Court Opinion

ID: 9755847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:55:10.693802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:12.200163
License: Public Domain

*392Wachenfeld, J.
(dissenting). The only inquiry of substance here is whether the insanity of a murderer, practically nullifying his responsibility under the criminal law, is to be determined as in every other criminal case by unanimous verdict of the jury or whether the accused is to be given the advantage and benefit of a 5/6 jury verdict permitted by the Constitution' of 1947 in civil cases and implemented by N. J. S. 2A :80-2.
The ultimate object of a murder trial is to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Whether he can be put to trial and is answerable is frequently raised by a plea of insanity. This occurred in the instant case and the majority opinion dissects the criminal cause, carves a portion of it from the whole and classifies the section so severed as a civil proceeding while admittedly everything else is criminal.
Such a procedure, in my analysis, is not founded upon either sound logic or intelligent reasoning and its effect on future murder cases, where the jury returns a verdict of insanity, is of the utmost importance.
No one disputes that an indictment for murder is disposed of by a criminal trial. The arrest, the arraignment, the custody, the plea, the presentation to a grand jury, the indictment returned, the plea to that indictment and the motion to quash, if any, the various motions in reference to the indictment, if made, the drawing of a special panel of jurymen to sit at the trial — every detail, every step, every incident, every phase relates to and is part of a criminal cause.
But the majority holds that the framers of the 1947 Constitution and the Legislature, by the passage of N. J. S. 2A :80-2, intended to create a state of confusion by co-mingling into one cause a criminal and civil proceeding. This inference is drawn even though the enactment is specifically limited to civil causes.
Its incredibility prevents my accepting such an interpretation.
*393I see nothing in our Constitution nor in the acts of our Legislature indicating an intent to favor a murderer by permitting him to escape the responsibility for his crime, when a plea of insanity is employed, by a 5/6 vote.
The State has the obligation of convicting a defendant so charged by an unanimous vote, and, by the same token, he should be exonerated only by a like verdict.
The advantage given the accused by the majority opinion was never, in my view, intended by the Legislature and I cannot in conscience be a donor of it.
I would reverse for these reasons.
Mr. Justice Heher concurs in this dissent.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Yandeebilt, and Justices Oliphant, Burling, Jacobs and Brennan — 5.
For reversal — Justices Heher and Wachbneeld — 2.