Opinion ID: 2265144
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Evidence Concerning Impact of Crime on Victim's Spouse

Text: Defendant argues that both the guilt and penalty phases of his trial were tainted by irrelevant and highly prejudicial statements concerning the impact of his crimes on Marilyn Flax. Defendant asserts that throughout the trial, the prosecutor made emotionally-charged comments regarding Mrs. Flax's reaction to the kidnapping and murder of her husband. In addition, defendant argues that during her testimony Mrs. Flax compounded the effect of prosecutor's remarks with statements focusing on her terrorization. As a result, defendant argues, jury deliberations in both phases of the trial were improperly influenced by the effect of defendant's crime on his victim's family. In support of his argument, defendant points to several instances during the trial. In her opening statement, the prosecutor stated: When Marilyn Flax comes in here and tells you what happens [sic] to her, she doesn't leave this courtroom and leave the role behind because you're going to be hearing about what John Martini did to the life of Marilyn Flax and what he did to her husband, Irving Flax, on January 23rd, 1989. Her statement continued with a description of the home life of the Flaxes: I'm sure most of you don't even remember what most of you were doing on January 23rd, 1989. It was a Monday. For the Flax family, it started out like any other Monday except that Marilyn Flax, who is known professionally as Marilyn Winters  she runs an employment agency in Fort Lee, New Jersey  she wasn't going to work that day. She normally goes to work on a Monday but her son, Brian, was home sick from school so she stayed home with him. Her husband, Irving, a man in his fifties, was a supervisor of a factory in Secaucus. He left for work that morning and she kissed him good-bye and that was the last time she saw him alive because 10 o'clock that morning things began to change drastically in the life of Marilyn Flax   . The jury was also told that it could not imagine what Mrs. Flax felt like during the kidnapping but that it would hear her testify as to what she did, how she tried to get her thoughts together, how she wasn't even able to bring herself to the reality of this happening. The prosecutor further remarked: While she goes to the bank and comes back from the bank, all along terrified because she doesn't know how many people are involved in this, who's watching her, where they are   .         You will also, and you can draw this conclusion, see the tremendous strain [sic] this woman was able to summon up to keep him in conversation   .         Now, of course, she's terrified   .         She's terrified on the phone   .         The next morning she gets the phone call that she's been dreading   . During her guilt-phase summation, the prosecutor referred to the chain of events that forever changed the lives of Irving and Marilyn Flax. The prosecutor returned to that theme during her penalty-phase summation when she pointed out that a defense expert's report had not mentioned any regret defendant may have felt for what happened to Irving Flax or what happened to his family. During her testimony Marilyn Flax made several references to the fear she had experienced during the kidnapping as well as defendant's threats against the lives of herself and her husband. And he said, I'm warning you, call the cops you, [sic] better get the money, and you better try to get the money or both of you are dead.         I was terrified out of my mind. He told me he was gonna kill me if I called the police. He kept saying it over and over again to me, I was very frightened   .         From there I called my partner, Barbara Rose, and I told her the call that I got, that a man threatened that he had kidnaped my husband, and he was gonna kill me if I called the police and if I didn't get the money and I said I'm terrified   .         Over and over and over again he kept threatening my life and my husband's   .         I also knew that I needed to see him badly, I needed to see the man who threatened me and my husband. Mrs. Flax also volunteered information concerning her husband's state of mind during his ordeal. During his third telephone call with Mrs. Flax, she testified, he was screaming and crying. Finally, when asked to identify the man she saw in the parking lot of the Forum Diner, she said, One, two, the third man there looking at me right now was the man who killed my husband. The court sustained defense counsel's objection to that remark and gave a curative instruction. Other than at the time of Mrs. Flax's identification of defendant, defense counsel did not object to any of the disputed testimony. He now argues, however, that Mrs. Flax's