State v. Biegenwald3/5/1987
to a death sentence on retrial; retrial of the instant case on the issue of penalty would result in no escalation in the severity of the potential punishment. See Knapp v. Cardwell, 667 F.2d 1253, 1265 (9th Cir.1982) (distinguishing Bullington in part because " he sentence that can be imposed on resentencing here cannot be more severe than that previously assessed"), cert. den., 459 U.S. 1055, 103 S. Ct. 473, 74 L. Ed. 2d 621 (1982); State v. Watson, 120 Ariz. 441, 586 P. 2d 1253 (1978) (en banc), cert. den., 440 U.S. 924, 99 S. Ct. 1254, 59 L. Ed. 2d 478 (1979).
Resentencing cannot be considered double-jeopardy where the first sentence was a death sentence and the evidence was sufficient. This does not mean that the State can charge any aggravating factors at resentencing that were not found by the jury in the first sentencing phase. Zant v. Redd, 249 Ga. 211,
290 S.E. 2d 36, 39 (1982), cert. den., 463 U.S. 1213, 103 S. Ct. 3552, 77 L. Ed. 2d 1398 (1983); see also Miller v. State, 237 Ga. 557, 229 S.E. 2d 376, 377 (1976) (pre- Bullington case holding that "a new trial on the sentence can be held before a new jury where the jury that convicted the accused also sentenced him to death and the sentence was reversed on appeal because of some error that infected the sentence").
Under this state's prior capital punishment statute, trials were unitary, and an error affecting the imposition of sentence resulted, until State v. Laws, 51 N.J. 494, cert. den., 393 U.S. 971, 89 S. Ct. 408, 21 L. Ed. 2d 384 (1968), in a remand for a new trial on the issues of both guilt and sentence. See, e.g., State v. Mount, 30 N.J. 195 (1959); State v. White, 27 N.J. 158 (1958). In State v. Laws, supra, 51 N.J. 494, however, this Court modified defendants' sentences to life imprisonment where an error affected penalty alone. The Court held that a retrial limited to the issue of penalty would be inappropriate; its holding was based largely, however, on practical grounds:
Obviously, the old jury could not now be reconstituted . . . or could a new jury pass on the matter of punishment alone without being familiar with "all the evidence. . . ." It is conceded that the State would be unable to produce all of the witnesses at the original trial, and any suggestion that a new jury could fairly be called upon to read the many thousands of pages of testimony at the former trial in lieu of hearing live witnesses, would appear to be too unrealistic to require discussion.
[ Id. at 512.]
Thus, the Court did not reject a resentencing trial on double-jeopardy grounds. The Court acknowledged, moreover, that its resistance to resentencing was due largely to the fact that bifurcated trials were foreign to New Jersey, id.; " hether bifurcation should be adopted for the future," the Court advised, "calls for thorough study." Id. That "thorough study" can be said to have resulted in the passage of the Act we uphold today. Because Laws was decided under a unitary trial statute, and because the Laws Court's major misgiving about a separate trial on the issue of penalty -- the foreignness of bifurcation
-- has been removed, Laws is not controlling precedent for the present case.
Since the reversible error affects only the sentencing proceeding, retrial shall be limited to that portion of the trial. Guilt shall not be retried. See State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. 404, 661 P. 2d 1105, cert. den., 464 U.S. 865, 104 S. Ct. 199, 78 L. Ed. 2d 174 (1983); Blankenship v. State, 251 Ga. 621, 308 S.E.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 New Jersey DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|