SYLLABUS
(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized).
State v. Lavar Winder (A-34-08)
Argued March 9, 2009 -- