Court Opinion

ID: 9646895
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:15:20.720171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:43.338058
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
concurring in the result.
I concur with the Court’s decision today upholding the constitutionality of the death penalty under our state constitution. On this as on certain other issues probing the content of *332counterpart measures of state and federal constitutions, I do not discern a distinct New Jersey understanding. On such issues I believe that the values of our society are the shared values of our nation.
Our frame of reference is not some abstract notion of civilization or free government, but the American vision. Promises of freedom of speech and worship, guarantees of privacy of the home and the person, a ban on cruel and unusual punishment—these things are in the Bill of Rights because they define our aspirations, our idea of a just society. [L. Tribe, God Save This Honorable Court 96 (1985).]
As the Court’s opinion demonstrates, the delegates to our 1947 Constitution did not view capital punishment as a cruel and unusual punishment beyond the pale of a civilized society. I cannot say that the circumstances or the structure of our society have so changed since that date that a per se challenge to the death penalty could be sustained under the New Jersey Constitution.
I have expressed on another occasion my concern about whether capital punishment as applied will not indeed prove to be cruel and unusual in the sense that it is applied disproportionately. State v. McCrary, 97 N.J. 132, 149 (1984) (O’Hern, J., dissenting). That issue is not before us. Contemporary studies indicate that New Jersey has not yet demonstrated any significant disproportionality with respect to the infliction of the death penalty upon minorities or the poor. Time will be the test of the ability of the act to sustain that record. Nor can I yet agree with Justice Handler’s forecast that the act will inevitably result in death sentences that are “wantonly and * * * freakishly imposed” in the sense condemned by Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 310, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 2762, 33 L.Ed.2d 346, 390 (1972) (Stewart, J., concurring). As interpreted by the Court, the legislative scheme “attempted to provide standards for a constitutional death penalty that would serve both goals of measured, consistent application and fairness to the accused.” Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 111, 102 S.Ct. 869, 874, 71 L.Ed.2d 1, 8 (1982). That the Supreme Court itself has not demonstrated a measured, consistent application of *333principle to capital cases does not mean that New Jersey cannot or will not. Our willingness to apply our own principles of fundamental fairness to the cases before us should dispel any belief that we shall fail to employ “the maximum substantive and procedural protections possible * * *, protections that can realistically minimize the risk of arbitrary enforcement.” Post at 380 (Handler, J., dissenting).
I write separately to express my view that continuing to death-qualify juries at the guilt phase of a capital trial is inconsistent with New Jersey’s traditional sense of fairness and justice. I reach this conclusion not as a matter of state constitutional doctrine, but in the exercise of our judicial supervision over the criminal justice system in New Jersey. In doing so, I need not quarrel with the holding of Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137 (1986), that the federal Constitution does not prohibit a state from excluding from the guilt phase of a capital trial a prospective juror whose views would “ ‘prevent or substantially impair the performance of his duties as a juror in accordance with his instructions and his oath.’ ” Id. at -n. 1, 106 S.Ct. at 1761 n. 1, 90 L.Ed.2d at 144 n. 1 (citing Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985)). Nor do I disagree with our Court’s holding that the New Jersey Constitution contains no distinct guarantee that would warrant a contrary constitutional finding. Finally, in reaching this result, it is not necessary to reverse this conviction since there was no trial error in following a practice that was sanctioned by our procedures. Cf State v. Brunson, 101 N.J. 132 (1985) (order of exercise of peremptory challenges shown here should not be followed in future cases, although not grounds for reversal).
It is the Supreme Court’s function to define the limits of what states can do, not what they should do. Focusing on the outer limits of state power averts attention from the inner question: what is the proper exercise of criminal procedure? The real question for us is not what the State can do, but rather *334what we should do in the just exercise of our common law supervisory power over criminal practice within our jurisdiction.
I.
