Court Opinion

ID: 9735238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:06:33.020012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:38.861696
License: Public Domain

STEIN, J.,
dissenting.
Despite an obviously flawed jury instruction on the State’s burden of proof, the Court affirms defendant’s murder conviction, concluding that the error did not cause prejudice sufficient to warrant reversal. We often have emphasized that “ ‘Appropriate and proper charges to a jury are essential for a fair trial.’ ” State v. Collier, 90 N.J. 117, 122, 447 A.2d 168 (1982) (alteration in original) (quoting State v. Green, 86 N.J. 281, 287, 430 A.2d 914 (1981)). “[EJrroneous instructions on material issues are presumed to be reversible error, excusable only if they are harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”. State v. Crisantos, 102 N.J. 265, 273, 508 A.2d 167 (1986) (citing Collier, supra, 90 N.J. at 122-23, 447 A.2d 168). Such errors “are poor candidates for rehabilitation under the harmless error philosophy.” State v. Simon, 79 N.J. 191, 206, 398 A.2d 861 (1979).
As the majority opinion acknowledges, ante at 325, 639 A.2d at 1103, the trial court did not specifically charge the jury that “the State bears the burden of proof with respect to a specific aspect of an element of purposeful and knowing murder, namely, the absence of passion and provocation.” The controlling legal principle is firmly established, and was most recently restated in State v. Wilson, 128 N.J. 233, 607 A.2d 1289 (1992):
We adhere to our conclusion in [State v. Erazo, 126 N.J. 112, 594 A.2d 232 (1991)]. The general instructions given by the trial court do not satisfy the requirement articulated in [State v. Powell, 84 N.J. 305, 419 A.2d 406 (1980)], namely, that “the trial judge must make the State’s burden clear by instructing the jury that * * * it must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did not kill * * * in the heat of passion.” 84 N.J. at 315 [419 A.2d 406]. When the record contains evidence of passion/provocation, a charge that does not include a specific instruction that the State must disprove passion/provocation before the *329jury can find defendant guilty of murder is fatally flawed—even when the instructions contain general statements concerning the State’s burden of proof.
[Id. at 240, 607 A.2d 1289 (alterations in original).]
In my view, the omission of an instruction that the State bore the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of passion/provoeation requires reversal of defendant’s conviction.
I
Although the majority observes that “we are not faced with overwhelming evidence of passion/provoeation as the singular and distinctive factor that led to the killing,” ante at 327, 639 A.2d at 1104, the jury decision whether the homicide was murder or passion/provoeation manslaughter was the central issue at trial, highlighted in the summation of both the prosecutor and defense counsel. The uncontradicted evidence was that defendant and the victim, who had been married approximately four years, had recently separated. The victim, Millicent Héslop, had left the marital home to reside with her sister in Irvington, New Jersey. During a brief reconciliation in April 1991, defendant resided in the Irvington apartment with the victim and her sister, but they told him to leave a few days before the homicide. According to defendant’s statement, offered in evidence as part of the State’s case, his ejection from the apartment resulted in his sleeping in the New York subway system for two nights.
On the evening of the homicide, a co-worker drove defendant to the Irvington apartment to retrieve his tools and clothing. Unarmed, defendant proceeded to the apartment but found that the lock had been changed. He went back to the van for a crowbar to force open the lock, and then returned to the apartment. Defendant’s statement constituted the primary evidence of what occurred inside the apartment.
According to defendant, he saw his wife inside the apartment and asked to be admitted to retrieve his personal belongings. His wife opened the door holding a knife. A struggle ensued and the *330two fell to the floor inside the apartment. Defendant picked up the knife, which had been broken, but the victim “grabbed another knife and started stabbing at me. I started blocking it.” The victim, still holding the knife, “started to run and scream outside.” According to defendant’s statement, “we started to wrestle outside of the house, she tried to stab me with the knife, and I hit her with the crowbar, then she started running away, and she ran to the barber shop.”
Defendant’s co-worker, Kirby Clark, testified for the State and described what he saw when the victim and defendant came out of the apartment. “[S]he had a big knife in her hand, and Nevel was holding the crowbar. * * * First they were tussling, and the woman, she spinned around, then I seen Nevel, he swung the crowbar and, you know, he didn’t hit her, but, you know, he swung the crowbar at her, then like she broke free at that point and then she headed down the side of the house toward the street * *
Defendant dropped the crowbar and pursued the victim, who entered a nearby barber shop still carrying the knife and calling for help. After a struggle in which the victim fell to the floor and dropped the knife, defendant picked up the knife and stabbed her. He removed the knife and proceeded back to his co-worker’s van, dropping the knife in some bushes on the way.
