Opinion ID: 2344370
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Defendant's post-crime behavior.

Text: Defendant contends that everything that happened after he left the Hazards' home was irrelevant because he pled guilty to the crimes themselves. The State counters that defendant's post-crime activities were relevant to the presence of aggravating and the absence of mitigating factors in the case. We agree with the State. As admitted in defendant's several statements to the police, the post-crime events are as follows. On January 18, 2001, after robbing and murdering the Hazards, burglarizing their home, and deliberately setting fire to the Hazards' home in five separate locations, defendant left the Hazards' home in Mrs. Hazard's car. Defendant was observed driving that stolen car by the husband of one the Hazards' grandchildren, a description that matched the one defendant himself gave of how he was dressed at the time. Defendant first drove to a fast-food restaurant, because he was hungry. Defendant then decided to purchase certain music to listen to while he drove Mrs. Hazards' stolen car. On his way to the shopping mall, the car stalled and defendant abandoned it. While walking the remainder of the way to the shopping mall, defendant drank and discarded a bottle of champagne he stole from the Hazards' home; defendant also discarded the keys to the car he stole from the Hazards' home. [4] Once at the shopping mall, defendant purchased new clothing and jewelry. Defendant then called for a cab to drive him around. The cab arrived and first took defendant to his mother's house. Defendant offered some of the jewelry he stole from the Hazards' home to his mother, but she rejected it; defendant then discarded that jewelry in a dumpster nearby his mother's home. [5] Defendant had the cab driver drive defendant to an Atlantic City casino hotel. Along the way, defendant had the cab driver stop so defendant could make additional purchases. Once at the casino hotel's parking garage, defendant changed into the clothes he had just purchased because the clothes he was wearing had the Hazards' blood on them. When defendant went to discard the clothes he had just removed, the cab driver requested defendant's permission to keep those clothes and, with defendant's consent, the cab driver placed the clothes in the trunk of the cab. At defendant's request, the cab driver rented three rooms in the casino hotel and assisted defendant in the purchase of alcohol, which was used to stock a bar in the room defendant was to occupy. [6] At the casino hotel, defendant exchanged a number of coins he had stolen from the Hazards into paper currency. The cab driver then drove defendant around Atlantic City, where defendant purchased marijuana and collected some friends for the party at defendant's rooms in the casino hotel. Once back at the casino hotel, defendant had sex with three or four girls[,] fell asleep, woke up in the bathtub, and climbed into bed. Meanwhile, the cab driver discussed the events of earlier that day with some of his fellow cab drivers. As a result of that discussion, the cab driver decided to report his suspicions to the police. Because the cab driver originally had picked defendant up in the vicinity of Pleasantville, New Jersey, the cab driver went to the Pleasantville Police Department, reported his suspicions concerning defendant, handed defendant's discarded clothing to the police, and told the police where defendant claimed to have discarded the keys to the Hazards' stolen car, and where defendant could be found. Based on the information provided by the cab driver, as corroborated by the crime scene and defendant's clothes, the police secured both an arrest warrant as well as a search warrant for the hotel room defendant then occupied. The police arrested defendant at his casino hotel room early the next morning. When the police woke defendant, arrested him and advised him that he was being placed under arrest for a double-murder/arson, defendant's sole concern was why his new clothes appeared to have been casually tossed in the bathtub. Defendant claims that, because he pled guilty to the underlying crimes charged, none of those proofs should have been admitted. The State contends that the majority of defendant's challenged statements were separately corroborated and, thus, inherently credible. In respect of the remaining challenged statements that defendant had sex with three or four girls and that defendant's sole concern on being awakened by the police was for the condition of his new clothesthe State asserts that those proofs provide a motive for robbery and that, in any event, no contemporaneous objection was made to the testimony concerning defendant's statements upon awakening in the police's presence. Although not all of those items of proof bear the same degree of relevance to the aggravating and mitigating factors in this case, none of them is irrelevant. Thus, evidence concerning defendant's consumption of the champagne stolen from the Hazards' home corroborated his commission of felony murder, an aggravating factor, see N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(g), and at least one of the Hazards' children confirmed that the Hazards had in their home a bottle of champagne from the same vintner as the one recovered by the police. Also, proofs of defendant's shopping spree, hotel room rentals, alcohol and drug purchases, and partying all provide motive for the robbery of Richard and Shirley Hazard. Thus, the relevance of these proofs is established. Furthermore, we find that the probative value of those proofs is not substantially outweighed by their undue prejudicial effect. We reiterate that [e]vidence claimed to be unduly prejudicial is excluded only when its `probative value is so significantly outweighed by its inherently inflammatory potential as to have a probable capacity to divert the minds of the jurors from a reasonable and fair evaluation' of the issues in the case. State v. Koskovich, supra, 168 N.J. at 486, 776 A. 2d 144 (citing State v. Thompson, 59 N.J. 396, 421, 283 A. 2d 513 (1971)). Also, `[t]he mere possibility that evidence could be prejudicial does not justify its exclusion[,]' id. (quoting State v. Morton, 155 N.J. 383, 453-54, 715 A. 2d 228 (1998), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 931, 121 S.Ct. 1380, 149 L.Ed. 2d 306 (2001)), and that [s]ome types of evidence require a very strong showing of prejudice to justify exclusion. One example is evidence of motive or intent. State v. Covell, 157 N.J. 554, 570, 725 A. 2d 675 (1999). Because we find that evidence of defendant's post-crime behavior was relevant to the aggravating and mitigating factors in this death penalty phase trial, and because we further find that its probative value is not substantially outweighed by its undue prejudicial effect, we reject defendant's challenges to the admission of the post-crime evidence.