Opinion ID: 1969802
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the interrelationship of post-conviction relief, the capital punishment act, and habeas corpus

Text: This is the first appeal taken to this Court from the denial of a post-conviction relief application seeking to set aside a murder conviction and death sentence imposed pursuant to this State's Capital Punishment Act. L. 1982, c. 111 (codified at N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3). The voluminous size of the petition and its constituent documents  including a forty-five volume appendix and fifteen volume supplemental appendix, together encompassing in excess of 8000 pages  combined with the 548 claims of error on which it relies, presents the Court with a gargantuan appellate record. The issues presented initially were addressed in the Public Defender's 215 page primary brief and answered by the Attorney General's primary brief of comparable dimension. The Public Defender filed a supplemental brief, at the Court's request, consisting of 250 pages and accompanied by an eleven volume index setting forth record and brief citations in support of each of the post-conviction relief claims. The State's responding supplemental brief comprises 244 pages. The Court acknowledges the enormous effort and professional dedication reflected by the Public Defender's submissions, as well as the burden it imposed on the remaining resources of that office. Similarly, the Court acknowledges the comparable effort and dedication reflected by the Attorney General's submissions. An appeal based on so vast a record and implicating so many distinct issues obviously imposes an enormous institutional burden on this Court, diverting time and resources from the Court's other adjudicative and administrative responsibilities. We know that defendant faces the death penalty. Nevertheless, we question both the wisdom and the necessity for so massive a presentation. We assume that the vastness of the petition and its supporting documents reflects strategic considerations. We infer that one of those strategic considerations was the desire to avoid the very procedural bars to the petition imposed by the trial court pursuant to Rule 3:22-4 and -5. Rule 3:22-4 essentially bars all grounds for post-conviction relief that reasonably could have been raised in a prior proceeding. Rule 3:22-5 bars all grounds for relief that previously were adjudicated on the merits. Presumably, the Public Defender's office reasoned that dividing the post-conviction relief claims into discrete and narrow components would dissuade the post-conviction relief court from categorically imposing the Rule 3:22-4 and -5 procedural bars, and would add weight to the argument that the cumulative effect of all claims required that the petition be granted. That strategy was unsuccessful in the post-conviction relief court, and we intend that our disposition of this appeal emphatically will discourage the artificial fragmentation of claims for post-conviction relief purposes, even in capital cases. Such fragmentation elevates form over substance, and unduly burdens the litigants, the post-conviction relief court, and this Court. Post-conviction relief issues should be categorized broadly but coherently, and to the extent necessary illustrated by pertinent examples. No valid purpose is served when every minute example of trial counsel's alleged ineffectiveness is offered as a separate ground for post-conviction relief. We do not underestimate the potential significance of a post-conviction relief strategy that is designed to avoid the imposition of procedural bars to post-conviction relief. In State v. Preciose, 129 N.J. 451, 464-78, 609 A. 2d 1280 (1992), we explored in detail the effect of the federal practice to deny habeas corpus review of state court judgments that rest on adequate or independent state grounds, whether substantive or procedural. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 81-87, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2503-07, 53 L.Ed. 2d 594, 604-08 (1977). In Harris v. Reed, the Supreme Court established the principle that a state court's imposition of a state procedural bar would not preclude federal habeas review unless the state court's disposition expressly stated its reliance on the state procedural bar. 489 U.S. 255, 266, 109 S.Ct. 1038, 1045, 103 L.Ed. 2d 308, 319 (1989). In decisions subsequent to Harris, however, the Court clarified that the Harris presumption against finding a procedural default `applies only ... where a federal court has good reason to question whether there is an independent and adequate state ground for the decision.' Preciose, supra, 129 N.J. at 471, 609 A. 2d 1280 (quoting Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 739, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 2559, 115 L.Ed. 2d 640, 662 (1991)). Thus, defendant's efforts to avoid the procedural bar imposed by the post-conviction relief court with respect to 374 claims can be understood in part as a strategy designed to obtain substantive review of his claims in federal habeas corpus proceedings. Another factor that may have influenced defendant to present such an extensive number of individual post-conviction relief claims is the exhaustion doctrine, pursuant to which a state prisoner must normally exhaust state judicial remedies before a federal court will entertain that prisoner's petition for habeas corpus. Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 275, 92 S.Ct. 509, 512, 30 L.Ed. 2d 438, 443 (1971). Codified by Congress in 1948, see 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the exhaustion doctrine contemplates that federal claims have been fairly presented to the state courts. Thus, a federal court should inquire whether, on the record and argument before it, the [state court] ... had a fair opportunity to consider the ... claim and to correct the asserted constitutional defect in respondent's conviction. Picard, supra, 404 U.S. at 276, 92 S.Ct. at 513, 30 L.Ed. 2d at 444. In Rose v. Lundy, the Supreme Court held that the exhaustion principle mandated that a federal district court dismiss a petition for a writ of habeas corpus that contained both exhausted and unexhausted claims for relief. 455 U.S. 509, 510, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1199, 71 L.Ed. 2d 379, 382 (1982). The Court offered this guidance to potential habeas litigants: before you bring any claims to federal court, be sure that you first have taken each one to state court. Id. at 520, 102 S.Ct. at 1204, 71 L.Ed. 2d at 388. Despite the preclusive effect of the exhaustion doctrine, it does not mandate presentation to a state court of every claim that conceivably might be asserted in the anticipated habeas petition, but only presentation to the state court of claims intended to be asserted in the habeas petition. Selectivity in the presentation of claims on post-conviction relief is not precluded by the exhaustion rule. If certain claims are obviously without merit and highly unlikely to succeed in the habeas petition, no purpose is served or interest advanced by including those claims in support of either the state post-conviction relief petition or the federal habeas petition. Thus, the exhaustion doctrine neither requires nor excuses the indiscriminate assertion of meritless claims in a post-conviction relief petition. The principle bears repeating that post-conviction relief proceedings are not a substitute for direct appeal. State v. Cerbo, 78 N.J. 595, 605, 397 A. 2d 671 (1979). As our opinion discloses, we find numerous claims to be totally lacking in merit. Apart from defense counsel's purpose in avoiding the imposition of a procedural bar, we consider the inclusion of many such claims to constitute an unjustified burden on the post-conviction relief process. Based on our disposition of the procedural bar issue, we anticipate that that imposition will not be repeated in future post-conviction relief proceedings, even in capital cases. In State v. Mitchell, 126 N.J. 565, 589, 601 A. 2d 198 (1992), we emphasized that the procedural bars contained in the rules governing post-conviction relief are imposed for a purpose. Although not endors[ing] their rigid, mechanical application, we expressed our expectation that the procedural rules and their exceptions will be conscientiously applied to the unique circumstances of each case.... Ibid. In the unique circumstances of this case, however, we question the wisdom and the practicality of the PCR court's broad-brush application of the Rule 3:22-4 and -5 procedural bars. In view of the substantial number of claims dismissed under Rule 3:22-5's admonition that a prior adjudication upon the merits of any ground for relief is conclusive ..., a question fairly raised by defendant is whether the adjudication by this Court on direct appeal or proportionality review concerned the same ground for relief now asserted in the post-conviction relief petition. Similarly, dismissal of claims on the ground that they could reasonably have been raised on direct appeal, see R. 3:22-4, raises the question whether the additional facts disclosed in the post-conviction relief record sufficiently augment the scope of such claims to preclude the conclusion that a substantially similar claim could have been advanced on the basis of the trial record. The issue of reliance on the procedural bars is made more complex by the recognition that the claims now raised invariably are as readily resolved on their merits as by application of the procedural bar. We illustrate the problem by considering the PCR court's disposition of post-conviction relief claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel in the context of the ineffectiveness issues raised on direct appeal and our disposition of those issues. The PCR court essentially relied on this Court's disposition of the ineffectiveness challenge asserted on direct appeal, Marshall I, supra, 123 N.J. at 164-65, 586 A. 2d 85, noting that this contention was raised before the Supreme Court on the appeal, and concluding: [E]xcept for the claims not dismissed it may be said that all claims are barred under R. 3:22-5 as having been previously adjudicated. If any claims are viewed as not having been previously adjudicated because not raised in specific terms on the appeal, then the claims are barred under R. 3:22-4. However, the specific allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel asserted in defendant's direct appeal