Opinion ID: 1473632
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Did the trial court incorrectly permit the jury to consider the felony offenses against the female members of the Ellison family in aggravation of the homicide?

Text: Defendant, in a pretrial motion, asked the court to limit the c(4)(g) factor to the offenses committed against the murder victim. Those included robbery, kidnapping, and burglary. Alternatively, defendant asked the court to empanel a separate sentencing jury. The essential question is whether the killing of Ellison was worse because it occurred in the course of the rape of his three other family members and the robbery of one of them. The c(4)(g) factor is obviously not limited to the commission of a felony against the victim. (For convenience, we use the familiar word felony, although our Code refers instead to certain offenses.) For example, in State v. Moore, supra, 122 N.J. at 471, 585 A. 2d 864, we allowed the c(4)(g) felony factor to be applied to the killings of both mother and child. In other words, the killing of the mother in the course of the killing of the child was an aggravating factor in the killing of the mother. We explained: [T]he statute does not rely on the temporal sequence of the murders to determine application of that aggravating factor. The factor applies to murders committed before, during, or after the commission of a felony, so that the time sequence of the murders is not dispositive of this factor's [c(4)(g)] application. Thus, the robbery or rape of the first of two murder victims would be admissible in determining death eligibility for the murder of the second victim. Would it not be illogical to allow the jury to consider the robbery or rape of the first victim but not allow it to consider the murder of the first victim in determining death eligibility for the murder of the second? [ Ibid. ] That reasoning applies here as well. Killing a father in the course of raping his child could be an aggravating factor in the case of the father's killing. Defendant relies on State v. McDougald, 120 N.J. 523, 569-70, 577 A. 2d 419 (1990), in which the Court cautioned the trial court carefully to instruct the jury on the necessary relationship that must exist pursuant to c(4)(g) between the felony and the murder, suggesting that if the defendant had intended to commit three murders in the very beginning, then the two consummated murders would not have been committed in the course of an attempted murder and would not qualify as an aggravation under c(4)(g). The State suggests that the real issue in McDougald was whether a burglary (unlawful entry with intent to commit a crime) should be the predicate felony when the actor always intended to kill the two murder victims. We agree that c(4)(g) requires more than a showing of committing another crime at roughly the same time and place as the murder. However, the statute is very broad. In McDougald, we agreed that a jury would decide at the retrial whether the defendant had committed the murder while engaged in committing the other felony. Id. at 570, 577 A. 2d 419.