Court Opinion

ID: 9751912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:17:33.92058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:01.796234
License: Public Domain

*403Francis, J.
(dissenting). Officer John Y. Gleason of the Plainfield Police Department, while in uniform and engaged in the performance of his duties, was set upon by a mob and so brutally beaten that he died within a relatively few minutes. The medical examiner’s report shows that Gleason suffered multiple fractures of the skull with extensive lacerations and contusions of the brain; multiple fractures of the mouth and lower jaw with numerous jagged pieces of bone protruding into and through the mouth and with spicules of this bone aspirated into the main bronchus of the left lung; numerous teeth were loose; there were severe lacerations of the left lower jaw, of the bridge of the nose, left eyebrow and of the scalp; a large laceration behind the left ear, a large abrasion of the left shoulder and arm, a fractured finger, an extensive abrasion of the left elbow, an abrasion 15 centimeters in length on the right side of the chest, and a laceration of the right flank, like a stab wound.
Twelve persons, including the defendants Merritt and Madden, were indicted for Gleason’s murder, eleven of them were tried together. After a 42 day trial, which produced! over 5700 pages of testimony from 81 witnesses, an obviously intelligent and conscientious jury, capable of evaluating the probative force of the proof adduced by the State against each defendant, concluded that the guilty participation of defendants Merritt and Madden has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt, that such guilt had not been shown as to^ seven other defendants, and that they could not agree as to the guilt of the remaining co-defendant. (The indictment as to this defendant was later nolle pvossed.) At the close of the State’s proof the trial court ordered a judgment of acquittal as to one defendant.
There was ample direct and circumstantial evidence of participation by Merritt and Madden in the fatal beating of Officer Gleason. For example, one witness testified that he saw Merritt striking Gleason with what appeared to be a hammer or a meat cleaver. As to Gail Madden, who reportedly was .a *404tall woman weighing about 300 pounds, there was testimony from which the jury could find that she jumped and kicked Gleason when he was on the ground. Then as the crowd was walking away from the scene, she was heard to say, “We killed him.” She did not testify in her defense.
N. J. S. A. 3A:113-1 provides:
If any person, in committing * * * any unlawful act against the peace of this state, of which the probable consequences may be bloodshed, kills another, or if the death of anyone ensues from committing * * • any such crime or act; or if any person kills a judge, magistrate, sheriff, constable or other officer of justice, either civil or criminal, of this state * * * in the execution of his office or duty '* * *, then such person so killing is guilty of murder.
This act has not been changed since it appeared in the Crimes Act of 1898. (L. 1898, c. 235, § 106; R. S. 2:138-1).
Section 107 of the 1898 Act, R. S. 2:138-2, which defined degrees of murder was amended by L. 1965, c. 212, and the portion pertinent to this case reads:
Murder which is perpetrated by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which is committed in perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate arson, burglary, kidnapping, rape, robbery or sodomy, or which is perpetrated in the course or for the purpose of resisting, avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest, or of effecting or assisting an escape or rescue from legal custody, or murder of a police or other law enforcement officer acting in the execution of his duty * * is murder in the first degree. Any other kind of murder is murder in the second degree. * * (Emphasis added.)
Undoubtedly this 1965 amendment was enacted by the Legislature in an effort to deter the ever mounting killing of police officers in the course of their duty. It was within the competence of the lawmakers to do so.
In my judgment the defendants had a full and fair trial and the jury after conscientious consideration of the evidence adjudged them guilty. I am convinced by a study of the record and the charge of the court to the jury that the ver<dict was not against the weight of the evidence, and that the *405charge of the court considered in its entirety did not visit upon the defendants any legal error of such magnitude or prejudice as to justify reversal of their convictions.
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and reinstate the jury verdict of guilt as to both defendants.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Weintraub and Justices Jacobs, Proctor, Hall and Schettino — 5.
For reversal — Justice Francis — 1.