Opinion ID: 1473632
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Did the trial court commit Gerald error by failing to define the difference between intent-to-kill murder and SBI murder in its jury charge?

Text: The Legislature amended the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice in 1979, c. 178, to include two forms of purposeful or knowing murder. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(1) and (2) (criminal homicide constitutes murder when the actor purposely or knowingly causes death or serious bodily injury resulting in death). (Felony murder is a third form of murder. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(3).) As we explained in State v. Gerald, supra, 113 N.J. at 77-78, 549 A. 2d 792, when the death penalty was superimposed on the Code of Criminal Justice in 1982, no specific reference was made to which form of knowing and purposeful murder under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3 would be death-eligible. However, the legislative history of the act helped us determine that it was only the intentional killing that was to be subject to the death penalty. Id. at 89-90, 549 A. 2d 792. We thus ruled in Gerald that if required by the evidence a jury must consider, in the alternative, whether defendant purposely or knowingly caused death, or purposely or knowingly caused serious bodily injury that resulted in death. Only the former offense renders a defendant death-eligible. Id. at 69-70, 549 A. 2d 792. In State v. Dixon, 125 N.J. 223, 253, 593 A. 2d 266 (1991), we said: Under our system of justice only a jury that knows the difference between the two forms of murder and the question that it must [answer] may decide who shall be sentenced to death. Defendant contends that the jury charge did not meet those standards. The charge joined together the two forms of murder without clearly distinguishing them. For example, in its charge the court said: Now, a person is guilty of murder if he purposely causes death or serious bodily injury resulting in death or knowingly causes death or serious bodily injury resulting in death. In order for you to find the defendant guilty of murder, the State is required to prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt, one, that the defendant caused [Ron Ellison's] death or serious bodily injury resulting in [Ron Ellison's] death and two, that the defendant did so purposely or knowingly.    [A] person who causes another's death does so purposely when it is the person's conscious object to cause death or serious bodily injury resulting in death. A person who causes another's death does so knowingly when the person is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct would cause death or serious bodily injury resulting in death. The nature of the purpose or knowledge with which the defendant acted towards [Ron Ellison] is a question of fact for you the jury to decide. That charge separates the mental states of knowledge and purpose, not the mental intents to kill or seriously injure. Later, the court charged the jury: If you determine that the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant purposely or knowingly caused death or serious bodily injury resulting in death you must find the defendant guilty of murder. Conscious of the Gerald issue, the court in reviewing the jury's verdict sheet at the conclusion of the charge, explained that there were two verdicts of murder: [G]uilty of murder for purposely or knowingly causing death by his own conduct or guilty of murder for purposely or knowingly causing serious bodily injury resulting in death. Check off one of those. However, neither the instructions nor the verdict sheet explained that only the first form of murder was death-eligible. Defendant contends that this reference to the verdict sheet, unaccompanied by a reinstruction that the jury must so find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, diluted the State's burden of proof. We are satisfied that, taken in its entirety, the court's charge always emphasized the State's burden to prove those elements (that trigger death-eligibility) unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt. It stated that the burden of proving the defendant guilty of the offenses charged here beyond a reasonable doubt is always on the State and that burden never shifts. The jury understood its role in choosing the murder verdict. Among the first comments made in general instructions to the jury panels were these: [U]nder our law, only certain murders are punishable by death.    