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State v. Koedatich
4/19/1990
State from resubmitting both the "outrageously wanton and vile" and the murder "to escape detection" factors. The trial court agreed, holding that those death-penalty decisions barred the State from charging any aggravating factors at resentencing that the jury in the first penalty phase did not unanimously find to exist.
II.
We note that the Capital Punishment Act, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3 (the Act), offers no specific guidance on the question whether aggravating factors not unanimously found to exist by the jury at the initial sentencing proceeding can be presented at resentencing following a remand. Nor have our prior decisions concerning the presentation of aggravating factors at resentencing dealt specifically with the issue raised by this appeal.
In Biegenwald II, supra, 106 N.J. 13, 524 A.2d 130, we affirmed defendant's conviction for the murder of Anne Olesiewicz, but reversed his death sentence because the trial court had improperly instructed the jury in the penalty phase. Accordingly, we remanded the case for a new sentencing proceeding, observing that " esentencing cannot be considered double-jeopardy where the first sentence was a death sentence and the evidence was sufficient." Id. at 68, 524 A.2d 130.
At the initial penalty-phase proceeding in Biegenwald II, the jury unanimously found the existence of two aggravating factors: (1) that defendant had previously been convicted of murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(a); and (2) that "the murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it
involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim." N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3c(4)(c) ("c(4)(c)"). We held that principles of double jeopardy barred the State from proving the existence of the "aggravated battery" or "torture" components of the c(4)(c) aggravating circumstance at resentencing because there was insufficient evidence in the record to support those components. 106 N.J. at 51, 524 A.2d 130. We noted, however, that the State would not be barred from offering evidence of "depravity of mind" to establish aggravating factor c(4)(c). Id. at 52, 524 A.2d 130.
In Biegenwald III, supra, 110 N.J. 521, 542 A.2d 442, the issue was whether the State could introduce as an aggravating factor at the resentencing hearing defendant's conviction for the murder of William Ward, which was obtained after the Olesiewicz conviction. We held that admission of the Ward conviction at resentencing complied with the double-jeopardy clauses of both the federal and state constitutions and with principles of fundamental fairness. Id. at 540-41, 542 A.2d 442. As dictum in that opinion, we offered this guideline:
If the sentencing jury in the first trial specifically rejects an aggravating factor or an appellate court finds that the State failed to establish by sufficient evidence the existence of an aggravating factor at the original trial, the aggravating factor[,] or that part of the aggravating factor rejected by the jury, cannot be used at the resentencing proceeding. [ Id. at 542, 542 A.2d 442.]
Neither Biegenwald II nor Biegenwald III, however, is dispositive of the issue before us. Therefore, we begin our analysis by considering the question in the context of double-jeopardy jurisprudence. Because we have held the double-jeopardy clauses of the state and federal constitutions to be substantially coextensive, State
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