Opinion ID: 1992848
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Exclusion of three photographs

Text: During the penalty phase of trial, Dorothy Loftin, defendant's wife, testified about five photographs of defendant and his family. Each photo depicted an event in defendant's life in 1989. The photographs included: (1) defendant in a naval uniform at his graduation from boot camp; (2) defendant, again in his naval uniform, taken after he rushed home from his naval training to tend to his six-month old daughter who had been seriously ill with croup; (3) defendant with his sister-in-law and his daughter, Danielle, just prior to defendant's move to Colorado; (4) defendant with his nephew, Clinton, at the celebration of defendant's graduation from technical school; and (5) defendant and his wife at Saint Francis Hospital in Trenton, immediately after the birth of his daughter. The State objected to defendant's motion to introduce the photographs into evidence. The State argued that the photographs were not reliable evidence establishing any mitigating factor properly before the jury, and therefore, were not admissible even under the relaxed rules of evidence. N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(2)(b). While not sustaining the State's relevancy argument, the trial court found photos three through five to be cumulative and therefore not admissible. Defendant now asserts that the trial court's ruling on the photos requires a reversal of the penalty-phase verdict because the trial court excluded relevant mitigating evidence in violation of defendant's constitutional rights. We need not decide whether the trial court's finding that photographs three through five were cumulative was erroneous. We also need not address whether the trial court improperly excluded relevant mitigating evidence by not admitting those photographs into evidence. Any error that resulted from the exclusion of those photos was harmless. To the extent the excluded photographs possibly conveyed the impression that defendant was capable of giving and receiving love as he contends, they were no different from the photographs that were admitted and certainly were not more persuasive than the vivid and obviously genuine displays of emotion from the numerous family members who testified to mutual feelings of love. [T]he question whether an error is reason for reversal depends finally upon some degree of possibility that it led to an unjust verdict. State v. Macon, 57 N.J. 325, 335, 273 A. 2d 1 (1971). The exclusion of these photos presented no real possibility of an unjust result. We also find defendant's argument that the trial court's rulings on evidence were inconsistent and strongly biased in favor of the State to be without merit.