Opinion ID: 2315948
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Failure to define murder

Text: Defendant contends that the trial court's failure to define murder for the jury at any time constituted plain error and violated his constitutional right to due process of law and to a reliable sentencing determination. Defendant argues that because the jury here sentenced defendant for the crime of murder, and based its decision on two prior murder convictions, without knowing the legal definition of murder, its determination is suspect. Beyond the impact that absence of a definition of murder may have had on the voir dire, see supra at 41-42, 594 A. 2d at 193-194, the failure to define murder, if error, was harmless. The determination to be made here was the appropriate sentence, not whether Biegenwald was guilty of murder. The jury was aware of the circumstances of the underlying killing and knew that those circumstances had caused another jury to find defendant guilty of murder. Because the jury was neither required nor permitted to reconsider whether defendant was guilty but rather was charged only with determining the appropriate sentence, a definition of murder should not have changed its deliberative process. Although educating potential jurors on what constitutes murder was necessary for the court and counsel to conduct an effective voir dire (because the common it depends on the circumstances answer to the question about a venireperson's views on the appropriateness of the death penalty is unintelligible in the absence of a clear understanding by that venireperson of the limited circumstances under which the death penalty may be imposed), see supra at 41-42, 594 A. 2d at 193-194, a definition of murder is not essential to the sentencing deliberation. We agree with the conclusion of the Trial Judges Committee on Capital Causes that the prior-murder-conviction aggravating factor, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(a), does not appear to require further definition. Judges Bench Manual for Capital Cases, supra, Appendix J, at J(2)-13; cf. State v. Clausell, 121 N.J. 298, 344, 580 A. 2d 221 (1990) (court on remand should define aspects of aggravating factors that are not substantially self-explanatory). The jury is not permitted to second-guess the judgment of a prior jury that has convicted a defendant of murder; it need know only that defendant has committed another murder. The murder statute specifies the evidence admissible to prove that factor: Evidence offered by the State with regard to the establishment of a prior homicide conviction [in fact, only a prior murder conviction is admissible as an aggravating factor under c(4)(a)] pursuant to paragraph (4)(a) of    subsection [c] may include the identity and age of the victim, the manner of death and the relationship, if any, of the victim to the defendant. [ N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(2)(f).] A detailed understanding of the murder statute is not necessary either to a jury's determination of the existence of the c(4)(a) factor or to its weighing of that factor in the ultimate decision on the appropriate sentence. The understanding of murder as used in our statute will be adequately conveyed by the trial court during voir dire, the underlying trial, or both. Because we reverse on other grounds, we need not decide whether this jury's understanding of murder was adequate for it to deliberate effectively.