state of terror was irrelevant and that the prosecutor's remarks were an attempt to divert the jury from the material facts to the worthiness of the victim and his family. Although defendant admits that some reference to Mrs. Flax had to be made, as she was a prosecution witness who testified to incontestably relevant facts, he contends that the prosecutor's remarks took Mrs. Flax's testimony beyond the point of relevancy. We are satisfied that the disputed statements are not impermissible victim-impact comments. Mrs. Flax was a key player in the kidnapping. Her testimony and the prosecutor's summation of that testimony reflect the fears and terrors that Mrs. Flax had continually expressed from the inception of the kidnapping. Fears she had expressed, prior to meeting the prosecutor, in her taped telephone conversation of January 23rd with Martini: [Mrs. Flax:] Why, can I talk to him? You don't know what you put me through, today  [Martini:] I didn't ask you that. [Mrs. Flax:] Tony, I'm going through such hell, you don't know.         [Mrs. Flax:] Tony, you don't know what I went through. I got some of the money. [Martini:] What? [Mrs. Flax:] I got some of the money, Tony, but I'm going crazy. I'm so nervous. I'm sick. [Martini:] Well, how much  well, where's the money then? [Mrs. Flax:] What? [Martini:] Where is the rest of the money? Mrs. Flax: I got the money you asked me. [Martini:] Okay. That's all I want to know. Mrs. Flax: All right. But you don't know what I'm going through. I told you. I'm a sick woman. My son is sick.         [Mrs. Flax:] But what, Tony, I don't know what you want me to do. I'm just so upset. [Martini:] I just want the money. [Mrs. Flax:] What? [Martini:] I want the money. I'll meet you. Give me the money, and I'll let  I'll take  I'll go back and release him, but if the cops come  [Mrs. Flax:]  Tony, I promise  Tony, I promised you. I said there'd be no cops. All I want is my husband.         [Mrs. Flax:] The back of the diner. I don't want to meet you, Tony, I'm like scared. Can I just drop the money some place? [Martini:] I have no reason to be here. I'll tell you what. I don't know what to tell you. [Mrs. Flax:] All right. [Martini:] I'm not going to hurt you. Believe me. I'm not going to hurt him. [Mrs. Flax:] Can I throw it at you or something out the window, please don't come near me. I'm terrified.         [Mrs. Flax:] I'm so sick. You don't know what you're putting me through. [Martini:] Don't call the police. [Mrs. Flax:] I'm not calling the police. I want my husband. I don't want you to call my house. I want you to leave me alone. I'm not used to these things.         [Mrs. Flax:]  just don't come near my car, because I'm very nervous. [Martini:] I won't come near you. I will stay away from you, and when you see me wave, then then I will start walking, and when I see you open the door, put that on the floor, I will just stop there and wait, and you just drive off and go home. As soon as you get home, he will be calling you within five minutes after you're home. INAUDIBLE. I can't  I don't know when you're going to be home. Mrs. Flax's fears and terrors were not induced by the prosecutor's planning or coaching, but by the defendant in order to secure money for the release of Irving Flax. Her acts and fears were an essential component of the total integrated criminal plan to kidnap the victim. Defendant relied on her terror to effectuate the kidnapping. Likewise, her husband's screaming and crying was intended to make her comply with defendant's instructions and demands. In order to present a complete picture of the crime with which defendant had been charged, Mrs. Flax's testimony was crucial and properly admitted. We recognized that prosecutorial comments that tend to overemphasize the character of the victim or the impact of the murder on the victim's family are improper in Williams II, 113 N.J. at 448, 550 A. 2d 1172, ( Williams II) and Pennington, supra, 119 N.J. 547, 575 A. 2d 816. Such comments, unrelated to the proofs of the case, tend to enflame the jury, creating the possibility that their deliberations will focus not on the guilt or innocence of the defendant but on other impermissible considerations. Here, however, the prosecutor's comments closely tracked the relevant testimony of Mrs. Flax. They are very different from the prosecutorial comments that painted a glowing picture of the sterling character of the victim that we held impermissible in Williams II, supra. There, the contested testimony concerned extraneous information about, among other things, the marriage plans and church-related activities of a young rape/murder victim. 