brief include only a fraction of the claims asserted on post-conviction relief. In his direct appeal brief defendant raised only the following ineffectiveness claims relating to the guilt phase: Specifically, Mr. Marshall was prejudiced by counsel's failure to pursue the possibility that Maria Marshall was sitting up and awake when shot through cross-examination of the medical examiner, independent investigation and summation; his failure to call his tire expert to testify about the inconclusiveness of the State's chemist's findings, his failure to request an adequate remedy for the tire's destruction and failure to object to the prosecutor's summation remarks about the tire; his failure to call as witnesses the individuals flagged down for aid by Marshall just after the murder; counsel's failure to attempt to obtain the September 6th medical report for Mr. Marshall through N.J.S.A. 2A:81-18, et seq.; counsel's failure to object to the prosecutor's blatantly improper questions of Oakleigh DeCarlo; his withdrawal of his objection to Maria Marshall's statement, What's this for?; his failure to object to Zillah Hahn's inadmissible hearsay testimony discrediting defense witness Paul Rakoczy; his failure to seek a remedy for the prosecutor's informing the jury and relying on the fact of Kraushaar's father's death; counsel's failure to object to most of the prosecutor's summation; and counsel's failure to request an opportunity to interview McKinnon upon learning he placed a call to Cumber after testifying.... The cumulative effect of the foregoing errors was a trial that was fundamentally unfair and unreliable from start to finish. Responding to the specific allegations of ineffectiveness in defendant's direct appeal brief, this Court observed: The contention that defendant was denied effective assistance of counsel in the guilt phase is utterly without merit. Defense counsel, a certified criminal trial attorney, see Rule 1:39, provided a zealous and conscientious defense of his client throughout this protracted trial. Counsel was obviously well-prepared, thoroughly familiar with the record, and persistently and forcefully advocated his client's interests throughout the guilt-phase proceedings. The examples of the deficiencies relied on by defendant represent no more than a fraction of the strategic decisions with which counsel was confronted in the course of this lengthy and sharply-contested proceeding. With hindsight, it is not difficult to suggest different trial strategies that counsel might have pursued, but the law is settled that [i]n assessing the adequacy of counsel's performance, `strategic choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts relevant to plausible options are virtually unchallengeable.' Burger v. Kemp, 483 U.S. 776, 819, 107 S.Ct. 3114, 3139, 97 L.Ed. 2d 638, 673 (1987) (Powell, J., dissenting) (quoting Strickland [v. Washington ], 466 U.S. [668,] 690, 104 S.Ct. [2052,] 2066, 80 L.Ed. 2d [674,] 695 [(1984)]). Nor can the quality of counsel's effectiveness fairly be assessed by focusing on a handful of issues, while ignoring the totality of counsel's performance in the context of the State's compelling evidence of defendant's guilt. Based on our close scrutiny of the entire record, we reject defendant's contention that counsel's performance was deficient under the Strickland/Fritz standard. [ Id. at 164-65, 586 A. 2d 85.] We cannot accurately discern from the PCR court's abbreviated disposition of the post-conviction relief ineffectiveness claims the extent to which the court simply accorded preclusive effect to this Court's disposition of the issue on direct appeal. Although our resolution of the issue on direct appeal reflected our familiarity with the entire record, our disposition should not have been understood to extend beyond the issues specifically raised in defendant's direct appeal brief. Our direct appeal opinion reflects our impression, based on the record, that trial counsel was skilled, diligent, and thorough, but our disposition could not fairly be understood to encompass an evaluation on the merits of numerous claims of ineffectiveness of which this Court was then completely unaware. Scant caselaw exists on the question of whether a prior adjudication of an issue should be considered an adjudication on the same ground as that asserted in support of a subsequent post-conviction relief claim. In State v. Bontempo, 170 N.J. Super. 220, 406 A. 2d 203 (Law Div. 1979), the trial court in a murder prosecution employed an unusual and unauthorized procedure, permitting the defendant to make an unsworn statement before the jury after the conclusion of the summations by the attorneys. Following the defendant's statement, the prosecutor was allowed a second summation during which he referred to the defendant's failure to deny specifically his complicity in the crimes charged. On direct appeal, the defendant argued that his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent was violated by the unusual procedure authorized by the trial judge, including allowing the prosecutor to rebut his statement, thus denying him his right to a fair trial. The defendant's argument on direct appeal was held to be clearly without merit. Id. at 234, 406 A. 2d 203. Noting