The police apprehended defendant soon after they arrived on the scene. Officers searched the victim’s sister’s apartment, finding blood stains on the door, floor, and bedroom wall, and a broken knife. Police officers took defendant to a local hospital, where he received stitches for a cut on his finger. They then took him to police headquarters, where he voluntarily gave the statement to police that the court admitted into evidence at trial.
The majority opinion, although acknowledging the necessity for a charge on passion/provocation manslaughter, implies that support for that characterization of the homicide is undermined because the stabbing occurred after the victim “had given up the combat and had become totally defenseless * * *.” Ante at 327, 639 A.2d at 1104. That view of the evidence, the majority *331suggests, “militate[s] strongly against the actuality of prejudice” caused by the faulty jury charge. Ibid. The Court’s rationale, however, is unsettling. Assuming, as the Court concedes, that a jury charge on passion/provocation manslaughter was required by the evidence, the question whether the homicide was mitigated by passion/provocation is for the jury to resolve. Crisantos, supra, 102 N.J. at 275, 508 A.2d 167. Moreover, the Court’s focus on the homicidal act minimizes the significance of the uncontested evidence that the victim attempted to stab defendant when he entered the apartment, and that after the first knife broke, she obtained a second knife and continued to wield it threateningly against defendant when the conflict continued outside the apartment.
The law is well settled that merely a threat with a gun or knife can constitute adequate provocation. State v. Mauricio, 117 N.J. 402, 414, 568 A.2d 879 (1990); State v. Powell, 84 N.J. 305, 320, 419 A.2d 406 (1980); State v. Bonano, 59 N.J. 515, 523-24, 284 A.2d 345 (1971). Battery, or mutual combat, has generally been considered adequate provocation, “almost as a matter of law * * Mauricio, supra, 117 N.J. at 414, 568 A.2d 879; Model Penal Code § 210.3 cmt. at 57 (1980); 2 Charles E. Torcia, Wharton’s Criminal Law §§ 158-159 (14th ed. 1979). Once adequate provocation is established, a trial court next considers “whether the perpetrator had reasonable time to cool off before killing the victim,” Mauricio, supra, 117 N.J. at 412, 568 A.2d 879, an objective appraisal based on a court’s “sense of the situation.” Id. at 413, 568 A.2d 879. On this record, the interval that elapsed between the attempted knifing of defendant in the apartment, the encounter outside with the victim wielding a knife and defendant swinging a crowbar, and the fatal stabbing in the barber shop surely was too brief to permit a court to conclude that defendant necessarily had “cooled off’ before the homicide. The remaining elements of passion/provocation manslaughter, whether the provocation actually impassioned the perpetrator and whether the perpetrator actually cooled off, are subjective elements ordinarily left for jury determination. Ibid. Accordingly, notwithstanding *332the majority’s assessment of the strength of the evidence, the record unmistakably established a rational basis for a jury verdict of passion/provocation manslaughter.
II
The trial court charged the jury on murder and on the lesser-included offenses of aggravated manslaughter, reckless manslaughter, and passion/provocation manslaughter. The court’s instructions on those offenses were flawed in three respects, and only one of the errors was corrected before jury deliberations commenced. The corrected error concerned the trial court’s initial instruction that the jury need not consider lesser-included offenses if it determined that defendant was guilty of murder. The other errors—failure to instruct the jury that the State bore the burden of proving as an element of murder the absence of passion and provocation, and an inadvertent but clearly erroneous misstatement of the jury’s function with respect to the offense of passion/provocation manslaughter—were never corrected.
The relevant portion of the trial court’s charge to the jury on murder stated:
Murder is the unlawful killing of one person by another purposely or knowingly.
A person who commits a killing does so purposely when it is the person’s conscious' object to cause death or serious bodily injury resulting in death.
A person who commits a killing does so knowingly when the person is aware that what he is doing will cause death or serious bodily injury resulting in death or is practically certain to cause death or serious bodily injury resulting in death.
In either case, that is, whether the killing is committed purposely or knowinglyj,] causing the death or serious bodily injury must be within the design or contemplation of the defendant.
