State v. Williams

• Citation: 113 N.J. 393,550 A.2d 1172
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. James Edward WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Decision Date: 08 December 1988
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

Page 393

113 N.J. 393

550 A.2d 1172

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. James Edward WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued Nov. 10, 1987.

Decided Dec. 8, 1988.

Matthew Astore, Asst. Deputy Public Defender, and Lois De Julio, First Asst. Deputy Public Defender, for defendant-appellant (Alfred A. Slocum, Public Defender, attorney).

Steven Pasternak, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff-respondent (W. Cary Edwards, Atty. Gen. of New Jersey, attorney).

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

WILENTZ, C.J.

In January 1984, a Mercer County jury convicted the defendant, James Edward Williams, of the murder of Beverly Mitchell and thereafter sentenced him to death. He appeals directly to this Court as of right. R. 2:2-1(a)(3). We reverse both the conviction and the sentence. We find as the basis for reversal of both phases the failure of the trial court to assure that the jury was impartial. We find further reversible error in the penalty phase jury instructions. We remand this matter for a new trial of both the guilt and penalty proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

I. Facts

At approximately 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 30, 1982, twenty-three year old Beverly Mitchell arrived for work at the Bellevue Care Center, a Trenton nursing home. Mitchell, a full-time teacher at Trenton High School, held a part-time position as a receptionist at the Center, where on weekdays she worked the 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. shift. She occupied a desk in the reception area, and controlled access to the normally-locked front door. As late as 6:05 p.m. on that day, she was seen sitting at her typewriter alone in the reception area. A nurse at the Center noticed sometime shortly before 6:45 p.m. that Mitchell was not at her desk. At about 6:45, the nurse entered an office adjoining the reception area, turned on the light, and found Beverly Mitchell's dead body lying on the floor.

The scene was gruesome. The victim lay face down and naked, her clothing strewn about the room. There was blood on the floor, the walls, and the furniture. Under the body, investigators found an undergarment, some pieces of jewelry, and a steak knife covered with blood.

The autopsy determined that Beverly Mitchell had been stabbed thirty-six times: there were twenty-one wounds on the back, seven on the front, and eight defense wounds on the body. Additionally, there were bruises, contusions, and abrasions in numerous areas of the body, and the victim's throat was slashed. The medical examiner found that the throat slashing and the defense wounds were superficial and would not have killed or immobolized the victim. The wounds to the front of the body would not, in her estimation, have immediately killed or immobolized the victim either; it was the wounds to the back that were fatal. The medical examiner concluded that the steak knife discovered at the scene could have been the murder weapon, but that another knife could also have been used. It was also her opinion that the victim had been sexually assaulted, although she found no trauma to the genital area.

Two days after the murder, defendant's mother, Sharon Ildefonso, and younger brother, Dennis Floyd, came forward. Floyd said that he had accompanied defendant to the Bellevue Care Center on the evening of December 30 and had witnessed the killing. His testimony would become the foundation of the State's case against James Williams.

Although brothers, Floyd and Williams had known each other only a few months at the time of the murder, having been raised in separate foster homes. They nonetheless had become companions, with Floyd, who was seventeen or eighteen, tending to follow his twenty-one year-old brother's lead. So it was the evening of the killing.

According to Floyd's testimony, the two brothers spent the late afternoon of December 30 drinking beer with four friends at Williams' apartment. Williams had "seemed to be okay," but at some point during the gathering began speaking and acting aggressively. He spoke more than once of "going to make some money tonight" and going to "beat up some white boys," at one point placing a knife in his belt and repeating the statement about making money. Floyd testified that he did not take this statement seriously, since defendant was employed as a construction worker and was not, to Floyd's knowledge, in need of money. Though not knowing his brother's destination, Floyd accompanied Williams as he left the apartment and walked to Bellevue Avenue. As the two young men approached the Bellevue Care Center, Floyd pointed out the Center as the place where his foster grandmother had died.