Stripped of all analysis of what constitutes a legally cognizable group for purposes of analysis of a fair cross-section of jurors, Lockhart v. McCree, supra, 476 U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137 holds that it is all right to determine a defendant’s guilt by a jury more prone to convict than by a jury representative of a cross-section of the community. For although it questioned the reliability of the data that suggests that death-qualified jurors are more conviction-prone, the Lock-hart Court, in the last analysis, had to accept that “the studies are both methodologically valid and adequate to establish that ‘death qualification’ in fact produces juries somewhat more conviction-prone than ‘non-death-qualified’ juries.” 476 U.S. at -, 106 S.Ct. at 1764, 90 L.Ed.2d at 147.
The Lockhart Court nonetheless held that the Constitution does not prohibit the states from death-qualifying juries in capital cases. Id. at-, 106 St. Ct. at 1770, 90 L.Ed.2d at 155. The Court permits that result because it believes that the State is entitled to have jurors in the penalty phase who will conscientiously apply the laws of the state. The Court extends this entitlement to the guilt phase, not because it believes that such a trial produces a fairer verdict, but because it does not believe in the limited exercise of its constitutional supervision over state criminal trials it should impose upon the states the burden of empaneling a penalty-phase jury if the guilt-phase jury cannot sit to resolve the penalty in those cases in which it has convicted of a capital offense. I recognize that the added burdens are real and are not insubstantial, but I believe that they are ones that society would be willing to make to preserve the central value of our criminal justice system—trial by an impartial jury, not one that is more prone to convict.
*335II.
In analyzing the question, I believe that we have approached the issue in a confrontational way in debating, as I have noted, the outer limits of state power. The Supreme Court has determined those. It is our duty now not to be distracted by that debate but to focus on the essentials of a criminal trial and determine, from a common law viewpoint, what is just cause for excusing a juror, and why it is that we death-qualify jurors. Holmes has reminded us that “whenever we trace a leading doctrine of substantive law far enough back, we are very likely to find some forgotten circumstance of procedure at its source.” O.W. Holmes, Jr., The Common Law 253 (1881).
The forgotten circumstance that now places capital defendants at a disadvantage is that prior to this century death was the automatic penalty for many felonies. Juries sat only to resolve guilt; the death penalty followed automatically from the guilty verdict. Fear that “a defendant who was clearly guilty of a capital charge would nevertheless be acquitted or not convicted of that charge because a juror’s antipathy toward capital punishment,” Welsh S. White, Life in the Balance 97-98 (1984) (citing Oberer, “Does Disqualification of Jurors for Scruples Against Capital Punishment Constitute Denial of Fair Trial on Issue of Guilt?,” 39 Tex.L.Rev. 545 (1961)), led to statutes or rulings that “those with conscientious or religious scruples against the death penalty would not be permitted to serve as jurors in capital cases.” Welsh S. White, supra, at 98.
Once set in motion, death qualification has moved glacier-like with the law of capital punishment through eras when juries began to decide both guilt and penalty to this era when guilt can be decided separately from penalty.
What is the common-law justification for continuing to death-qualify jurors before the guilt phase of a capital trial? To answer this, we must ask ourselves why a juror should be excused in any case. Challenges for cause to jurors are permitted by statute and rule, N.J.S.A. 2A:78-4 to -9, Rule 1:8-3, but
*336neither offers any guidance as to what constitutes cause for challenge. That task has been left to the courts. N.J.S.A. 2A:78-8. Generally, individuals may be excused for cause from a jury because they will be unable to abide their oath or follow the court’s instructions. Basically, what we are looking for is jurors who are not biased or prejudiced in the fulfillment of their duties. State v. Singletary, 80 N.J. 55 (1979).
Heretofore, in capital cases our courts have excluded jurors for cause on the basis of their inability to answer with certainty that they would be able to consider the imposition of the death penalty upon a finding of guilt. State v. Mathis, 52 N.J. 238 (1968), rev’d, 403 U.S. 946, 91 S.Ct. 2277, 29 L.Ed.2d 855, reh. den., 404 U.S. 876, 92 S.Ct. 31, 30 L.Ed.2d 125 (1971). But that practice was obtained under pre-Code law where there was no bifurcated trial and the death penalty was automatic for first-degree murder convictions unless the jury recommended mercy. The guilt jury had to be the sentencing jury. That practice is no longer available. We now have a bifurcated capital trial system.
