State v. Choice

• Decision Date: 16 January 1985
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas CHOICE, Defendant-Respondent.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Page 295

98 N.J. 295

486 A.2d 833

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas CHOICE, Defendant-Respondent.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued Sept. 25, 1984.

Decided Jan. 16, 1985.

Linda K. Calloway, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff-appellant (Irwin I. Kimmelman, Atty. Gen., attorney).

John DeMassi, Fanwood, Designated Counsel, defendant-respondent (Joseph H. Rodriguez, Public Defender, attorney).

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

WILENTZ, C.J.

We reverse the Appellate Division and reinstate the conviction and sentence rendered in the trial court.

Defendant, Thomas Choice, was tried and convicted of the murder of his former wife. ¹ His defense was an alibi--he was somewhere else when decedent was killed. The contrary evidence was that defendant, rebuffed in his attempts to resume an intimate relationship with his former wife, surprised her on the porch of her mother's home and shot her twice in the head. At no point in the case was there any contention by anyone that the evidence could rationally accommodate a manslaughter verdict. No request so to charge was made. On appeal to the Appellate Division, defendant claimed, for the first time, as plain error, that our decision in State v. Powell, 84 N.J. 305, 419 A.2d 406 (1980), required the trial court to charge manslaughter sua sponte, there being sufficient evidence, according to defendant, to support such a charge; defendant further claimed that failure to do so was reversible error.

The Appellate Division, one judge dissenting, agreed with these contentions and reversed, remanding the matter for a new trial. The basic difference between the majority and the dissent was their views of the evidence, the majority concluding that the evidence could rationally support a manslaughter charge (i.e., that the homicide resulted from an overpowering passion caused by a reasonable provocation), the dissent, that it could not. The more specific point of difference related to the existence or not of any evidence that decedent's conduct constituted "reasonable provocation." Both the majority and the dissent implicitly assumed that if the evidence could rationally support a manslaughter charge, the failure of the trial court to give one, even though none was requested, called for reversal on appeal. ²

We need not reach the factual issue that divided the Appellate Division since Powell calls for reversal of the judgment below on different grounds. In Powell, the defendant at trial, as here, claimed an alibi. The State had introduced several contradictory statements by the defendant, one of which not only put defendant with decedent at the time and place of the homicide, but clearly suggested the possibility of a passion/provocation manslaughter. ³ We held that the fact that defendant's position at trial was totally inconsistent with a manslaughter verdict did not deprive him of the right to have that lesser offense submitted to the jury, and that it was reversible error on the part of the trial court upon request, to refuse to charge such lesser offense. ⁴ In dictum we noted that "where the facts clearly indicate the possibility that the crime was manslaughter based upon either provocation/passion or imperfect self-defense, we see no reason why the trial judge should not also be obliged, even without any request being made, so to charge." Powell, supra, 84 N.J. at 318, 419 A.2d 406 (emphasis supplied). Our conclusion was based on our belief that the public interest may require that a particular charge be given to the jury, where the facts rationally support such a charge, even though neither the defense nor the prosecution has requested it; that enforcement of the criminal law is too important to be controlled completely by the contentions of the adversaries; and that the court has an obligation to see to it that the jury, as the representative of the public, is given all of the facts and all of the possible offenses that might reasonably be found from such facts. That dictum, however, was limited to a statement of the trial court's duty. The limitation was explicit: "We express no opinion here as to the effect, on appeal, of a failure so to charge where no request has been made. Rather we shall state the duty of the trial court when similar circumstances present themselves." Id. ⁵

Our review of the record in this matter shows that whatever else in this case may be murky, it is clear that the facts here do not "clearly indicate the possibility that the crime was manslaughter based upon ... provocation/passion...." Powell, 84 N.J. at 318, 419 A.2d 406. The trial court does not, by virtue of Powell, have the obligation on its own meticulously to sift through the entire record in every murder trial to see if some combination of facts and inferences might rationally sustain a manslaughter charge. It is only when the facts "clearly indicate" the appropriateness of that charge that the duty of the trial court arises. That is what was referred to in Powell, and those were the facts as they existed in Powell. Such clarity being absent here and there being no request so to charge, we reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and reinstate the conviction and sentence of the trial court. We do not pass on any of the other issues before the Appellate Division since the matter is before us solely as a result of the dissent, the only issue there addressed being the failure of the trial court to charge manslaughter sua sponte.

Some further clarification of Powell seems necessary. The dissent below points out that had defendant requested a manslaughter charge, and had the State been aware that the case would proceed on that theory as well as on the alibi offered, there were various matters that the State might have wanted to bring to the jury's attention relevant to the passion/provocation basis underlying the manslaughter charge but totally irrelevant to the charge of murder (matters, in fact, that the judge...