State v. Harris
| Decision Date | 12 July 1995 |
| Citation | 662 A.2d 333,141 N.J. 525 |
| Parties | STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Joseph HARRIS, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
Mordecai Garelick and Marcia Blum, Asst. Deputy Public Defenders, for appellant (Susan L. Reisner, Public Defender, attorney).
Joseph Connor, Jr., Asst. Prosecutor, for respondent (W. Michael Murphy, Jr., Morris County Prosecutor, attorney).
Robert E. Bonpietro, Deputy Atty. Gen., for amicus curiae, Atty. Gen. of New Jersey (Deborah T. Poritz, Atty. Gen., attorney).
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
O'HERN, J.
A Morris County jury convicted defendant, Joseph Harris, of the murder of R.E., and of other offenses against R.E., his wife, I.E., and their two daughters. In a sentencing proceeding, the jury also found the presence of statutory aggravating factors that established death-eligibility. After considering the statutory aggravating and mitigating factors, the jury determined that defendant should be sentenced to death. For the non-capital convictions, the court imposed two consecutive life sentences and eighty years of consecutive sentences with a ninety-year period of parole ineligibility.
The principal claims raised in defendant's appeal are: (1) a selective capital prosecution of this case occurred after defendant rejected a plea offer with a non-capital sentence; (2) the trial judge incorrectly charged the jury on the form of murder that is death-eligible under the principles of State v. Gerald, 113 N.J. 40, 549 A.2d 792 (1988); (3) the trial judge failed to inform the jury that it could unanimously find defendant guilty of murder even if it did not agree on the form of murder (intentional or serious-bodily-injury (SBI) murder); (4) the trial judge incorrectly charged the jury that it should not consider the diminished-capacity defense based on mental disease or defect until after it had rejected defendant's evidence of insanity; and (5) the trial judge improperly denied an affirmative defense to robbery based on a claim of right to funds in the possession of the murder victim. We find that those and other claimed errors did not taint the trial. The convictions are affirmed.
For purposes of this appeal we draw generally upon defendant's statement of facts. In 1984, defendant invested $10,000 with Ron Ellison's firm, an investment company specializing in precious metals and coins. Defendant received dividend checks for the first few months thereafter. Eventually, however, the monthly checks became smaller and payments finally stopped. The company went out of business in 1985. Defendant wanted his $10,000 investment back. He visited the company offices and telephoned several times, attempting to talk to Ellison about the return of his money. Defendant thought that Ellison was avoiding his obligations to him.
Ellison and his wife lived with their two daughters, ages seven and nine. On November 15, 1988, Harris wrought his frightful revenge. On that date, it was after 8:00 p.m. when Ilene Ellison returned home from work to a night of horror. The front door was locked but it was opened by a man dressed in black, his face covered by a mask. He struck her and told her that her family was upstairs and that if she did what he told her to do nobody would get hurt.
Upstairs she found her husband and her two daughters handcuffed, blindfolded, and seated on the bed. He handcuffed and blindfolded Mrs. Ellison. Defendant repeatedly asked for money. Mrs. Ellison gave him $700 from her purse. He was not appeased. Defendant raped Mrs. Ellison and her two children.
Mrs. Ellison managed to loosen her blindfold and could see defendant walking around. She observed that he wore a mask and surgical gloves. After continuous demands for more money, he raped Mrs. Ellison again and warned her and the children that if he saw anything in the newspapers about what occurred he would come back to get them.
After defendant left the room, Mrs. Ellison heard a sound like a gun being loaded. She heard her husband say to defendant, Mrs. Ellison saw a gun in the master bedroom on the floor, which she kicked under the bed. She then heard her husband outside screaming, "he's going to kill me." Unable to open the window because of her handcuffs, Mrs. Ellison broke a window with the back of her hand. She screamed to a neighbor walking his dog outside. The neighbor called the police. Defendant returned upstairs and tried to force his way back into the bedroom. Because Mrs. Ellison had barricaded the door with a dresser, he was unsuccessful.
