Court Opinion

ID: 9753100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:57:33.176918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:29.589077
License: Public Domain

*464Prancis, J.
(dissenting). This defendant perpetrated a cold and brutal killing, which a jury after full trial said constituted first degree murder. The Legislature in unequivocally mandatory terms has ordained that the punishment for such a murder shall be death “unless” the jury after a comparison and consideration of all the evidence decides that the punishment shall be life imprisonment. N. J. 8. A. 2A :113-4. Here, the jury to whom the issue of penalty was committed, 12 conscientious citizens of Ocean County, found no ameliorating circumstances in the evidence, nothing to detract from the sheer callousness of defendant’s murder of the 18 year old victim, and so fixed the penalty at death. It was not an easy task for them, and obviously they felt a death sentence was the only way in which their full public duty could be satisfied. How this Court without referring to a single palliating circumstance in the evidence, or making a finding that the sentence is contrary to the weight of the evidence, and in disregard of the clearly expressed legislative will, has cancelled the punishment deemed just by the jury. Thus all the travail of the jury is reduced to an exercise in futility.
As I said in my dissents in State v. Laws, 51 N. J. 494, 518, cert. den. 393 U. S. 971, 89 S. Ct. 408, 21 L. Ed. 2d 384 (1968); State v. Royster, 57 N. J. 472, 492 (1971), and State v. Conyers, 58 N. J. 123, 149 (1971), and I repeat it here, there is no authority in this Court under the circumstances present to substitute a life imprisonment sentence for the punishment of death decreed by the jury. The Legislature vested that decision in the discretion of the jury, and there is not the slightest suggestion anywhere in the majority opinion that the jurors abused their discretion.
As this Court said in State v. Forcella, 52 N. J. 263, 283 (1968), cert. dismissed 397 U. S. 959, 90 S. Ct. 999, 25 L. Ed. 2d 252 (1970):
Capital punishment lies within the authority and the responsibility of the Legislature, and the Legislature has expressly and continuously dealt with the subject. There have been numerous efforts to abolish it. *465As recently as 1964 a study commission created by joint resolution of the Legislature recommended that the death penalty be retained. * * * It is not our responsibility, or authority, whatever our individual views on capital punishment, to impute to the Legislature a repeal it has consistently refused to enact during more than a century of agitation upon this subject.
Furthermore, I do not see even a shadow of an intention on the part of the Legislature to grant or to recognize authority in our Court to disregard its mandate that the punishment for first degree murder “shall be death” unless the jury decrees otherwise. If the mandate is to be changed the Legislature should do it.
I would reverse the sentence in this case and order a new trial as to punishment alone.
For modification—Chief Justice Weintratjb and Justices Jacobs, Proctor, Hall and Schettino—5.
For reversal—Justice Francis—1.