Shortly thereafter, at the beginning of its charge to the jury on the lesser-included offenses of murder, the court instructed the jury:
If you were to decide the defendant is guilty of a purposeful knowing murder, then you don’t have to consider the lesser included offenses.
*333The trial court then proceeded to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offenses, concluding its passion/provocation-manslaughter charge as follows:
If you are not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, that the elements of this offense have been proved, or any one of them has failed to be' proved, then you should find the defendant not guilty of this charge.
On the other hand, if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or purposely caused death or serious bodily injury resulting in death, without—I am sorry—if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or purposely caused the victim’s death, but you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant did so in the heat of passion upon a reasonable provocation, then you should find the defendant guilty of manslaughter. (Emphasis added).
As noted, the trial court’s initial charge on murder and on passion/provocation manslaughter does not explain the relationship of the offenses or inform the jury that to convict defendant of murder, the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of passion and provocation. In addition, referring to the last two paragraphs of the charge on passion/provocation manslaughter, the second paragraph incorrectly states the jury’s function and contradicts the statement in the first paragraph. The problem arises from the trial court’s undoubtedly inadvertent use of the words “did so,” rather than “did not do so,” in the phrase “but you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant did so in the heat of passion upon a reasonable provocation, then you should find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.” As stated, the charge instructs the jury, contrary to the preceding paragraph, that it should convict the defendant of passion/provocation manslaughter if it had a reasonable doubt that the murder had been committed in the heat of passion on a reasonable provocation. Obviously, that explanation of the jury’s duty in respect of passion/provocation manslaughter seriously misstates the law. Correctly stated, the concluding phrase of the second paragraph should have read “but you have a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not do so in the heat of passion on a reasonable provocation, then you should find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.” Unfortunately, the trial court repeated the error in *334the course of two other attempts to charge the jury on passion/provocation manslaughter.
Prior to the commencement of deliberations, defense counsel requested the trial court to modify that portion of the charge that informed the jury that it need not consider the lesser-included offense of passion/provocation manslaughter if it decided that defendant was guilty of murder, undoubtedly adverting to this Court’s holding in State v. Coyle, 119 N.J. 194, 222-23, 574 A.2d 951 (1990), that a similar instruction constituted reversible error. In response to defense counsel’s concerns, the trial court modified its earlier instruction:
The * * * point that counsel wants me to make clear to you is that when you consider the charge of purposeful or knowing murder that you have to in that context, of course, aside from considering the self defense that’s been interposed here as well, that you also have to consider the heat of passion.
In other words, if you are not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted purposely or knowingly, then you would find him not guilty of a purposeful or knowing murder.
If you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly caused death or serious bodily injury resulting in death without acting in a heat of passion upon reasonable provocation, then you should find him guilty of murder.
If you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or purposely caused the death of the victim but you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant did so in the heat of passion upon a reasonable provocation, then you should find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.
In other words, that you should consider the heat of passion upon reasonable provocation in connection with the purposeful or knowing murder count. (Emphasis added).
Although the trial court corrected its charge to instruct the jury that it must consider passion/provocation manslaughter in connection with its deliberations on purposeful or knowing murder, the court did not instruct the jury that the State bore the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of passion/provocation. In addition, in the fourth paragraph of the modified instruction, the trial court again erroneously used the phrase “did so” rather than “did not do so,” resulting in a flawed charge to the jury.
*335The jury began deliberations on October 10, 1991. The following day it requested additional instructions on murder and aggravated manslaughter. At defense counsel’s request, the following sidebar discussion ensued in the course of which defense counsel asked the court to recharge the jury on passion/provocation manslaughter, emphasizing the State’s burden of disproving passion/provocation in the context of murder:
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: I would ask you to give them heat of passion along with that, because if they [do] find knowing, purposeful [murder], they have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that despite that it is not in the heat of passion.
[ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR]: Judge, they specifically asked for purposeful, knowing [murder] and aggravated manslaughter.
THE COURT: Yes, but I think what she is saying is that there is a recent case that talks about that when that’s raised, that you have to give it in the context of the murder.
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: And when it’s raised, the State has the burden of disproving it.
THE COURT: I am going to do it. I am not going to fool around with it. (Emphasis added).
Accordingly, the trial court recharged the jury on murder and passion/provocation manslaughter, concluding with the following statements:
If you are not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant in fact caused the victim’s death or that the defendant acted purposely or knowingly, you should find the defendant not guilty of murder.
If you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or purposely caused the victim’s death, if you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant did so in the heat of passion upon reasonable provocation, then you should find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.
If you are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or purposely caused death or serious bodily injury and death without acting in the heat of passion on reasonable provocation, then you must find the defendant guilty of murder. (Emphasis added).
Once again, the trial court failed to instruct the jury that the State, not the defendant, bore the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the homicide did not occur in the heat of *336passion on reasonable provocation. Moreover, the trial court again used the phrase “did so” rather than “did not do so” in the middle paragraph of the supplemental instruction quoted above, resulting in an erroneous jury charge on passion/provocation manslaughter.
Our cases make crystal clear that the trial court’s instruction was defective. We emphasized in State v. Grunow, 102 N.J. 133, 506 A.2d 708 (1986), a trial court’s obligation in a case that warrants a passion/provocation charge: “‘[A] trial judge must make the State’s burden dear by instructing the jury that to find [murder] it must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did not kill * * * in the heat of passion caused by inadequate provocation * * *.’ ” Id. at 145, 506 A.2d 708 (emphasis added) (alterations in original) (quoting Powell, supra, 84 N.J. at 315, 419 A.2d 406 (footnote omitted)).
In Coyle, supra, we re-emphasized the importance of a proper instruction on the State’s burden of proof: “When the record contains evidence of passion/provocation, the State can obtain a murder conviction only if it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the purposeful killing was not the product of passion/provocation.” 119 N.J. at 221, 574 A.2d 951.
More recently, in Erazo, supra, 126 N.J. 112, 594 A.2d 232, Justice Pollock restated the same principle and also rejected the State’s contention that the trial court’s general instruction on burden of proof was sufficient:
When a defendant places passion/provocation in issue, the State, to prove a knowing or purposeful murder, must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant’s actions were not the result of passion.
# 'Jfi * *
* * * To support its contention that the charge was merely ambiguous, the State points to an earlier instruction:
[T]he burden of proof is on the State. * * * [T]hat burden never shifts and it remains on the State throughout the whole case, so no burden with respect to proof is imposed upon the defendant, Mr. Erazo. He is not obligated to prove his innocence.
*337That general statement, although accurate, lacks the muscle to shift to the State the burden to disprove passion/provocation.
[Id at 121-22, 594 A.2d 232 (citations omitted) (alterations in original).]
As noted supra at 328, 639 A.2d at 1105, the same rule was repeated with unmistakable clarity in Wilson, supra, 128, N.J. at 240, 607 A.2d 1289: “When the record contains evidence of passion/provocation, a charge that does not include a specific instruction that the State must disprove passion/provocation before the jury can find defendant guilty of murder is fatally flawed—even when the instructions contain general statements concerning the State’s burden of proof.”
In the face of this compelling precedent, the majority finds comfort in its observation that “although the [trial court’s] instruction did not explicitly state that the burden of proving the lack of passion/provocation rests with the State, nowhere did it suggest that the burden of proof on that issue belongs to the defendant.” Ante at 325, 639 A.2d at 1103. The Court also finds reassurance in its review of the factual record, which, it concludes, “does not suggest the likelihood” that the trial court’s flawed instruction either “resulted in or contributed to an improper verdict.” Ante at 328, 639 A.2d at 1105. As our case law makes abundantly clear, however, an instruction that fails to state clearly that the State bears the burden of disproving passion/prov.oeation is not cured merely by the absence of language suggesting that that burden is borne by the defendant. Nor have we heretofore been willing to sustain a murder conviction in the absence of an adequate instruction on the State’s burden of proof merely because the record did not “suggest the likelihood” that the error contributed to an improper verdict. The choice between murder and passion/provocation manslaughter, which depends on the mental state of the accused, is not the province of this Court. “Deciding that question is the jury’s function.” Crisantos, supra, 102 N.J. at 284, 508 A.2d 167 (O’Hern, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part). On an issue so critical to the jury’s deliberative function, we should not compromise our insistence on “a specific instruction that the State must ■ disprove passion/provocation [beyond a reasonable doubt] *338before the jury can find defendant guilty of murder * * Wilson, supra, 128 N.J. at 240, 607 A.2d 1289.
I would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and remand the matter for retrial.
CLIFFORD and POLLOCK, JJ., join in this opinion.