State v. Harris

• Citation: 181 N.J. 391,859 A.2d 364
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Ambrose A. HARRIS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Decision Date: 19 October 2004
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

859 A.2d 364

181 N.J. 391

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Ambrose A. HARRIS, Defendant-Appellant.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued March 2, 2004.

Decided October 19, 2004.

Robert Francis Gold and Michael A. Priarone, Designated Counsel, argued the cause for appellant (Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney; Mr. Gold, Mr. Priarone and James N. Barletti, of counsel and on the briefs).

Nancy A. Hulett, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (Peter C. Harvey, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney).

Justice LaVECCHIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1996, a jury convicted Ambrose Harris of capital murder and sentenced him to death. We affirmed the conviction and sentence, State v. Harris, 156 N.J. 122, 716 A.2d 458 (1998) (Harris I), and in a subsequent proceeding, found defendant's capital sentence not disproportionate when compared to sentences imposed in similar cases. State v. Harris, 165 N.J. 303, 757 A.2d 221 (2000) (Harris II). Now, four years later, we review defendant's multiple claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and assorted other challenges to the validity of his conviction and sentence.

I.

A.

Review of an application for post-conviction relief in a capital case, eight years after the defendant's trial and sentencing, is a daunting task under any set of circumstances. It is made more difficult in this instance due to the conduct of the PCR trial court. That conduct requires us to determine initially whether we can place any confidence in the PCR court's findings and conclusions.

We explain. Ordinarily our review would be based on the findings and conclusions of the PCR trial court. R. 3:22-11; R. 2:2-1(a)(3). However, certain written and in-court statements of that court complicate our review. We will not recount those statements in detail here, except to note their thrust. The PCR court expressed a belief that defendant would not ever face the death penalty, no matter what the court did:

[S]ince 1976, the date the United States Supreme Court reassessed its death penalty views,[ ] not a single New Jersey defendant has been executed notwithstanding the fact that 51 persons had been sentenced to death by trial juries to date.[ ] If that history of the non-employment of capital punishment in New Jersey—no executions in 33 years[]—is to be any guide, this court entertains substantial doubt that this defendant, despite the depravity of his crime, will ever be called upon to finally pay his richly-deserved penalty. (Cf., inter alia, the 14-year odyssey of Edgar Smith as in New Jersey v. Edgar Smith, 27 N.J. 43 [433, 142 A.2d 890] (1958) and its own rich history of marathon appeals and petition involving more than 20 justices and judges, including his 1971 jackpot decision in the Federal District Court which suddenly divined his confession to be "involuntary," followed by his almost pre-ordained return to transgression.)[ ]

Rather, given the remarkable fervor with which the instant matter has been approached thus far by the publicly-funded PCR counsel, we can easily anticipate another, and another and yet another application or review of some kind. Such application, when combined with the general aversion to put psychopathic killers to death regardless of the consummate depravity exhibited by their crimes and notwithstanding that from any angle of analysis, defendant has already been deemed, to adopt the quaint coinage of our [New Jersey Supreme] Court, "deathworthy," will no doubt operate to preserve the defendant's life well into senior-citizen status. Civilized society can only hope that defendant's existence will, until his demise, be defined within a cubicle demarcated by steel bars, concrete block and razor wire.

[(Footnotes omitted)(emphasis added).]

The balance of the court's statements contain what only can be described as outrageous, sarcastic, and pejorative comments about this State's death penalty system and this Court's capital jurisprudence, including gratuitous personal attacks against current and former members of the Court.¹ The court's statements reveal a disdain for defendant and a preordained view that its role in our capital-sentencing system is meaningless. The nature of its comments raise a Caldwell-like issue, namely whether we can affirm a post-conviction relief determination upholding a capital sentence "when [a PCR court seems] to believe that responsibility for determining the appropriateness of a death sentence rests not with [it] but with the appellate court which later reviews the case." Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. 320, 323, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 2636, 86 L.Ed.2d 231, 235-36 (1985).