A defendant convicted of murder is subject to the death penalty only if he purposely or knowingly caused the death of the victim by his own conduct or as an accomplice procured the commission of the offense by paying or promising to pay anything of a pecuniary value. A defendant who is convicted of knowingly causing serious bodily injury resulting in death is not subject to the death penalty. Stated differently, a defendant who intended to inflict only serious bodily injury and death unintentionally results is guilty of murder, but is not subject to the death penalty, and, similarly, a person convicted of felony murder is not subject to a death penalty. Every juror was asked if he or she understood the concept of a presumption of innocence and accepted that the State bore the burden of proof on every element of the charge. Defense counsel did ask the trial court to indicate in its instructions that the purposeful or knowing murder verdict was the capital-murder verdict. Counsel could, however, point to no language in Gerald that required that instruction. The prosecutor agreed that some reference in the verdict sheet might be warranted. The court seemed hesitant to do so because it might appear to the jury that it was thereby making a decision on the penalty, although it recognized that it could give the jury a cautionary instruction. In the end, the court was satisfied that we would be able to tell from the verdict that the jury checks off whether it's capital or non-capital. The point could have been more clearly stated in our Dixon decision. In future cases, whether required by constitutional compulsion or not, courts should explain to juries the difference between the forms of murder submitted for their verdict (e.g., where appropriate, murder as principal or accomplice, or as accomplice who has given value to procure the killing), that some are capital and others are not, and that they must agree unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt on those elements of their verdict that trigger death eligibility. Under the principles of State v. Mejia, 141 N.J. 475, 662 A. 2d 308 (1995) (also decided today), and State v. Brown, 138 N.J. 481, 651 A. 2d 19 (1994), courts must instruct juries that to convict one of murder that is not death-eligible they need not unanimously agree on the form of murder, provided that they agree unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of murder. But this is not a case of a reviewing court with an uncertainty about the basis for the jury's verdict. Nor is this a case in which the jury convicted defendant of murder without specifying on which of the two distinguishable bases he was convicted. See State v. Gerald, supra, 113 N.J. at 92, 549 A. 2d 792. We have a separate, unanimous verdict that the defendant by his own conduct knowingly or purposely caused the death of Ron Ellison. Even when we could not discern the basis for the jury's murder verdict (intent to kill or SBI), we have not reversed on Gerald grounds absent a rational basis for the jury to find an intent merely to cause serious bodily injury. See State v. Bey, 129 N.J. 557, 581, 610 A. 2d 814 (1992) (finding failure to give Gerald charge harmless, even when aggravated manslaughter had been charged, because evidence that defendant [who stomped and strangled victim] intended to cause death or knew that death was practically certain to occur [was] so compelling as to exclude the possibility that he possessed a less culpable state of mind); State v. Rose, 120 N.J. 61, 63-64, 576 A. 2d 235 (1990) (holding that one who fired shotgun into police officer's stomach at close range had to be practically certain the shot would cause death); State v. Hightower, 120 N.J. 378, 413-14, 577 A. 2d 99 (1990) (holding that shooting victim in chest, neck, and head supports a finding of intent to kill). Compare State v. Clausell, 121 N.J. 298, 313-16, 580 A. 2d 221 (1990) (finding evidence that defendant, aiming low, shot victim through door could rationally support finding that defendant intended only serious bodily injury); State v. Pennington, 119 N.J. 547, 560-65, 575 A. 2d 816 (1990) (finding evidence that defendant reflexively fired gun when victim threw a glass at him was sufficient to warrant Gerald charge). In this case, the jury returned a separate verdict sheet that found the defendant guilty of knowingly and intentionally causing death, the principal theme of the defense was insanity or diminished capacity, and no rational jury could have found that one who shoots a handcuffed victim in the back of the neck would not have been practically certain that death would result. Therefore, we find that any failure to describe more fully the difference between intent-to-kill murder and SBI murder was harmless. The New Jersey Constitution was amended in 1992 to permit capital punishment of a defendant who intended only serious bodily injury resulting in death without offending the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the New Jersey Constitution. N.J. Const. art. 1, ¶ 12. The Legislature amended the Criminal Code to reflect that change. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3i. Because this homicide took place before those constitutional and statutory amendments, the Gerald distinction applied to this trial. A capital charge without distinction between the two forms of murder under our statute (intentional or SBI) would not offend the New Jersey Constitution. Courts and counsel formulating charges to juries in future cases, however, should clarify that the mental state required for a capital conviction based on SBI murder should be consonant with the federal constitutional mandate in Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed. 2d 127 (1987), that the actor be recklessly indifferent to whether the result of the conduct would be death. State v. Gerald, supra, 113 N.J. at 74-75, 549 A. 2d 792.