Williams proceeded to the main entrance of the Center, his brother following. Defendant opened the door--whether it had been locked Floyd did not know--and stated to the young black woman in the reception area that he wanted to see a Mr. Hoffman. The woman indicated that Mr. Hoffman was on the second floor, and Floyd walked toward the elevator. Defendant, however, approached the woman and began pushing her into a back room. Floyd followed. Once in that room, defendant closed the door and turned out the lights and then ordered the victim to take off her clothes. She started to comply, but then stopped, at which point defendant "got mad" and began hitting her. The victim, in a scared voice, cried, "Jesus help me."

What followed, according to Floyd's testimony, was a horrendous sequence of events in which defendant raped and stabbed the victim while Floyd passively stood by, gripped by fear. The 6'6"' Williams forced the 5'2"' victim to the floor, where she lay on her back. Floyd testified that defendant appeared to penetrate the victim. She screamed; he put his hand over her mouth and then "started cutting her." The victim eventually managed to stand up, at which point defendant stabbed her in the back. After the victim fell to the floor on her face, defendant got down on one knee and "started stabbing her in the back." Williams then attempted to give his brother the knife and have him "stab her a couple of times." Floyd refused. Defendant then began looking around to see if he had dropped anything, saying that he did not want to leave any evidence. "He asked me if I touched anything," Floyd recounted at trial, "and I said no." On the way out, Williams took the victim's pocketbook.

Williams was limping slightly and bleeding from his leg as he left the scene of the crime; he blamed his stab wound on his brother's nervousness, and told Floyd that "the last person who was nervous I iced him." He later rubbed blood on the elbows of his brother's coat. He told Floyd that he had stabbed the woman in her lungs, liver, and heart to make sure that she was dead.

The two brothers proceeded back to Williams' apartment, where defendant hid the knife he had with him under some blankets. Williams dumped the contents of Beverly Mitchell's pocketbook on the floor of the apartment, searched for money and credit cards, then put everything back into the pocketbook. Defendant then washed his hands and changed coats, though he did not change his bloodstained jeans and boots. Floyd also changed his jacket on defendant's instructions. The two men went out again, proceeding first to a site along the Delaware River, where defendant put a rock into the pocketbook and tossed it into the water, and then to various points in Trenton in an effort to establish an alibi. On the way through Trenton, they passed the Bellevue Care Center; "as he passed Bellevue, he said they don't know yet. And he started laughing." At one point during the journey around Trenton, Williams bought and smoked "what looked like a white joint" in order, he later told Floyd, "to help him handle what he did." Floyd testified, however, that he had not seen Williams using drugs earlier in the day, and that he had noticed nothing impaired in defendant's motor skills.

Floyd remained silent about the murder for two days, telling only his mother, Sharon Ildefonso, with whom he was then living. Both were fearful of defendant. Their decision to come forward came after Williams made an unannounced visit to the Ildefonso apartment on January 1 with "a bag full of bloody clothes," which he and Floyd proceeded to wash at the laundromat across the street. While at the laundromat, defendant stated that he intended to kill his mother's minister. The brothers returned to the Ildefonso apartment, where Floyd saw that defendant was carrying a gun. After Williams left, Floyd and Ildefonso decided to contact the authorities.

The following day, Williams was arrested. A search of his apartment uncovered, among other items, the jeans, coat, and boots that defendant wore on the evening of the murder, a serrated steak knife, a blood-stained cloth, a pellet gun, and copies of two local newspapers with articles providing details of the murder of Beverly Mitchell. On January 3, 1983, Beverly Mitchell's pocketbook was recovered from the Delaware River. Inside were found, in addition to the victim's belongings, two letters addressed to James Williams.

On April 15, 1983, a Mercer County Grand Jury indicted defendant on the following charges: knowing and purposeful murder by his own conduct, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(1) and (2) (count one); murder during the course of a robbery, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(3) (count two); robbery while armed with a knife, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1 (count three); robbery, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1 (count four); murder during the course of an aggravated sexual assault, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(3) (count five); aggravated sexual assault while armed, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:14-2a(4) (count six); aggravated sexual assault, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:14-2a(6) (count seven); murder during the course of a burglary, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3a(3) (count eight); burglary while armed with a knife, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:18-2 (count nine); ¹...