Court Opinion

ID: 9630273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:07:02.636956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:35.316909
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the judgment of the Court. However, I disagree with its opinion primarily for the reasons stated in the opinion of *470the Appellate Division. I add only the following observations concerning the issues.
I
An interpretation of the provisions of the Code of Criminal Justice, N.J.S.A. 2C:1-1 to :98^4 (the Code), that would allow a sentence of life imprisonment to be imposed on the basis of the negligent appraisal of a risk that another would commit a homicide, conflicts with the internal structure of the Code. Despite the fact that “[cjommon law crimes are abolished [by the Code] and no conduct constitutes an offense unless the offense is defined by this code or another statute of this State,” N.J.S.A. 2C:l-5a, the Court has incorporated within its analysis concepts drawn from the common law of crimes. Ante at 453-457, 628 A.2d at 273-275. The common law had a deep distrust of criminal combinations. Group activity was seen as posing a “greater potential threat to the public than individual delicts.” Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 593, 81 S.Ct. 321, 325, 5 L.Ed.2d 312, 317 (1961). “For two or more to confederate and combine together to commit or cause to be committed a breach of the criminal laws [was considered] an offense of the gravest character, sometimes quite outweighing, in injury to the public, the mere commission of the contemplated crime.” United States v. Rabinowich, 238 U.S. 78, 88, 35 S.Ct. 682, 685, 59 L.Ed. 1211, 1215 (1915) (emphasis added). It was as though a conspiracy to injure were worse than the harm itself. Why should this be so? Justice Holmes once reminded us that “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345; 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963, 983 (1921).
An obsession of English judges with the fear of political conspiracy gave the crime of conspiracy a “chameleon-like” life of its own. See Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 447, 69 S.Ct. 716, 719, 93 L.Ed. 790, 796 (1949) (Jackson, J., concurring). Having its origin in Star Chamber practices, “The crime comes down to us wrapped in vague but unpleasant connotations. It sounds histori*471cal undertones of treachery, secret plotting and violence on a scale that menaces social stability and the security of the state itself.” Id. at 448, 69 S.Ct. at 720, 93 L.Ed.2d at 796 (Jackson, J., concurring). Yet it is often trivialized by application to ones such as Krulewitch, a panderer found in conspiracy with his prostitute. Still today, as in this Court’s decision, “[i]ts history exemplifies the ‘tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.’ ” Id. at 445, 69 S.Ct. at 719, 93 L.Ed.2d at 795 (Jackson, J., concurring) (quoting Cardozo, Nature of Judicial Process 51). The Court now gives the crime one of the most unusual and illogical twists in its long history.
The law of conspiracy serves two independent values. The first is the protection of society from the danger of concerted criminal activity. The second is the protection of society from inchoate or uncompleted crimes.
This is to say, that, although the law generally makes criminal only antisocial conduct, at some point in the continuum between preparation and consummation, the likelihood of a commission of an act is sufficiently great and the criminal intent sufficiently well formed to justify the intervention of the criminal law.
[United States v. Feola, 420 U.S. 671, 694, 95 S.Ct. 1255, 1268, 43 L.Ed.2d 541, 558 (1975).]
For that reason, conspiracy is grouped under our Code, in Chapter 5, with other uncompleted or inchoate crimes such as attempt. Because the intervention of the law before an act occurs implicates special concerns, the Code requires that the actor have the purpose to cause the result. Thus, for example, in the case of attempted murder, a preparatory crime the same as conspiracy to commit murder, the Code requires:
Although an actor may be guilty of murder if he or she intended to kill or was practically certain that his or her actions would cause or would be likely to cause death, the actor is guilty of attempted murder only if he or she actually intended the result, namely, death, to occur. Thus, the Code requires that to be guilty of attempted murder, a defendant must have purposely intended to cause the particular result that is the necessary element of the underlying offense — death.
*472[State v. Rhett, 127 N.J. 3, 7, 601 A.2d 689 (1992) (emphasis added).]