Upon arrival, the police found Ellison's body in the backyard. He was lying face down on his stomach. He had blood on his neck and shoulders. A bullet fell from the wound when the medical examiner moved the body. An autopsy report showed that Ellison had died from a bullet that entered the back of his neck on the left side, cutting the spinal cord and disconnecting the brain from the rest of his body. The State's pathologist testified that the victim probably was shot while he was on the ground.
A black hood with an opening for the eyes was found on the floor of the den. In addition, the pistol that Mrs. Ellison had kicked under the bed in the master bedroom, two pistol magazines, a box of ammunition, a flashlight, and a syringe and its plastic wrapper were also found. Two days later, a .22-caliber bullet shell was found in the yard adjacent to the Ellisons' backyard.
In October 1991, almost three years later, defendant was arrested in connection with unrelated killings of four postal workers in Bergen County. His home was searched. That search disclosed handcuffs and a flashlight like the one found in the Ellisons' home. Syringes found in the search had markings similar to the one found at the Ellison house. Two newspaper articles on the Ellison homicide and two snapshots of defendant in Ninja attire, armed with a martial-arts throwing star and a Ninja sword were discovered. The search produced two undated letters written by defendant. In both letters defendant calls himself a "warrior" likely to die "in combat" and "with great honor." One note, which is fairly brief and concerns Ron Ellison, has a postscript warning that after defendant died in combat he "might return as a ghost." In the face of that evidence defendant could not realistically deny that he killed Ron Ellison. His principal defenses were insanity and diminished capacity.
Defendant's life was troubled. He was born in 1956 to an inmate of the State Women's Prison in Clinton, New Jersey. He was taken from his mother at the age of two months and given to his aunt and uncle. Defendant had hardly any contact with his mother and did not meet his father until he was eleven years old. He began to believe that he was cursed because he was born in prison and rejected by his parents. He did graduate from high school and served in the United States Navy. He attended classes for one semester at a local community college.
During his childhood, defendant began to fantasize. He had an imaginary friend and drew guillotines, swords, and guns. At the age of nine or ten he began to hear the voice of an Indian Chief. Eventually, however, the dominant voice defendant began to hear was that of a Ninja spirit, a fierce warrior whom defendant believed had been with him throughout his life. "Ninja" describes a member of a class of feudal Japanese warriors who were highly trained in the art of stealth. Commonwealth v. Hudgens, 400 Pa.Super. 79, 582 A.2d 1352, 1355 n. 9 (1990). Daimyos, the Japanese feudal lords, frequently employed Ninjas as spies and assassins because of their specialized training. Ibid. The Ninja costume is black and similar in style to a karate outfit, but it includes a black hood. Id. 582 A.2d at 1355 n. 7. Defendant claimed that this Ninja spirit directed him to go to Asia to fulfill his prophecy. He enlisted in the Navy with the understanding that he would be stationed in Asia. After serving two years on an aircraft carrier in the Navy, he received a general discharge for failure to attend to his duties.
In November 1981, he began to work at the post office in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and remained there until May 1990. At this job he claimed to experience discrimination as an African-American. Believing that he needed to be able to defend himself, he took up karate. Defendant occasionally arrived at work dressed in black, an imitation of Ninja garb, or in a military camouflage outfit, and performed martial-arts maneuvers before fellow employees. His co-workers described his behavior as "irrational," "odd," and "weird."
1. Was the prosecutor's decision to seek the death penalty after offering a plea to a life sentence an abuse of discretion, resulting in the wanton and cruel imposition of the death penalty in violation of defendant's constitutional rights?
In April 1993, during jury selection, the prosecutor offered a plea agreement to defendant pursuant to which the prosecutor would seek only a life sentence. Defendant claims that the prosecutor thereby announced his view that the death penalty was inappropriate and excessive in his case. When defendant tore up the executed plea in an emotional outburst moments before he was scheduled to enter the plea, the State continued to trial with a capital case. Defendant contends that he was subjected to a sentence of death rather than life imprisonment because he is mentally ill. Defense counsel does not claim that the State's initial decision to make this a capital prosecution was based on unsupported aggravating factors. Instead, they claim that an error lies in the State's reversal of its decision to...
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