In Caldwell, supra, the capital defendant's attorney asked the jury to "confront both the gravity and the responsibility of calling for another's death." 472 U.S. at 324, 105 S.Ct. at 2637, 86 L.Ed.2d at 236. In response, the prosecutor urged the jurors not to see themselves as the determiners of the defendant's sentence because a death sentence would be reviewed for appropriateness by the state supreme court. Id. at 325-26, 105 S.Ct. at 2637-38, 86 L.Ed.2d at 237. The United States Supreme Court "conclude[d] that it is constitutionally impermissible to rest a death sentence on a determination made by a sentencer who has been led to believe that the responsibility for determining the appropriateness of the defendant's death sentence rests elsewhere." Id. at 328-29, 105 S.Ct. at 2639, 86 L.Ed.2d at 239. Acknowledging "the qualitative difference of death from all other punishments [as] require[ing] a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny of the capital sentencing determination," the Supreme Court observed that "many of the limits that [it] ha[d] placed on the imposition of capital punishment are rooted in a concern that the sentencing process should facilitate the responsible and reliable exercise of sentencing discretion." Id. at 329, 105 S.Ct. at 2639, 86 L.Ed.2d at 239.

The Supreme Court continued:

[T]his Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has taken as a given that capital sentencers would view their task as the serious one of determining whether a specific human being should die at the hands of the State.... Belief in the truth of the assumption that sentencers treat their power to determine the appropriateness of death as an "awesome responsibility" has allowed this Court to view sentencer discretion as consistent with—and indeed as indispensable to— the Eighth Amendment's need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.

[Id. at 329-330, 105 S.Ct. at 2640, 86 L.Ed.2d at 240 (internal quotation marks omitted).]

The Supreme Court vacated the defendant's death sentence, because "the State sought to minimize the jury's sense of responsibility for determining the appropriateness of death." Id. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 2646,86 L.Ed.2d at 247.

We have applied Caldwell on several occasions in circumstances where, for example, a prosecutor or court makes an inappropriate statement to a jury, or where a misleading verdict sheet weakens or subverts the requirement of enhanced "reliability in the [sentencer's] determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case." Id. at 330, 105 S.Ct. at 2640, 86 L.Ed.2d at 240. See, e.g., State v. Nelson, 173 N.J. 417, 457-60, 803 A.2d 1 (2002) (Nelson II)

(applying Caldwell to special verdict sheet); State v. Josephs, 174 N.J. 44, 107, 803 A.2d 1074 (2002) (finding Caldwell violation may exist when prosecutor's "remarks to the jury on the death penalty improperly described the role assigned to them under state law"); State v. Koskovich, 168 N.J. 448, 536, 776 A.2d 144 (2001) (rejecting argument that prosecutor's comments "had the capacity to dispel the jury's sense of responsibility"); State v. Marshall, 123 N.J. 1, 247, 586 A.2d 85 (1991) (noting applicability of Caldwell to jury instructions); State v. Rose, 112 N.J. 454, 511, 548 A.2d 1058 (1988) (same); State v. Bey, 112 N.J. 123, 162, 548 A.2d 887 (1988) (observing that "in its charge to the jury in the sentencing phases of a capital trial, a trial court must be careful not to dilute the jury's sense of responsibility for determining appropriateness of the death penalty"). See also Moore v. State, 771 N.E.2d 46, 53 (Ind.2002) (applying Caldwell analysis in evaluating statements of sentencing judge).

Caldwell states that the Eighth Amendment's demand for heightened reliability in capital sentencing forbids the State from trying to diminish the sentencer's sense of its "awesome responsibility." The decision does not directly or explicitly place Eighth Amendment duties on a state trial court adjudicating a capital defendant's post-conviction petition. Nevertheless, it is beyond doubt that members of the judiciary, charged with the function of ensuring the fairness and integrity of the capital-sentencing process, also must view their responsibility as "awesome." Courts evaluating direct review appeals, proportionality review claims, and post-conviction petitions do not determine a capital defendant's sentence, but nonetheless play an indispensable role in "determining [the] appropriateness of [a] death [sentence]," ibid., in light of a defendant's legal rights.

Thus, although we do not rely directly on Caldwell in addressing the PCR court's transgressions, we find that Caldwell provides support for our decision to nullify the PCR court's findings and conclusions. That said, we ground our nullification of the PCR court's determinations in this matter in our State Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment, N.J. Const. art. I, ¶ 12, and specifically, on the role that the post-conviction review proceeding is expected to play in assuring meaningful appellate review in our capital-sentencing scheme.

We have stated that a meaningful post-conviction review proceeding is essential to the state constitutionality of our capital sentencing process....