that he did not expressly articulate the manner in which the procedure was said to be violative of the Fifth Amendment [in his appellate brief], and finding that the thrust of his direct appeal argument was that the structure of the process was the root of the Fifth Amendment violation, Judge Baime ruled that the defendant's post-conviction claim of a Fifth Amendment violation resulting from the prosecutor's rebuttal to defendant's statement had not been raised on direct appeal. Ibid. Thus, Rule 3:22-5 did not bar petitioner's claim. Judge Baime explained: Under these circumstances, it would be unfair to bar defendant from advancing the Fifth Amendment claim presented in his petition. To be sure, the argument advanced here and that presented in defendant's Appellate Division brief are similar. Nevertheless, the United States Supreme Court has held in a somewhat related context that federal judicial review of constitutional questions on habeas corpus should be denied only where it is clear that the identical issues or substantially equivalent arguments were not presented initially in the state courts. See Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 92 S.Ct. 509, 30 L.Ed. 2d 438 (1971). See also United States ex rel. Trantino v. Hatrack, 563 F. 2d 86 (3d Cir.1977), cert. den. 435 U.S. 928, 98 S.Ct. 1499, 55 L.Ed. 2d 524 (1978); Zicarelli v. Gray, 543 F. 2d 466 (3d Cir.1976). By analogy, that rule should be applied with equal force here. Preclusion of consideration of an argument presented in post-conviction relief proceedings should be effected only if the issue raised is identical or substantially equivalent to that adjudicated previously on direct appeal. Applying that standard, defendant's oblique reference in his Appellate Division brief to the prosecutor's rebuttal to his unsworn statement should not bar judicial resolution of the issue presented in his petition for post-conviction relief. [ Bontempo, supra, 170 N.J. Super. at 234, 406 A. 2d 203.] Judge Baime then rejected the defendant's post-conviction relief claim on the merits, concluding that he had waived his Fifth Amendment right by electing to address the jury. Id. at 238-49, 406 A. 2d 203. Similarly, in State v. Rosen, 110 N.J. Super. 216, 265 A. 2d 152 (App.Div. 1969), aff'd, 56 N.J. 89, 265 A. 2d 142 (1970), an issue raised on direct appeal of the defendant's burglary conviction was whether the fact that his retained trial counsel had been appointed to a judgeship before the trial deprived him of his opportunity to be represented by counsel of his choice, a contention rejected by the Appellate Division. In a post-conviction relief application, the defendant for the first time asserted that he had permitted the substitute trial counsel to represent him against his will because counsel had warned him that his bail would be revoked if he requested an adjournment to seek new counsel. Although the PCR court dismissed the post-conviction relief petition, the Appellate Division majority concluded that an evidentiary hearing on the claim should have been held, but that the failure to do so was harmless. Id. at 219, 265 A. 2d 152. Dissenting, Judge Conford concluded that the lack of an evidentiary hearing was reversible error because the claim asserted on post-conviction relief had not previously been adjudicated: The decision of the Appellate Division on the appeal from the conviction did not decide the issue presented to the post-conviction court. On that appeal the record as it then stood precluded any determination of more than whether the trial transcript demonstrated deprivation of defendant's right to counsel of his choice. While the remarks of the trial judge were of a coercive tenor, the record seemingly demonstrated unequivocal acquiescence by defendant in the directions of the court. Defendant did not, nor could he properly, argue to the appellate court on that appeal that Mr. Kmiec's representations to him during the recess combined with the trial court's initial strictures made his agreement to go to trial involuntary, since the former facts were not in the record then before the court. Consequently the adjudication in the prior appeal was not a prior adjudication upon the merits of the specific grounds for relief asserted in the instant post-conviction petition, within a proper application of R.R. 3:10A-5. [ Id. at 223, 265 A. 2d 152 (Conford, J.A.D., dissenting).] The question whether a ground for relief in a post-conviction relief petition constitutes the same ground as was adjudicated on direct appeal takes on added significance because it implicates the strict application of the exhaustion doctrine by federal courts considering habeas applications. Thus, in Santana v. Fenton, 685 F. 2d 71 (1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1115, 103 S.Ct. 750, 74 L.Ed. 2d 968 (1983), the Third Circuit rejected the defendant's habeas petition on exhaustion grounds. The court concluded that the defendant's habeas contention that the state PCR court's refusal to reopen the case had denied him his constitutional right to testify on his own behalf had not been asserted before the state courts. On direct appeal, the defendant had argued only that the trial court had abused its discretion in refusing to allow his testimony. Relying on Bontempo, supra, the Third Circuit concluded that the argument presented to the state courts was not the substantial equivalent of the constitutional argument he now poses in federal court.... Santana, supra, 685 F. 2d at 75. Similarly, in Gibson v. Scheidemantel, the Third Circuit also denied the defendant's habeas petition on exhaustion grounds, concluding that [t]o the extent that Gibson's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel is now considered by him to encompass also a contention that trial counsel failed to protect his juvenile status, that aspect of his claim [is not a ground for relief that has been] previously adjudicated. 