Court Opinion

ID: 9755548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:42:29.419373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:09.024900
License: Public Domain

I-Iei-ier, J.
(dissenting). I do not concur in the view that the trial judge in substance charged the jury that “a criminal intent to commit robbery” was an essential ingredient of the statutory offense of murder in the first degree laid to the accused in the indictment, and so the request for an instruction in this regard interposed by the defendant De Vita was properly refused as unnecessary, and that, at all events, the question of intent was not at issue, for there was “no claim on De Vita’s behalf” in the opening statement to the jury made by his. counsel “that he did not intend to commit the robbery.”
The judge instructed the jury that “the statute makes no mention of the element of the intention to kill in connection *191with a killing which shall be committed in perpetrating a robbery,” and in cases “where death ensues from the commission of a robbery, the commission of the robbery is regarded as standing in the place of, or as the legal equivalent of, the wilfulness, deliberation, and premeditation required under the statute, and therefore the State is not under a duty to prove wilfulness, deliberation, and premeditation where it has proved that a killing has been committed during the perpetration of a robbery.” But there was no reference whatever to the indispensable requisite of an intent to commit the basic crime of robbery and of De Vita’s participation in that intent, if the offense was to constitute murder in the first degree.
The State differentiates in this regard between proof of a robbery as the substantive offense charged .and murder in the commission of a robbery. Conceding that in the former case “felonious intent” is an element of robbery to be proved, the insistence is nevertheless that in the latter case proof of “wilful intent to kill, deliberation and premeditation is dispensed with, and in its place is substituted the proof of the commission of the robbery(Italics the State’s.) I do not perceive the distinction. Where it is charged that the killing was done in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of one of the enumerated statutory felonies, proof of an intent to kill, deliberated and premediated, is of course unnecessary; but, by the same token, it is requisite that there be proof of an intent to commit the underlying statutory offense.
The State had the burden of proof of all the essential elements of murder in the first degree; and, while a murder committed in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of a robbery is murder in the first degree under the statute, irrespective of the intent and mental operations otherwise essential to an offense of that degree, proof of the “commission of the robbery” ex, necessitate involves the felonious intent which is a constituent of that offense. It would seem to be axiomatical truth that there cannot be a conviction of mur*192der in the first degree for a killing in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of an offense,of the statutory class, unless all the elements of the basic crime be established as on the trial of an indictment for that offense alone.
I shall not consider -whether in the particular circumstances the ruling was prejudicial. There are other grounds for reversal, common to both of the accused, which I deem to be well founded.
The trial judge charged the jury that, if there be no recommendation of life imprisonment, “the penalty is death, determined not by the jury, but by the statute and pronounced by the court; It is not correct to say that the jury imposes the sentence of death where it does not choose to make the recommendation for life imprisonment.”
This suggests that the jury is under no duty affirmatively to determine which of the alternative punishments, death or life imprisonment, shall be inflicted, and thereby unduly modifies the jury’s responsibility in this behalf under the rule of R. S. 2:138-4, now superseded by N. J. S. 2A :113-4.
There is laid upon the jury the duty “to determine, within the limits fixed by the statute, what” the accused’s “punishment shall be.” State v. Rombolo, 89 N. J. L. 565 (E. & A. 1916). The jury are made the final arbiters of the punishment; that tribunal exercises judgment and discretion based on the evidence. The choice is the jury’s; but a choice there must be. State v. Cooper, 2 N. J. 540 (1949). I reiterate the views expressed in my dissenting opinion in State v. Bunk, 4 N. J. 461 (1950).
And, on the crucial issue of whether the judgment should be death or life imprisonment, the trial prosecutor in his closing argument transgressed the substantial rights of the accused under the statute. He said:
“As I recall the law, being a former member of the legislature, the punishment originally for first degree murder was death. At that time or many years later, there was an agitation that death should not be the punishment in every case. Then the legislature in its wisdom said: We will give the right to a jury, if they so feel upon *193and after a consideration of all the evidence, to recommend life imprisonment. This is not the type of case the legislature had in mind when it gave jurors the right upon and after a consideration of all the evidence to attach to their verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree a recommendation of life imprisonment.
This is the type of case that the Legislature had in mind when it said that persons convicted of first degree murder shall suffer death. If you don’t think so, thumb your nose at the Legislature. I don’t care. But if you believe in law and order, you will return a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree against each and evexy defendant on trial.”
This served to deny the accused the essence of a fair trial of the issue of life or death as the punishment for the crime of which they were convicted, such as was within legislative contemplation. Thereby, the prosecutor drew upon his experience as a legislator for a legislative intention that is not to be found in the enactment itself. He declared that the instant case was not within the class the Legislature had in view; e contra, that the Legislature had death “in mind” for cases of this type, and “If you don’t think so, thumb your nose at the Legislature.” It was the natural tendency of this argument, ill-founded in law and in fact as it was, to coerce the jury into prescribing death as the punishment supposedly to conform to the legislative intention and thus to avoid public opprobrium for not doing so.
There was fundamental unfairness in this assessment of the jury’s statutory function to resolve the issue of punishment, such as in all human likelihood operated to deprive the accused of the essential benefit of the statutory rule. The accused is entitled to a fair trial and to the ungrudging application of the statutory policy for determining the punishment. In the words of Cardozo, C. J.: “A criminal, however shocking his crime, is not to answer for it with forfeiture of life or liberty till tried and convicted in conformity with law.” People v. Moran, 246 N. Y. 100, 158 N. E. 35, 37 (Ct. App. 1927). There is all the more reason for fairness where the issue is that of life or death.
I would reverse the judgment and direct a new trial of the issuei
*194For affirmance—Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Oliphant, Wacheneeld, Burling, Jacobs and Brennaa —6. •
For reversal—Justice Heher—1.