It will be seen at once that under a bifurcated capital trial system “Witherspoon excludables” are not disqualified for bias in the guilt phase of the trial. By definition they can decide guilt or innocence fairly but are conscientiously opposed to voting a fellow citizen to death.1 The constitutional validity of death qualification is one that deeply divides the Supreme Court. See Lockhart v. McCree, supra, 476 U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137. A respected journal of opinion sees that the decision “rigs matters against [capital defendants]. A *337system that must rely on biased juries hardly needs opponents to condemn it.”
I need not even dwell on the question of whether death-qualified juries are conviction-prone juries. The point is that a jury selection process that systematically excludes all jurors who cannot state a commitment to the death penalty results in a jury that, although not suspect for excluding constitutionally “distinct” groups, is not a truly representative cross-section of the community and deprives the capital defendant of a jury of his peers on the fundamental question of guilt or innocence.
I repeat that this is not to say the State is entitled to anything less than a jury that is without bias towards its established laws and statutory requirements. State v. Reynolds, 43 N.J. 597 (1965); State v. Rios, 17 N.J. 572 (1955). Thus, supervention of the fair cross-section requirement is justified, if not required, at the penalty phase. However, those reasons do not demand the exclusion of jurors with conscientious scruples about the death penalty at the guilt phase of a capital trial. Some may argue that a jury that includes jurors with scruples against the death penalty at the guilt phase will be acquittal-prone, and yet the empirical studies conducted at the impetus of the United States Supreme Court decision in Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 111 (1968), suggest that the negative attitude of a juror towards the imposition of the death penalty is irrelevant to the juror’s determination of guilt or innocence. See Grigsby v. Mabry, 569 F.Supp. 1273 (E.D.Ark.1983), aff'd as modified, 758 A.2d 226 (8th Cir.1985), rev’d o.g. sub nom. Lockhart v. McCree, supra, 476 U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137; Jurow, “New Data on the Effect of a ‘Death Qualified’ Jury on the Guilt Determination Process,” 84 Harv.L.Rev. 567 (1971); White, “Death-Qualified Juries: The ‘Prosecution-Proneness’ Argument Reexamined,” 41 U.Pitt.L.Rev. 353 (1980); Special Project, “Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in New Jersey,” 15 Rutgers L.J. 261, 360-62 (1984).
*338As noted at the outset, we seek jurors who can abide by their oaths and follow the court’s instructions. The studies of Wither spoon/Wainwright excludables confirm that such jurors, in addition to forming a fair cross-section of the community, can be trusted to judge questions of fact fairly. Therefore, at the guilt phase there is no cause related to their ability to follow their oaths to excuse these jurors.
Why then do we continue to do it? And why must we, as a State, continue to approach the question in terms of the limits of power rather than the proper exercise of power? Our criminal practice and procedure have been shaped by more than constitutional compulsion. Our goal has been to produce trials that are fair and result in substantial justice. Thus we have perhaps the broadest discovery rules extant. See R. 3:13-3 and comment (Pressler ed. 1987) (making “prosecutor’s entire file” available to the defendant as a matter of the defendant’s right and upon the defendant’s demand, subject to State’s legitimate and disclosed need for appropriate protective order); R. 3:17-1 (making available to defendant any statement or record of a statement in prosecutor’s possession, relevant to offense charged, made by a witness about to testify on behalf of State); see also “Report of Supreme Court Committee on Criminal Procedure,” 96 N.J.L.J. 449, 459, 462 (1973) (overview of recommended changes to Criminal Procedure Code). We do this as a State out of a fundamental sense of fairness—that this is not a game that is being played but is truly a quest for justice—and because we believe that a criminal trial “although inevitably an adversarial proceeding, is above all else a search for truth.” State v. Fort, 101 N.J. 123, 131 (1985).
