Court Opinion

ID: 9636390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:26:34.354179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:44.988545
License: Public Domain

*246O’HERN, J.,
dissenting.
In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), the Supreme Court held that the systems of capital punishment then in existence in Georgia and Texas were incompatible with the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. In his concurring opinion, Justice Stewart stated that the schemes inevitably resulted in death sentences that were “wantonly and * * * freakishly imposed,” and “cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.” 408 U.S. at 309-10, 92 S.Ct. at 2762-63, 33 L.Ed.2d at 390.
Four years after Furman, the Supreme Court upheld a Georgia capital-sentencing statute that promised to eliminate the constitutional defects found in Furman. That scheme had features that would channel the exercise of sentencing discretion. Georgia established a bifurcated procedure setting forth the factors that the State deemed relevant in the sentencing process, which provided for “the further safeguard of meaningful appellate review” of every death sentence. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 195, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2935, 49 L.Ed.2d 859, 886-87 (1976).
In the exercise of the “meaningful appellate review” that is a necessary concomitant to a capital-sentencing scheme, we should hold that the sentence of death in this case is disproportionate because offenders such as defendant, Anthony DiFrisco, usually receive life sentences.
I
As the Court notes in its opinion, “we rely here more heavily on the precedent-seeking review than on frequency analysis” in considering the proportionality of the death sentence. Ante at 183, 662 A.2d at 460. Review of precedent reveals that in a contract kñling the pliable tools of masterminds have rarely been sentenced to death. It is usually the hirer who is prosecuted for the capital offense. For example, in State v. Marshall, 130 N.J. 109, 613 A.2d 1059 (1992) (Marshall II), the State allowed the contract killer to plead to a reduced sentence to strengthen the prosecution of the *247hirer, Robert Marshall. An exception, in which the death penalty was sought for both the hirer and the contract killer, arose in the case of James Clausell. State v. Clausell, 121 N.J. 298, 580 A.2d 221 (1990). Clausell was anything but a tool. He was an entrenched member of the contract hirer’s criminal organization. Id. at 309, 580 A.2d 221. Clausell executed the victim because the victim’s dog bothered the hirer. He fired randomly through a door, endangering the intended victim as well as his family. Id. at 308, 580 A.2d 221. An examination of other cases under the precedent-seeking approach discloses that the manipulative hirer is usually considered more death-worthy than the contract killer.

RANDY BURROUGHS

Burroughs, who was mildly mentally retarded, killed Arthur Brand for promised money from the contract principal, Francis Brand, the victim’s younger brother. Burroughs opened Arthur’s bedroom door and shot him twice with a shotgun. Arthur died instantly. Burroughs had tried to resist Brand’s earlier attempts to convince him to commit the murder of his allegedly abusive brother but was unsuccessful. Burroughs received a thirty-year prison term with thirty years of parole ineligibility.

DANNY HARRIS

Georgia Wooten and Walter Wilson paid Harris to kill the father of Wooten’s sister’s children. Harris shot the victim in the chest. Prior to the shooting, Harris had told a friend that he was being paid to shoot someone. Evidence suggested that Harris suffered from organic brain damage, learning disabilities, and developmental disorders. Harris was found guilty of capital murder and at the penalty phase the jurors found that the mitigating factors outweighed the aggravating factors. He was sentenced to thirty years without parole, with a concurrent four-year term for unlawful possession of a weapon.

RICHARD IRIZARRY

Julius Boeglin paid Irizarry $1,000 to kill a drug dealer who owed Boeglin $1,800. Boeglin furnished Irizarry with a gun and drove him to a location where he pointed out the victim to Irizarry *248and told Mm to “get Mm now.” Irizarry got out of the car and called the victim’s name. When the victim realized what Irizarry was about to do, Irizarry shot him four times in the chest.
The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office gave Irizarry use immumty in exchange for his testimony at trial against Boeglin. Boeglin was convicted of non-capital murder. Irizarry pled to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to a term of forty years imprisonment with a parole ineligibility period of twenty years.

