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State v. Fortin2/3/2004
rial court precluded questioning of prospective penalty jurors concerning the defendant's prior murder convictions that the State introduced as an aggravating factor in support of a sentence of death. Biegenwald IV, supra, 126 N.J. at 32.
Reason and experience tell us that prospective jurors have varying thresholds for processing and reacting to evidence. Most prospective jurors, even when confronted with shocking evidence related to a brutal crime, presumably will be able to follow the court's instructions and render a fair and impartial verdict. Some jurors, however, will be so disturbed or repulsed by the gruesome details of a crime that they will lose their ability to be objective and will be incapable of dispassionate consideration of the evidence. For the most part, those jurors will be honest and forthcoming in response to direct questions by the court. Our courts must not be fearful of asking those questions out of concern that jury selection will be protracted. The disclosures by the two jurors who read accounts of defendant's crime in Maine and who freely admitted their inability to remain impartial based on that information should have suggested to the trial court that, given the explosive nature of the 404(b) evidence, not all jurors would be capable of following the limiting instructions on the use of that evidence.
The court and the parties needed to know whether the jurors could resist the temptation to consider the heinous assault on Trooper Gardner as proof of propensity to commit a crime, rather than solely as proof of the identity of Padilla's killer. That was reason enough to permit the voir dire on the subject, given the number of jurors who were excused for cause because they could not remain impartial based on the nature of the crimes committed against Padilla. But here, the potential prejudice was compounded incalculably by the fact that the other-crime evidence was that defendant savagely, sexually assaulted a law enforcement officer. Six jurors who sat on the case, five of whom became deliberating jurors, had ties to law enforcement personnel, but were never asked whether, in light of those relationships, they could remain fair and impartial and follow the limiting instructions for the use of the other-crime evidence. The absence of any voir dire on that subject deprived the trial court of the opportunity to strike for cause, and defendant of the opportunity to challenge peremptorily those jurors with law enforcement connections who may have revealed latent biases had they known the nature of the other-crime evidence to be introduced at trial.
In Moore, supra, we approved of inquiring about a juror's ability to remain impartial in view of a victim's condition or status. 122 N.J. at 451. We acknowledged the importance of the trial court and parties learning whether jurors harbored any prejudice in such circumstances that would predispose them toward rendering a particular verdict. Id. at 448. Such reasoning applies with equal force to the victim-status of Trooper Gardner. There was a need to know whether jurors, particularly those with law enforcement ties, could remain open minded in a case in which evidence of defendant's sexual assault on a female state trooper was certain to be introduced.
Expedience can never trump the considered and thoughtful selection of jurors whose impartiality and fairness must be beyond reproach. The extra time necessary to impanel twelve dispassionate jurors in this case would have been a small price to pay for the assurance of a fair trial.
C.
We conclude that the trial court improperly limited the scope of voir dire. The court denied defendant his right to a fair trial by depriving him
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