under former death penalty law that provided for unified trial, instruction against bias and sympathy related to jurors’ role in finding facts on guilt phase, and was not intended to foreclose compassion for defendant with respect to punishment
How later courts described this case
- under former death penalty law that provided for unified trial, instruction against bias and sympathy related to jurors’ role in finding facts on guilt phase, and was not intended to foreclose compassion for defendant with respect to punishment
- distinguishing Mathis where "defendant himself injected" a topic into the case
- Court may impose life sentence after appeal when prosecutor recommends it rather than retrial
- it is within the prosecutor's discretion not to seek the death penalty
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Proctor, J.
(concurring). I agree with the majority that we should accept the prosecutor’s waiver of the death penalty in this case even though the trial was free of error. In State v. Laws, 51 N. J. 494, 509-510 (1968), I set forth my view that we could reduce a jury imposed death penalty to life imprisonment if the prosecutor agreed to waive the death penalty, but that we could not do so in the absence of sucSh a waiver. I was able to concur with the majority in Laws only because the prosecutor there agreed to waive. The issue arose again in State v. Royster, 57 N. L. 472 (1971) and I concurred noting the necessity for a prosecutorial waiver of the death penalty which was again given. Id. at 492. Today’s opinion by the majority rests on the premise that the prosecutor agreed to waive the death penalty and in this respect comports fully with what I have maintained from the start.