As the Court recently noted, “An attempt is purposeful ‘not only because it is so defined by statute, but because one cannot logically attempt to cause a particular result unless causing that result is one’s ‘conscious object,’ the distinguishing feature of a purposeful mental state. N.J.S.A. 2C:2-2(b)(l).’ ” State v. McCoy, 116 N.J. 293, 304, 561 A.2d 582 (1989) (quoting State v. McAllister, 211 N.J.Super. 355, 362, 511 A.2d 1216 (App.Div. 1986)). If we assume, as the majority does, ante at 449-151, 628 A.2d at 271-272, that Bridges did not intend that Shawn Lockley be killed, he could not have been convicted of attempted murder.
Nor could defendant have been convicted as an accomplice to the murder. “Because of a moral intuition about holding one accountable for the wrongdoing of another the extent of accomplice liability has been defined carefully in our Code of Criminal Justice.” State v. Weeks, 107 N.J. 396, 401, 526 A.2d 1077 (1987) (citation omitted). Under the Code, “By definition an accomplice must be a person who acts with the purpose of promoting or facilitating the commission of the substantive offense for which he is charged as an accomplice.” State v. White, 98 N.J. 122, 129, 484 A.2d 691 (1984) (holding that for accomplice liability to be imposed under Graves Act, defendant must have shared accomplice’s intent to use or carry gun in commission of offense).
And finally, defendant could not even have been found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. A person is guilty of a conspiracy to commit an offense only if “with the purpose of promoting or facilitating its commission he” or she agrees with another person that they will “engage in conduct which constitutes such crime” or agrees to aid such person “in the planning or commission of such crime.” N.J.S.A. 2C:5-2a (emphasis added).
The Court concludes that defendant may be held accountable for the offense of murder without sharing any intent to murder, primarily in reliance on a memorandum of the minutes of the *473November 14, 1974, meeting of the Assembly Judiciary, Law, Public Safety and Defense Committee, revealing that the Office of the Attorney General objected to departure from the common-law principles of liability as set forth in Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 66 S.Ct. 1180, 90 L.Ed. 1489 (1946). Ante at 458-459, 628 A.2d at 275-276. Thereafter, the Legislature added a section to the Code’s provisions on “Liability for the conduct of another; complicity,” N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6, to include one who is “engaged in a conspiracy with such other person.” N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6b(4). The Code gives no further guidance concerning scope or meaning of that provision. On another occasion, Justice Handler reminded us that such isolated drafting changes to the Code sometimes “bespeaks inadvertence rather than deliberation.” See State v. Rose, 112 N.J. 454, 567, 548 A.2d 1058 (1988) (Handler, J., dissenting). In this aspect, as in so many other aspects of mid-course corrections to the Code, I believe that we should give the Code an interpretation that is consistent with its overall structure. We have regularly done that. When Code provisions appear to produce a result inconsistent with the overall structure of the Code, we normally give the provision a meaning that furthers the general purposes of the Code. See State v. Bridges (Dwight), 131 N.J. 402, 414, 621 A.2d 1 (1993) (noting that “ ‘[l]aek of precision in drafting does not mandate lack of common sense in construction’ ” (quoting State v. Des Marets, 92 N.J. 62, 78, 455 A.2d 1074 (1983))); State v. Valentin, 105 N.J. 14, 20-21, 519 A.2d 322 (1987) (noting that Court’s job in construing statutes is to make sense of whole of statute insofar as possible and not to construe individual sections in isolation).
The Appellate Division gave N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6b(4) an interpretation that is consistent with the whole of the Code structure, that is, recognizing the Pinkerton doctrine as a form of accomplice liability. Justice Jackson, who did not participate in Pinkerton, noted that the Pinkerton holding sustained a conviction of a substantive offense when the record contained no proof of participation in or knowledge of it, on the “theory that conspiracy is equivalent in law to aiding and abetting.” Krulewitch, supra, 336 *474U.S. at 451, 69 S.Ct. at 722, 93 L.Ed. at 798 (Jackson, J., concurring). Under our law, an aider and abettor is treated as an accomplice. N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6c(l)(b). To convict an accomplice of a substantive offense, the accomplice must share the criminal purpose of the actor. N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6c(l).
The Code establishes a carefully-measured grid of criminal responsibility.