113 N.J. at 446, 550 A. 2d 1172. For example, the prosecutor related to the jury that the victim had `so much to live for,' that she was `beautiful, educated, religious, a member of her church choir.' Id. at 453, 550 A. 2d 1172. In her concluding remarks the prosecutor stated `[s]he didn't deserve to die as she did, naked, ravaged, in agony, and calling to Jesus for help. Jesus help me, Jesus help me.' Ibid. We held that our law does not regard a crime committed against a particularly virtuous person as more heinous than one committed against a victim whose moral qualities are perhaps less noteworthy or apparent. The law exists to protect all persons equally. Id. at 450, 550 A. 2d 1172. Because the contested passage contain[ed] nothing that would aid the jury in determining the defendant's guilt or innocence, we determined that its admission was improper. Id. at 452, 550 A. 2d 1172. Similarly, in Pennington, supra, the prosecutor consistently emphasized the character and background of the victim, as well as the impact of her death on her family. 119 N.J. at 566, 575 A. 2d 816. The disputed testimony included an account by the victim's daughter of the time she spent with her mother on the day of the shooting. We likewise found those comments to be improper. Id. at 570, 575 A. 2d 816; see also State v. Hightower, supra, 120 N.J. at 411, 577 A. 2d 99 (holding prosecutor's comment that [h]ad it not been for [the defendant], ladies and gentlemen, [the victim] would be twenty-seven years old today. Today is her birthday to be improper). However, the proscription against victim-impact statements is not absolute. In Marshall I, supra, the prosecutor commented on the victim, defendant's wife, whom he had murdered by a contract killer. I didn't know [the victim], but I know and you know that she loved her boys. I know and you know that she loved her husband. For eight months that lady knew that his afternoons were spent in the arms of another woman. She continued to cook for him, she continued to clean his clothes, she continued to keep the house clean, she continued to make love with him, because she loved him. She wanted to start all over. She wanted to give him a second chance. She had a right to live her life in full, to watch her boys continue to grow, to watch them graduate from school, to get married and have families of their own, but he tossed it all away because of his desperation and his greed. And that is [the defendant]. [123 N.J. at 161, 586 A. 2d 85.] We found that the statement, for the most part, was not improper because it was supported by evidence in the record and [was] consistent with the theory of the State's case. Id. at 162, 586 A. 2d 85. [T]he prosecutor's comments do not merely describe the victim sympathetically, but characterize her relationship with defendant in a manner relevant to `critical aspects of the trial,' and tend to support the State's proofs concerning defendant's motive for the homicide. Id. at 162-62, 586 A. 2d 85 (quoting Williams II, supra, 113 N.J. at 451, 550 A. 2d 1172). See also State v. Clausell, 121 N.J. 298, 340-41, 580 A. 2d 221 (1990) (finding that although prosecutor's comments about activities of victim and his family on day on which a man was killed in front of his wife and children should have been more restrained, we held, Some reference to the victim's family was unavoidable because family members had witnessed the crime and because defendant was charged with aggravated assault of each person near the foyer at the time of the shooting.). Likewise, the prosecutor's comments in this case related directly to the proofs. Perhaps in a few instances the prosecutor could have been more restrained, however, the comments were relevant and were not designed to divert the jury's attention from the question of guilt or innocence. Mrs. Flax's testimony concerned the events for which defendant was standing trial. Her participation in the kidnapping was not a collateral consequence of defendant's actions. A critical element of defendant's plan was to terrorize Mrs. Flax into producing ransom for the safe return of her husband. The impact of the kidnapping on Mrs. Flax was not an unintended and unforeseeable side effect on a victim's family member. Instead, defendant directly involved her for the express purpose of terrorization. Additionally, nothing was mentioned of the victim's character. The prosecutor did not explore Irving Flax's background to any extent. Thus, because the character of the victim was not introduced into the minds of the jurors, the potential for tainted deliberations did not exist. To the extent that Mrs. Flax's courtroom identification of defendant was prejudicial, we are satisfied that the curative instruction given by the trial court sufficiently ameliorated its negative effect. We find that Mrs. Flax's testimony and the prosecutor's summation do not constitute victim-impact statements and hence were admissible.