Opinion ID: 2344370
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: tender of photographs of defendant's parents.

Text: As a means of depicting the manner in which he was raised, defendant, on three separate occasions, sought to introduce two photographs  one of his mother and one of his father  sent to him from his parents in Florida while he was incarcerated in Atlantic County awaiting trial, well after the facts that gave rise to defendant's prosecution. Defendant claims that these photographs, with the legends inscribed on the reverse of each photograph, show the parents' indifference to their son's situation. Tethering the admissibility of these photographs to the mitigating factors relevant to his upbringing, and relying on the relaxed standard of admissibility attendant to death penalty proceedings, defendant claims it was error to refuse to admit the tendered photographs. In response, the State focuses on the requirements of N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(2)(b) and asserts that the photographs were neither relevant nor reliable and, hence, the trial court properly rejected them. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(2)(b) provides, in part, that [t]he defendant may offer, without regard to the rules governing the admissibility of evidence at criminal trials, reliable evidence relevant to any of the mitigating factors. See also State v. McDougald, 120 N.J. 523, 549, 577 A. 2d 419 (1990) (In order to ensure that the jury imposes death only when the individual defendant is deserving of the punishment, the defense is allowed to introduce evidence in the penalty phase, that lies outside the rules of evidence.). By its own terms, then, that statute requires the satisfaction of a two-pronged test for admissibility of evidence tendered by a defendant in respect of mitigating factors during a death penalty phase trial: the proofs tendered must be reliable, and they must be relevant to one or more of the mitigating factors. We have described the application of N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(2)(b) as follows: [W]hen there is any doubt about admissibility of mitigating evidence, that doubt should be resolved in the defendant's favor. Evidence that fails the admissibility test under the strict rules of evidence should be admitted if relevant, and the shortcomings go to the weight of the testimony, properly relegating to the adversarial process the task of separating the wheat from the chaff. The trial court ultimately retains discretion to exclude evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by its speculative nature and the risk of confusion. [ State v. Timmendequas (I), 161 N.J. 515, 630, 737 A. 2d 55 (1999), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 858, 122 S.Ct. 136, 151 L.Ed. 2d 89 (2001) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).] Here, the trial court balanced the probative value of these photographs against their speculative nature and the attendant risk of confusion they might engender. Ultimately, the trial court excluded the photographs for the following reasons: Before the Court on additional grounds is an application to admit into evidence two photographs, one of the defendant's mother, the other of what I'll refer to as his father, there's an issue with regard to that but there's also proofs with respect to that. [18] The photographs in question were taken and provided to the defendant post-homicide and were sent to him while he was in the county jail. For [the] reasons which follow I deny their admission, and I would incorporate by reference my prior determinations in this case. Now, I will be the first to agree that the photographs are not particularly flattering. You have [defendant's mother] exhaling what? You don't know. It is obviously smoke. You have [defendant's father] pictured [with] what I previously described in the photograph[,] it is a cigar. It does not appear what is available as part of the picture to be a modified cigar in a sense of a blunt which . . . is slit open and marijuana added. It's a small relatively thin cigar that he is smoking and I don't see in the photograph [any] indication that the cigar was the subject of modification with respect to CDS. The purpose is to allow a jury to come to a conclusion with respect to the defendant's parents. It has little or no relevance in that respect because of its post-homicide nature. The jury has heard a lot of testimony about the parents, about the upbringing and the like. What they are smoking or not smoking and whether they are high or not, any period in time after the defendant's incarceration for this offense has limited relevance, highly limited relevance. I guess you could argue that the conduct continued. I would hold under the circumstances that it adds nothing and would sustain the objection. No doubt, the simpler path would have been for the trial court to admit these photographs in evidence and allow the parties to argue their relevance and probative value to the jury; defendant could have argued that the photographs depicted the indifference with which he was raised, while the State could have argued that the photographs were irrelevant because they depicted recent events, without any link to defendant's upbringing. Moreover, because the point defendant sought to make with these photographs  that his upbringing left a great deal to be desired  had been extensively covered by other proofs properly before the jury, and because the photographs themselves were inconclusive of the point defendant sought to establish, any refusal to admit those photographs was harmless. State v. Timmendequas (I), 161 N.J. at 631-32, 737 A. 2d 55.