It is well to remember that in making “a clean break with the past,” the Code defines crimes to match criminal conduct more precisely than did pre-Code law. See State v. Mirault, 92 N.J. 492, 496 [457 A.2d 455] (1983). It presents a complete and carefully structured system that fits punishments to the crimes committed.
[State v. Williams, 197 N.J.Super. 127, 133, 484 A.2d 331 (App.Div.1984), certif. denied, 99 N.J. 233, 491 A.2d 722 (1985).]
Thus, one who causes the death of another with the knowledge or purpose to kill will be guilty of murder and can be sentenced to death in certain circumstances or to life imprisonment with a minimum of thirty years without parole. In the case of felony-murder, at least at common law, the intent to commit the underlying crime, such as robbery or rape, was constructively transferred to the death of the victim, although “[m]ore recently, felony murder has been viewed * * * as a crime * * * of absolute or strict liability.” State v. Martin, 119 N.J. 2, 20, 573 A.2d 1359 (1990).
The manslaughter offenses require a finding that an actor causing death has exhibited a reckless disregard for human life. When that recklessness is in disregard of a probability that death may occur, the offense is aggravated manslaughter and carries a penalty of up to thirty years in prison. When the proof shows reckless disregard of a possibility of causing death, the offense is reckless manslaughter and carries the penalty of a first-degree crime, up to twenty years in prison. Except for one form of vehicular homicide, N.J.S.A 2C:ll-4b(3), no negligent homicide exists under New Jersey law, much less a crime of negligent murder.
In describing the purposes of the Code, Dean Robert E. Knowlton explained that one of its main goals was “to achieve greater *475individual justice through a closer relation between guilt and culpability, requiring workable definitions of the various culpability factors.” Comments Upon The New Jersey Penal Code, 32 Rutgers L.Rev. 1, 2 (1979). (He did note that the legislative change making one person liable for the conduct of another when both are engaged in a conspiracy posed “dangers [that] are obvious.” Id. at 7.) The Court has contradicted those principles of justice by making one such as defendant more likely to be found guilty of murder than one charged as an actual conspirator, or as an accomplice to murder, or even as one who attempted murder. In each of those cases, one would have to intend the killing to be convicted of murder. The members of a criminal combination can be prosecuted under one of three theories: as a principal in the crime, as an accomplice to the crime, or as one who conspired to commit the crime. State v. Schmidt, 110 N.J. 258, 264, 540 A.2d 1256 (1988). Most often, the conspirator’s act will be further removed in time from the criminal act than that of the principal or accomplice. Yet the Court penalizes the conspirator more severely than the principal or accomplice, each of whom would have to have a specific intent, at least knowledge, and in the case of an accomplice, the actual purpose to commit the completed crime. The Court thereby dismantles the carefully-crafted principles of cases such as White, supra, 98 N.J. 122, 484 A.2d 691, which held that to convict an accomplice of a Graves Act offense, the accomplice would have to have shared the principal’s purpose to use a gun in the commission of a crime.
In a long series of cases, we have attempted to seek rational and proportional punishment for crimes. See, e.g., State v. Towey, 114 N.J. 69, 552 A.2d 994 (1989) (requiring that sentences be internally consistent); State v. Kruse, 105 N.J. 354, 362, 521 A.2d 836 (1987) (stating that need for uniformity in sentencing will rarely allow court to “impose a period of parole ineligibility while also imposing the presumptive sentence”). This case is an example of the most extreme sort — life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for thirty years on the basis of a negligent mental state. The Pinkerton-type rule accepted by the Court “‘may implicate a *476person, on the basis of negligence or stupidity, in very serious offenses which he never contemplated or agreed, expressly or by implication, to have perpetrated.’” Note, Peter Buscemi, Conspiracy: Statutory Reform Since The Model Penal Code, 75 Colum.L.Rev. 1122, 1152 (1975) (quoting Louis B. Schwartz, The Proposed Federal Criminal Code: The Administration Bill 11 (1973)). Even a felony-murderer can assert in most circumstances the subjective defense that he “[h]ad no reasonable ground to believe that any other participant intended to engage in conduct likely to result in death or serious physical injury.” N.J.S.A. 2C:ll-3a(3)(d).