PATRICK LANZEL

Lanzel conspired with Ms cousin, Laura Kaldawy, to kill Laura’s father, with the expectation that Laura would inherit a large amount of money and share it with Lanzel. They first attempted to doctor the father’s coffee with an excessive dose of medication, but he refused to drink it because it tasted bitter. As the father brewed another pot of coffee, Lanzel went to his car and returned with a package of rat poison, wMch he poured into the coffee. His uncle saw this and a fight erupted. Lanzel went back to Ms car again, this time returning with a two-foot-long metal rod. Lanzel then beat his uncle to death with the rod.
Next, Lanzel went upstairs and bludgeoned Ms aunt with the rod. He returned to her room a number of times and at one point found that the door was locked. After breaking down the door, Lanzel was surprised to find that his aunt was still conscious. He beat her again with the metal rod, and choked her to death.
Laura Kaldawy’s nine-year-old brother witnessed the attack upon Ms mother, so Lanzel beat Mm with the metal rod. He, however, survived the attack.
The State did not seek the death penalty. Lanzel’s case involved the carefully planned and premeditated “for hire” murder of two family members for pecuniary gain. Lanzel was sentenced to an aggregate term of 120 years in prison, sixty years to be served without parole. Laura Kaldawy received an aggregate sentence of thirty years in prison with no parole disqualifier.

*249
MIQUEL MELENDEZ

Melendez shot his victim twice in the head, killing him in the presence of his daughter. Lazaro Trimino paid Melendez $2,500 to do so. Melendez had no role in planning the murder. Evidence suggested that Melendez was at least mildly mentally retarded and suffered from organic brain damage. He had been abandoned by his father as a child and institutionalized in state hospitals for most of his childhood. Melendez cooperated with the police and admitted that Trimino hired him to commit the murder. At trial he expressed remorse for his part in the murder. Melendez was sentenced to an aggregate term of life plus ten years imprisonment, with a parole disqualifier of thirty-three-and-a-half years.

JAMES MC FADDEN

McFadden was a contract killer who was not prosecuted for capital murder.
William Engel was apparently obsessed with his former wife. He and his brother, Herbert, therefore, arranged for her murder. William delegated to Herbert the task of hiring a contract killer. Herbert pressured McFadden, an employee of his, into agreeing to commit the murder by plying him with liquor and promising him money.
William stood over his ex-wife and watched, smoking a cigarette, while McFadden strangled her to death. At one point during the four-minute ordeal, William called her a “bitch.” The two men then loaded her body into a waiting car and McFadden, with a cohort, transported the body to South Carolina where he burned it beyond recognition.

BILLY WAYNE MC KINNON

McKinnon confessed to conspiracy to murder Maria Marshall, the wife of Robert Marshall, a Toms River businessman. Marshall agreed to pay McKinnon $65,000 to kill Maria. Marshall brought Maria to a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway late at night. She was shot to death as she lay sleeping in the car. *250McKinnon identified Larry Thompson as the triggerman. A jury acquitted Thompson. McKinnon was given a five-year sentence. Marshall II, supra, 130 N.J. at 272, 613 A.2d 1059. Marshall, the hirer, was sentenced to death.

