The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Grand Juries, not prosecutors, should make the call on a Capital Murder. Seems like less of a check to me.


SFGAte.com

PS The link worked when I checked it.

From the article:

"Since [NJ] reinstated the death penalty in 1982, grand juries have determined whether enough evidence exists to charge a suspect with murder.

But the decision of whether to add a capital murder charge was left to prosecutors, and depended on whether there were aggravating circumstances, such as murder for hire, killing a police officer and multiple homicides.

New Jersey's high court ordered the change in procedure because recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings [Ring, et al.?] said that the aggravating factors are integral to the murder charge itself, not simply additional factors that determine a potential sentence."

Seems like this holding just brings NJ into compliance with what we already do -- something I often discover when reading about other states' death penalty "reforms."

Ah, you would think so. But it also creates the possibility for more reversals as defense attorneys claim that past death penalty sentences came without grand jury approval. It's all part of the kill them with due process plan.

Here's a link to the case itself.

http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/supreme/a-31-01.pdf

Thanks, David.

I skimmed the lengthy opinion and saw at the end that the NJ S.Ct. held their decision to be prospective, applying only to defendants whose cases have not yet reached the punishment phase.

That's a neat trick -- I'm sure the defense bar is already sharpening their knives ...

Yeah, I can't imagine a more fundamental structural defect that to say that a grand jury completely failed to consider the aggravating element that led to a death penalty. But, then you could have said that of the jury sentencing for the same, and so far some courts have found that to be prospective only.

I am sure the defense attorneys will try to use it but this is an easy one under Texas law since our grand juries are required to determine whether probable cause exists in every capital murder case AND the case must be plead as a capital murder. There is simply no way that a grand jury can indict for capital murder in Texas without finding the so-called aggravating elements, since those are actually elements of capital murder in Texas.