II
Although the Court believes that it is bound to accept the foregoing interpretation, I do not believe that it can do so without offending the principles of the Pinkerton doctrine itself. To begin with, to find that murder was in furtherance of the conspiracy, alleged here in Count One, to carry weapons and to point weapons and to threaten people with weapons is a logical impossibility. This was not a ease in which conspirators in a drug transaction killed federal agents to further their conspiracy by escaping detection. United States v. Alvarez, 755 F.2d 830 (11th Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Hernandez v. United States, 474 U.S. 905, 106 S.Ct. 274, 88 L.Ed.2d 235 (1985), and cert. denied sub nom. Portal v. United States, 482 U.S. 908, 107 S.Ct. 2489, 96 L.Ed.2d 380 (1987). No one kills to further a plan to frighten others. See State v. Darby, 200 N.J.Super. 327, 331, 491 A.2d 733 (App.Div. 1984) (explaining that “ ‘Attempted felony murder’ is a self-contradiction, for one does not ‘attempt’ an unintended result.”), certif. denied, 101 N.J. 226, 501 A.2d 905 (1985).
The Court has suggested instructions, ante at 466-467, 628 A.2d at 279-280, that will narrow the scope of such conspirator liability but the instructions still fail to require the jury to find an essential element of Pinkerton liability. The Pinkerton doctrine is a judicially-created doctrine that makes each member of a conspiracy liable for crimes that other members commit to further the joint *477criminal enterprise. Nye & Nissen v. United States, 336 U.S. 613, 618, 69 S.Ct. 766, 769, 93 L.Ed. 919, 925 (1949), summarized Pinkerton as holding that
a conspirator could be held guilty of the substantive offense even though he did no more than join the conspiracy, provided that the substantive offense was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy and as a part of it. A verdict on that theory requires submission of those fact issues to the jury.
The Court’s suggested instructions can be read as not requiring the jury to find the essential requirement of Pinkerton that the substantive offense was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. Although the Pinkerton doctrine allows as a matter of course that all crimes committed in the furtherance of a conspiracy may be attributed to all co-conspirators, it provides an exception to that normal rule if an act done in furtherance of a conspiracy could not have been reasonably foreseen as a necessary and natural consequence of the conspiracy. Pinkerton, supra, 328 U.S. at 646-47, 66 S.Ct. at 1183-84, 90 L.Ed. at 1496-97. The suggested instructions can be read as swallowing up the Pinkerton exception and converting it into a substitute predicate for liability, namely, that an act not done in furtherance of the conspiracy can become an act of the conspiracy if it is foreseeable. The Court has done its best to salvage a rather undetailed effort by drafters and revisers of the Code to fit conspirator’s liability into the Code. It may have inadvertently created greater potential for trial error.
“At the heart of the guarantee of a fair trial is the ‘jury’s impartial deliberations upon the guilt of a criminal defendant based solely upon the evidence in accordance with proper and adequate instructions * * *.’ ” State v. Collier, 90 N.J. 117, 122, 447 A.2d 168 (1982) (quoting State v. Simon, 79 N.J. 191, 206, 398 A.2d 861 (1979)). We emphasize that charges should be tailored to the facts of a case. State v. Concepcion, 111 N.J. 373, 379-80, 545 A.2d 119 (1988). A proper charge under N.J.S.A 2C:2-6 requires a court to explain the meaning of liability for another’s act when the actor is “engaged in a conspiracy with such other person.” N.J.S.A 2C:2-6b(4). But what conspiracy? We have no common law crime of conspiracy, only a statutory crime of conspiracy when
*478with the purpose of promoting or facilitating its commission [an actor]:
(1) Agrees with such other person or persons that they or one or more of them will engage in conduct which constitutes such crime or an attempt or solicitation to commit such crime; or
(2) Agrees to aid such other person or persons in the planning or commission of such crime or of an attempt or solicitation to commit such crime.
[N.J.S.A. 2C:5-2a (emphasis added).]
