. Id. This proposal was rejected by the Legislature in favor of a resolution substantially in the current form. The narrowing of the scope of the defense of passion/provocation has been balanced, however, by the reduction in grade of the unintentional homicide reflecting extreme indifference to human life from murder to manslaughter. In addition, as originally presented, the Criminal Law Revision Commission's concepts of justification also would have been framed in terms of subjective evaluation. The Commission proposed: The justification provisions    of the Code have been so framed that when the actor believes the force that he employs is necessary for any of the purposes which may establish a justification, his belief affords him a defense although it is erroneous, subject to the qualification of Section 2C:3-9 that when the actor is reckless or negligent in having such belief or in acquiring or failing to acquire any knowledge or belief which is material to the justifiability of his use of force, he may be convicted of an offense for which recklessness or negligence, as the case may be, suffices to establish culpability. These provisions assure that homicides in self-defense, defense of others, defense of property, effectuation of arrest or crime prevention, where the actor's belief in the necessity rests on unreasonable grounds, must be approached as crimes of recklessness or negligence, if they are crimes at all. Such homicides, accordingly, are manslaughter at most under the Code  whether or not there was intent to kill. [ Final Report, Vol. II, at 163.] Taken together, these provisions would have drawn a careful balance between individual culpability and collective security from crime by penalizing the actor who is reckless or negligent in forming the mental state that guided his conduct, exposing the actor to criminal liability for any grade of crime for which such mental state would suffice. As noted, the legislative sponsors of the Code substantially altered the subjective view of mitigation or justification. They returned to the common law concepts of objectively reasonable reactions to both provocation and the need for self-defense. At the same time the Legislature recognized the inconsistency of treating as murder a criminal homicide that was not knowing, purposeful, or committed in the course of a felony. [4] The composite result represents a balance between the subjective ranges of criminal responsibility proposed by the Commission and the Legislature's desire to return to objective levels of responsibility. The structure is not without precedent. New York has an offense, similar to aggravated manslaughter, characterized as depraved mind murder, which is murder in the second degree, N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25(2); the element of mental culpability required to establish depraved mind murder is recklessness. New York also has an affirmative defense of act[ing] under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance. Id. § 125.25(1)(a). This extreme emotional disturbance defense is a broad replacement for the heat of passion doctrine; if established, it will mitigate a knowing or purposeful murder to manslaughter. Id. No such mitigation is provided for the offense of depraved mind murder, however, and the New York courts have recognized this. See People v. Wingate, 72 A.D. 2d 955, 422 N.Y.S. 2d 245, 246 (App.Div. 1979); see also People v. Register, 90 A.D. 2d 972, 456 N.Y.S. 2d 562 (App.Div. 1982), aff'd, 60 N.Y. 2d 270, 280, 457 N.E. 2d 704, 709, 469 N.Y.S. 2d 599, 603 (1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 953, 104 S.Ct. 2159, 80 L.Ed. 2d 544 (1984) (intoxication not a defense to depraved mind murder because this crime is distinguishable from manslaughter, not by the mental element involved but by the objective circumstances in which the act occurs). Connecticut and Oregon, like New Jersey, classify extreme indifference homicide as manslaughter in the first degree. Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 53a to 55; Or. Rev. Stat. § 163.118. The language of neither statute provides for mitigation of that offense to manslaughter in the second degree. While we can agree that there may be reasons to conclude that aggravated manslaughter should be mitigated by passion/provocation, we do not believe that those reasons are compelling enough to conclude that our Legislature did not consider this in structuring the law of homicide. In light of the Legislature's stiffening of the Code in other areas with respect to subjective elements of offenses, it is logical to assume that having downgraded the crime of extreme indifference reckless homicide from murder to manslaughter, the Legislature would rest content with that determination. After all, depending upon the circumstances of the offense, we are dealing only with a difference in sentencing range, and presumably the sentencing judge will consider the mitigating factors under the Code, specifically the following two factors: whether [t]he defendant acted under a strong provocation and whether [t]here were substantial grounds tending to excuse or justify the defendant's conduct, though failing to establish a defense. N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1(b)(3) and (4). In short, in rearranging the highly complex provisions of the Code, both in terms of the substantive definition of offenses and the justification for acts that would otherwise constitute offenses, the Legislature downgraded extreme indifference reckless homicide from murder to aggravated manslaughter, but, at the same time, eliminated the concept of negligent homicide. The Legislature recognized a single concept of reckless homicide that constituted manslaughter, with the gradation of punishment based upon the degree of risk of death. State v. Curtis, 195 N.J. Super. 354, 364 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 99 N.J. 212 (1984). Within this framework, the legislative scheme, as enacted, does not inevitably reflect an oversight with respect to the treatment of passion/provocation. The Legislature could have concluded, on the basis of common experience, that passion/provocation usually causes an intentional reaction and that it is rare for passion/provocation to lead to recklessness. The pre-Code analogue of passion/provocation manslaughter was referred to as voluntary manslaughter, which typically involved an intentional killing rather than one committed recklessly. State v. Powell, 84 N.J. 305, 311 (1980). Since the scheme is plausible, we are not certain that the Legislature overlooked the matter; rather, we believe that it could have concluded that the role of passion/provocation is not so much a matter of reclassifying an extreme indifference reckless criminal homicide as it is a means of reducing the severity of the penalty. Generally speaking, the Legislature is presumed to be thoroughly conversant with its own legislation   . Brewer v. Porch, 53 N.J. 167, 174 (1969). Hence, we hold on the basis of the language and structure of the act that the Code does not provide that the passion/provocation defense be invoked to reduce aggravated manslaughter to simple manslaughter.