Hence I believe that we should approach this issue as we have approached countless other issues in the administration of the criminal justice system, with the goal of achieving fair accommodations of the rights of the State and the defendant.
The defendant’s interest is in having a fair and impartial jury, a preeminent right in our system. The State’s interest is in *339having a just and efficient trial of the case. I do not dispute that there are important values in having the guilt-phase jury act as the penalty-phase jury. We must primarily be guided by the language of our statute. N.J.S.A. 2C:ll-3c(l) presupposes that there shall be one jury that shall sit in both penalty and guilt phases unless good cause be shown. The question is this: is trial by a jury that is not more prone to convict a good cause for a truly bifurcated trial? I think that it is. It is hard to state a better cause.
On the other hand, I can recognize that delay, inefficiency, and general distrust of the criminal justice system are good causes for not empaneling separate juries at the guilt and penalty phases. But I believe that accommodation of these two interests can be achieved without sacrifice of either. In the first instance we know that in almost one-third of the capital cases the guilt-phase verdict results in acquittal. Thus in these cases society would be saving the time, expense, and loss of impartiality that is occasioned by empaneling a death-qualified jury at the guilt phase.
In the remaining cases, it may turn out in many, if not most, instances that the guilt-phase jurors will, in fact, not prove to be disqualified. In addition, I would explore the possibility that use of the alternate jurors, who, in almost all circumstances, will have sat through the guilt phase of a capital trial, would be sufficient to replace any jurors disqualified from the penalty phase. As many as sixteen jurors are often seated in capital cases. A reservoir of four will have heard all the guilt phase evidence and would be available if four are disqualified during death qualification.
I recognize that there are difficult constitutional and statutory problems in the consideration of whether this is the “same jury” under N.J.S.A. 2C:ll-3c(l) that would be statutorily and constitutionally authorized to proceed to the penalty phase. But since the paramount interest in this issue resides with the defendant, it is possible that defendants would concur in such a *340procedure prior to trial. Obviously, the problems involved cannot be insurmountable as our courts have contemplated the use of a jury that has not been death-qualified in the guilt phase of a trial where only one of two defendants is charged with capital murder. State v. Savage, 198 N.J.Super. 507, 511 (Law Div.1984). Justice Marshall has outlined in his dissent in Lockhart v. McCree, supra, 476 U.S. at-, 106 S.Ct. at 1780-81, 90 L.Ed.2d at 167-68, various other remedies that are available to a state in fashioning appropriate guilt and penalty proceedings in capital trials.
In many circumstances we have not attempted to institute full-scale revision of criminal procedures without testing their efficiency. It may be that even despite the majority’s reluctance to undertake such exploration, there will be conscientious prosecutors and defense counsel through whose cooperative efforts actual examination of alternative methods of death qualification can take place. Such efforts could result in substantial benefits, both for defendants and for the State.
In this case, the discursive qualification, disqualification, and rehabilitation of death penalty jurors such as jurors M and S highlight the benefit that might be gained from death qualification after the guilt phase. As noted, Juror M, in response to the court’s initial voir dire, clearly stated that he could in good conscience return a guilt verdict that would lead to death.
Defense counsel then undertook the desultory and eventually destructive examination of the juror about whether he thought death was the appropriate punishment “anytime a person has committed a murder.” Quite naturally, Juror M hesitated, believing that if the act was done in self-defense it should not warrant death. The prosecutor then took up the questioning. The juror obviously sensing that he was in some sort of a cross-fire or test of wits, when asked by the court again about his position stated: “You’re running a case like this, I truthfully could say I prefer not even to participate.” Defendant argues that the effect of all the questioning was simply to *341explain to the juror a way in which he could be excused from the trial.
It is difficult for us to place ourselves in the position of such jurors. Surely they must be bewildered by the trail of the questions. Notably, California has concluded that the process of death qualification itself conditions a jury to think in terms of guilt:
In a typical death-qualifying voir dire, the judge and the attorneys repeatedly instruct the jurors about the steps leading to the penalty trial and question each prospective juror, oftentimes at considerable length, concerning his or her attitudes about capital punishment. These repeated displays of concern about the death penalty before any evidence of guilt has been presented may prompt the jurors to infer that the court and counsel assumes the penalty trial will occur.