805 F. 2d 135, 140 n. 2 (1986); see also Zicarelli v. Gray, 543 F. 2d 466 (3d Cir.1976) (en banc) (holding that defendant's habeas claim that jury had not represented a fair cross-section of community was not fairly presented to state courts that considered and adjudicated other jury-related issues). We do not imply that the federal exhaustion doctrine constitutes a mirror image of the Rule 3:25-5 bar based on prior adjudications on the merits, but simply observe that both doctrines seek to vindicate the State's interest in the finality of its criminal judgments. Moreover, both doctrines are applied on the basis of an inquiry into whether a ground for relief has fairly been adjudicated by or presented to the state courts. That potential interrelationship suggests that we modify our dicta in Preciose, supra, when we observed in a different but related context that the use of post-conviction relief procedural bars should not be shaped or influenced in the slightest by the federal court's restrictive standards for allowing or disallowing habeas review. 129 N.J. at 477, 609 A. 2d 1280. Obviously, neither state nor federal interests would be served by so broad an application of our procedural bars as to deny a defendant post-conviction relief on the ground that a claim previously had been adjudicated and, as a result of that ruling, also preclude habeas relief because of the defendant's inability to satisfy the exhaustion doctrine. Moreover, the PCR court's blanket reliance on Rule 3:22-4 as a ground for dismissal of all dismissed ineffectiveness claims not previously adjudicated appears to be overbroad. In its letter brief of April 26, 1994, to the post-conviction relief court, defendant offered numerous examples of ineffective assistance of counsel claims neither specifically adjudicated on direct appeal nor based solely on facts and evidence contained in the trial record. In addition, numerous items of documentary evidence were obtained for the first time in the post-conviction relief proceeding, and ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims implicating those documents cannot fairly be characterized as claims that could have been raised on direct appeal. Finally, we noted in Mitchell, supra, that Rule 3:22-4(c) has been interpreted to allow courts to consider petitions for post-conviction relief when the defendant alleges that his constitutional rights were seriously infringed during the conviction proceedings. 126 N.J. at 585-86, 601 A. 2d 198. Because defendant's post-conviction relief petition relies heavily on the contention that trial counsel's ineffectiveness deprived him of his constitutional rights, aggressive application of the Rule 3:22-4 bar to those claims appears to be unwarranted. Our familiarity with the record and the proceedings on direct appeal facilitates our disposition on the merits of virtually all of defendant's post-conviction relief claims. To eliminate the concerns about ambiguous state court rulings addressed in Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 802-04, 111 S.Ct. 2590, 2594-95, 115 L.Ed. 2d 706, 716-17 (1991), we expressly overrule the post-conviction relief court's reliance on the Rule 3:22-4 and -5 procedural bars to dismiss defendant's claims. We are satisfied that many, if not most, of those rulings overstate the effect of our direct appeal opinion or underestimate the significance of the enhanced factual basis for the claims asserted in the PCR petition. Moreover, the question whether a claim buttressed by added facts fairly could have been raised on direct appeal often involves an analysis that is peculiarly subjective. Ironically, in most instances the analysis required for disposition on the merits is less intricate than that required to decide whether a claim should be precluded because of a procedural bar. Moreover, a state court adjudication on the merits of a federal constitutional claim generally assures that that claim will qualify for federal habeas review, and as we stated in Preciose, supra, we do not deem federal habeas review an undesirable intrusion on our adjudications. 129 N.J. at 475, 609 A. 2d 1280. That observation has special force in the context of habeas corpus petitions to review death sentences imposed pursuant to our Capital Punishment Act. Finally, we reiterate that when meritorious issues are raised that require analysis and explanation, our traditions of comprehensive justice will best be served by decisions that reflect thoughtful and thorough consideration and disposition of substantive contentions. Id. at 477-78, 609 A. 2d 1280.