At a minimum, constitutional guarantees to a fair trial require that the statutory elements of this offense be charged to the jury. A jury must be instructed that the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder committed by Bing and Rolle was pursuant to the conspiracy in Count I to carry a weapon unlawfully or to threaten another with the weapon. I agree with the Appellate Division that the evidence fell measurably short of allowing such a finding, but at least the jury must be asked to make the finding.1 State v. Stein, 70 N.J. 369, 360 A.2d 347 (1976), does not (and cannot) dispense with these essentials. *479It cites Pinkerton with approval. Stein assumes that the assault and kidnapping of the victim were committed by actors pursuant to the conspiracy to commit burglary and concerned itself with what it perceived to be a misapplication of State v. Madden, 61 N.J. 377, 294 A.2d 609 (1972), a case that dealt with an absence of sufficient evidence of a conspiracy.
I am convinced that the Legislature would never intend that one be sentenced to prison for life as a convicted murderer on the basis of a “negligence” standard. With certain exceptions for motor-vehicle accidents, negligence will not even sustain a conviction of reckless manslaughter. The most reasonable construction of N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6b(4) is that the Legislature intended that the conspirator to the commission of an offense, like an accomplice to the commission of an offense, be punished as a principal. The model jury charge on N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6b(4) incorporates that understanding, ie., that only liability for the completed crimes that were the objects of the conspiracy is intended under N.J.S.A. 2C:2-6b(4). The model charge states in part: “the State alleges that the crime of_was committed by_, and that the defendant is legally accountable for the crime of_committed by _ because the defendant and _ allegedly conspired to commit that crime.” (Emphasis added.) Later the charge reads: “Thus, you must decide whether the defendant engaged in a conspiracy with_to commit the crime of__” Finally, it states: “In this case, after consideration of all of the evidence if you find beyond a reasonable doubt that _ committed the crime of_and also that the defendant conspired with_to commit that crime, then you must find the defendant Guilty of the crime of__” No liability is foreseen by that charge, drawn by a committee of judges and lawyers appointed by the Court, other than for the crime or crimes that were the object of the conspiracy.
Ill
In its long history, the crime of conspiracy has taken many bizarre turns. As noted, at one time the law punished conspiracy *480to commit an offense more severely than the completed offense. Of course, we no longer do that. In a case involving a completed offense, the conspiracy merges into the completed offense and is punished as is that offense. N.J.S.A. 2C:l-8a(2).
Somewhat like the English judges did, the Court now punishes one who has no intent to kill more severely than one who was practically certain to kill. See Rhett, supra, 127 N.J. 3, 601 A.2d 689 (holding that purpose to kill is required to convict one of attempted murder). To demonstrate the utter illogic of that holding, we need only pose the example of two conspiracies with single objectives: one to kill, the other to trade in counterfeit antiques. In the former case, an alleged conspirator could .be guilty of murder or conspiracy to commit murder only if he or she shared the purpose to kill, N.J.S.A. 2C:5-2a; in the latter case, a conspirator in the antique scam could be found guilty of murder if he or she did not foresee that a confederate might go berserk in a heated discussion with a customer and kill the customer.
For affirmance in part; reversal in part; and remandment— Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices HANDLER, CLIFFORD, POLLOCK, and GARIBALDI — 5.
Concur in part; dissent in part — Justices O’HERN and STEIN — 2.

 An example of a minimally-appropriate Pinkerton charge is found in Alvarez, supra, involving a drug conspiracy with the attendant murder of federal agents. The jury was instructed:
If you find that a particular defendant is guilty of conspiracy as charged in Count I of the indictment [the drug indictment], you may also find the defendant guilty of either murder as charged in Count III of the indictment or assault as charged in Count IV of the indictment, or both, provided you find the essential elements of murder or assault or both as defined in these instructions have been established beyond a reasonable doubt; and provided you also find beyond a reasonable doubt:
First, that the murder or assault or both were committed pursuant to the conspiracy;
Second, that the murder or assault or both were reasonably foreseeable consequences of the [drug] conspiracy alleged in Count I; and
Three, that the particular defendant was a member of the conspiracy at the time of the murder or assault or both was committed.
Under the conditions just defined a defendant may be found guilty of a substantive count even though he did not participate in the murder or assault or both.
The reason for this is that a coconspirator committing a substantive offense pursuant to a conspiracy is held to be the agent of other conspirators as to acts which are reasonably foreseeable. [755 F.2d at 848 n. 22 (emphasis added).]