A penalty trial is contingent on a guilty verdict and a finding of special circumstances. Jurors undergoing death-qualification would have reason to infer that the judge and the attorneys personally believe the accused to be guilty or expect the jury to come to that conclusion. Only such an inference could serve to explain to the jurors why so much time and energy are devoted to an extensive discussion of penalty before trial. Provided with these cues from people who are not only experts in the courtroom but are also presumably acquainted with all the evidence in the case, the relevant law, and the “correct” application of the one to the other, death-qualified jurors may themselves become more inclined to believe that the accused is guilty as charged. [Hovey v. Superior Court of Alameda County, 28 Cal.3d 1, 70-71, 616 P.2d 1301, 1348, 168 Cal.Rptr. 128, 175 (1980).]
III.
I believe that the Court should itself undertake to study the available alternatives to our current death qualification process and to test their reliability. We cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility for not examining the alternatives by reference to the act. The act is silent as to when and how death qualification shall occur. It is we who have chosen the present course. In this case and in our rules, we have interpreted the act to achieve fundamental fairness. We should make the same attempt here. If it proves that the cost, the delay, or the inefficiency of the alternative practices are grave burdens upon the administration of the criminal justice system, at least the effort would have been made.
*342I believe that pricing the expediency and efficiency of trials at the expense of a capital defendant’s right to be tried before an impartial jury conflicts with our traditional sense of fairness and justice. I concur with the views of Justice Stevens, concurring and dissenting in Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U.S. 447, 470, 104 S.Ct. 3154, 3167, 82 L.Ed.2d 340, 359 (1984), that history amply demonstrates that the jury is central to the link between capital punishment and the standards of decency contained in the eighth amendment. In State v. Gilmore, 103 N.J. 508, 530 (1986), we recently restated our commitment to trial by a jury “as nearly impartial ‘as the lot of humanity will admit.’ ” (citations omitted).
Ours is a civilization uniquely committed to the value of human life. Our nation does not view the lives of its citizens as easily expendable. We do not measure the value of human life in dollars. I realize that it is difficult for society to accept that those who stand to be convicted of the shocking and heinous acts demonstrated in capital murder convictions should ask society for fair treatment. Thus Arkansas says: “We may ask, why should the most cowardly and contemptible of criminals, merely by reason of the viciousness of their crimes, be favored in jury selection to a greater degree than any other accused person or any litigant in a civil case?” Rector v. State, 280 Ark. 385, 395, 659 S.W.2d 168, 173 (1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 988, 104 S.Ct. 2370, 80 L.Ed.2d 842 (1984). But capital defendants ask for no more than an unbiased jury. It is a premise of our system that the innocent and guilty alike deserve equal justice under law. So long as we adhere to that presumption of innocence, we must give it meaning. If we could but abstract ourselves as a people from our reaction to the shocking and heinous acts that have shattered innocent lives, I believe we would still choose a system that does not put a price upon the quality of justice.
The subject of capital punishment deeply divides our society. The subject of guilt or innocence does not. We should not, without the fullest examination of alternatives that might ac*343commodate fair trial with faithful observation of law, disqualify from participation in the most revered safeguard of a free society—the jury trial of guilt—those conscientious members of a society who do not share the majority’s belief that the State may take a human life to advance the purposes of its criminal justice system. For these reasons, I would add to the decision made today that jurors with reservations about the death penalty not be excluded from the guilt phase of a capital trial.

I recognize that there are a small number of citizens who are called "nullifiers” who would refuse to participate in the guilt phase because of their conscientiously-held views against the death penalty and might vote to acquit of guilt because of their belief in the injustice of the punishment. I agree that such persons should be excluded from the guilt phase. I believe this can readily be done by a limited pretrial inquiry.