MICHAEL ROSE

Rose was paid $540 to murder Kathryn Cveticanin. The principal, Zoran Cveticanin, hired Rose to kill his step-mother to prevent her from inheriting his father’s estate. Rose, who was mildly mentally retarded, carried out the task in a vicious fashion — he stabbed his pregnant victim eighty-three times and beat her over the head with a blunt object. When the victim became too weak to defend herself, Rose smoked a cigarette and then proceeded to beat her head and neck with a sump pump. Rose received a sentence of life imprisonment with thirty years of parole ineligibility.
II
What sets DiFrisco’s case apart from those hired killers? He was, by the State’s theory of the case, the pawn of Anthony Franciotti. Franciotti supplied him with drugs, chose the time and place of the murder, and hired him for the sum of $2,500 and cancellation of a $500 drug debt, just as Randy Burroughs, Danny Harris, Richard Irizarry, Miquel Melendez, James McFadden, Billy Wayne McKinnon, and Michael Rose were hired for similar sums. Similarly, although Patrick Lanzel was not hired for a specified sum of money, he murdered his aunt and uncle with the expectation of sharing in an inheritance. The only apparent difference is the stereotyping of DiFrisco as a mob hitman without any evidence to support that contention. I am one of those who accepted that stereotype, having joined our opinion in Marshall II, supra, 130 N.J. at 183, 613 A.2d 1059, in which we said that “[b]y his own account, [DiFrisco] committed the contract murder to earn himself a professional reputation with a crime syndicate.”
DiFrisco had never been involved in organized criminal activity either before the crime or in the year or so after the crime. In *251the first penalty-phase proceeding the prosecution characterized him as “mak[ing] his bones,” which was described as “signifying] a would-be killer’s first kill in order [for] the individual [to] become trusted among the criminal element.” In addition, he was accused of keeping “the code of silence.” State v. DiFrisco, 118 N.J. 253, 268, 571 A.2d 914 (1990) (DiFrisco I). Both are veiled allusions to participation in syndicated criminal activity. See Charles E. Silberman, Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice 84 (1978) (explaining that “The Code” means “[n]ever squeal”).
Defendant and his family did not observe the code of silence when they gave evidence in open court that the contract principal was Anthony Franciotti. Much is made of the fact that DiFrisco had his chance to cooperate with the police and refused. All that occurred was that his father suggested to him that he first consult with a private attorney before making a taped telephone call to Franciotti. Nothing in the record indicates or suggests that DiFrisco was or is unwilling to cooperate with the State in the prosecution of Franciotti.
What also sets this case apart from those other cases is that the State has not conducted an investigation of the higher-up, Franeiotti. The Public Defender observes that the State has treated this case as though it were a contract killing with “only one party to the contract.” An investigator for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office described the extent of his investigation: “I personally called up an associate of mine in the Queens Special Narcotics Task Force.” Despite DiFrisco’s reference to the car as a rental car, no effort was made to check such records or to check telephone records that would connect DiFrisco to Franciotti in the days before the murder. See State v. Marshall, 123 N.J. 1, 36, 586 A.2d 85 (1991) (Marshall I) (describing State’s use of telephone toll records to locate contract killers). (There was a dispute at trial about how long toll records were kept.) We are told that it would be unfair to bring to trial one who hired a gunman to kill an innocent citizen of New Jersey without more evidence than *252DiFrisco’s statement, the same statement that is sufficient to put DiFrisco to death.
The Court questions DiFrisco’s remorse, ante at 205-206, 662 A.2d at 471, but it is not Anthony DiFrisco who tries to paint himself as remorseful; rather, an investigating police officer’s testimony that during the 1987 confession in New York “DiFrisco apparently felt remorse on killing and decided to tell New York [City] detectives.” That officer’s report noted that DiFrisco’s conscience “had been bothering him since the * * * murder and he could no longer sleep.” The officer also testified that DiFrisco wanted to “clean the slate.” In the mythology of crime no one lets “personal feelings get in the way of business.” Moreover, no one in the mob business would admit to a murder to beat a car-theft rap.
The reality is that DiFrisco was used by his drug dealer to do the drug dealer’s business. The State’s theory of the ease is that Franciotti picked out the victim, chose the time and place for the killing, and drove DiFrisco to and from the crime scene. In DiFrisco I, we anticipated that the State would complete its investigation in this case and either “establish the groundwork for a case against Franciotti” or disprove that “Franciotti could have been in New Jersey on the date of the murder.” 118 N.J. at 283, 571 A.2d 914. “In either event, justice [would be] done.” Ibid.
The inscrutable paradox in this case is that when the State executes DiFrisco, it also executes the only witness who can implicate the higher-up in this cold-blooded killing. It thereby grants permanent immunity to and asylum for the higher-up and guarantees that a murderer will remain at large, free to kill again.
Justice HANDLER joins in this opinion.
For Affirmation — Chief Justice WILENTZ, and Justices POLLOCK, GARIBALDI, STEIN and COLEMAN — 5.
For Reversal — Justices HANDLER and O’HERN — 2.