Court Opinion

ID: 9517987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:39:31.834924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:39.025619
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
dissenting.
This is hardly a sympathetic case. Defendant admits that he beat a taxi driver out of a fare. The State has charged him, however, with robbery, which is a theft accompanied by violence. N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1, the statute governing robbery, does not use the expression “armed robbery.” That statute grades robbery as a first-degree crime “if in the course of committing the theft the actor * * * is armed with, or uses or threatens the immediate use of a deadly weapon.” The State says that defendant stole $120 by brandishing a knife at the taxi driver. Defendant says that he stole the seven-dollar ride only, without a knife. That is the crime *254that he admits committing. However, the State says: “We’re sorry, we are going to let the jury consider only our version of the event. The jury will have to believe us or let a criminal go free.” The trial court agreed with the State and refused to permit the jury to consider the theft of services because, in its view, the grand jury had not indicted defendant for that offense. According to the trial court, the armed-robbery count was predicated only on the theft of the $120, not on defendant’s refusal to pay the cab fare. But “an indictment is merely a pleading device and never an end in itself.” State v. LeFurge, 101 N.J. 404, 419, 502 A.2d 35 (1986). The indictment, moreover, charges the defendant with armed robbery, that is, that on May 23, 1990, defendant “in the course of committing a theft, did threaten immediate bodily injury to [the taxi driver] and/or purposely put [the taxi driver] in fear of immediate bodily injury, while armed with and/or threatening the immediate use of [a] deadly weapon.”
The trial court nonetheless refused to permit the jury to consider the offense of theft of services, which was plainly in the case by virtue of defendant’s testimony. In other circumstances, we have regularly held that a jury must be presented with all available verdicts that have support in the evidence, subject to a fair-notice requirement applicable to either the defendant or the State. For example, in State v. Mancine, 124 N.J. 232, 590 A.2d 1107 (1991), we held that a defendant indicted as the perpetrator of a murder, who testified at trial that someone else had committed the murder, could be found guilty of aggravated manslaughter as an accomplice to that murder on the theory that he may have hired the other person to injure the victim but did not intend that the victim be killed. In his concurring opinion, Justice Stein succinctly stated the principles that apply in such cases. He wrote:
In my view, the lesser-included offense provision of the Code of Criminal Justice, N.J.S. A 2C:l-8d, permits a defendant to be convicted of “an offense included in an offense charged,” meaning that the statutory definition of an “included offense” refers back to the offense for which defendant was indicted, in this case murder. See State v. LeFurge, 101 N.J. 404, 419, 502 A.2d 35 [,43] (1986). Hence, as the msyority opinion tacitly acknowledges, the aggravated-manslaughter offense in this case was not a lesser-included offense of murder, the indicted offense, because its *255factual predicate was entirely different. The evidence supporting the aggravated-manslaughter charge indicated that defendant hired someone to injure the decedent, and the murder indictment charged that defendant committed the homicide by his own conduct
Nevertheless, there was clearly a rational basis in the evidence for the aggravated-manslaughter charge, and defendant understandably, did not object to the trial court’s proposed charge on aggravated manslaughter. As we noted in State v. Sloane, 111 N.J. 293, 300, 544 A.2d 826 [,829] (1988), the statutory definition of lesser-included offenses is not “all-encompassing,” nor are the statutory categories “water-tight compartments.” Sloane suggests that in certain circumstances, subject to the requirements of fair notice, an offense not meeting the Code’s definition of lesser-included offense should be charged to the jury if it is supported by the evidence. That principle “comports with our general view that subject to fair notice the jury should resolve the degree of an actor’s guilt on the basis of the evidence presented to the jury.” Ibid.
[Id, 124 N.J. at 264-65, 590 A.2d 1107 (Stein, J., concurring).]
He observed that the principles stated in LeFurge, supra, that a defendant may be found guilty of an uncharged lesser offense included in the offense charged, 101 N.J. at 419, 544 A.2d 826, would equally accommodate a charge on a related offense. 124 N.J. at 265, 590 A.2d 1107.
In State v. Grunow, 102 N.J. 133, 506 A.2d 708 (1986), we held that although the defendant could not be charged with murder (he had previously been acquitted of that offense by a jury), on retrial a jury must nevertheless consider the available verdict of passion/provocation manslaughter, a lesser-included offense of an uncharged offense. In short, as our cases have repeatedly explained, the lesser-included-offense doctrine is not an abstract doctrine of watertight compartments. Rather, it is an essential component of a fair trial. Defendant is entitled to have a jury consider his guilt of any offense shown by the evidence that is related to the offense charged.
In State v. Short, 131 N.J. 47, 618 A.2d 316 (1993), the Court reversed a murder conviction because the trial court had instructed the jury that any verdict of guilt that it returned on the implicated manslaughter charges would not result in the entering of a conviction against the defendant. The Court wrote: “Unless a jury is told that it can convict the defendant of lesser-included offenses, it may be tempted to find defendant guilty of a crime he *256or she did not commit simply because it prefers to convict on some crime rather than no crime at all.” Id. at 54, 618 A.2d 316.
In essence, the trial court told this jury the same thing, i.e., that any finding of guilt on the theft-of-services charge would not result in the entering of a conviction against the defendant. The State, however, insists that it did not have to charge the theft of services; it chose to prosecute only the theft of the $120 in cash. That is almost the same argument that the State made in State v. Purnell, 126 N.J. 518, 601 A.2d 175 (1992), in which it chose not to prosecute a felony-murder homicide. Although felony-murder homicide is not a lesser-included offense of murder (it requires the proof of an additional element), we held that the State could not deprive the defendant of the right to have a jury consider defendant’s guilt of an uncharged offense that would subject him to a lesser penalty. Id. at 534, 601 A.2d 175. Granted that the stakes were higher there and the facts a bit different in that the State sought to establish a robbery in the penalty phase, id. at 529, 601 A2d 175, the principles remain the same.
To insist on those fair-trial rights in view of the small sums of money involved here may be tedious, but the central principle of justice is to “[t]reat like cases alike.” H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 155 (1961). No matter how small or inconsequential a case may appear in the larger scale, to the defendant involved it is the most important case in the judicial system. In all other cases, we have afforded defendants the right to have juries consider all available verdicts bearing on their guilt or innocence. Theft of services was an available verdict in this case. It was not an unrelated offense. I agree that a defendant charged with rape, who happened to have a counterfeit bill in his possession or possessed marijuana illegally on the occasion, does not have the right to have a jury charged on those offenses, but that is an entirely different scenario. That defendant need not mention either offense in defending a rape charge because they are wholly unrelated and irrelevant. This defendant, who is sworn to tell the truth as are the State’s witnesses, cannot defend against the theft *257without explaining to the jury what theft did occur. The indictment charged defendant with threatening the taxi driver “in the course of committing a theft.” To deny the jury the opportunity to resolve defendant’s guilt on the basis of the evidence presented to it subjects defendant to the substantial risk that the jury, knowing he committed some lesser wrongdoing, will convict him of a greater offense rather than acquit him entirely, the very evil to be avoided in these cases. Keeble v. United States, 412 U.S. 205, 212-13, 93 S.Ct. 1993, 1997-98, 36 L.Ed.2d 844, 850 (1973).
I would affirm the judgment of the Appellate Division.
For reversal and reinstatement—Justices CLIFFORD, POLLOCK, GARIBALDI and STEIN—4.
For affirmance—Justice O’HERN—1.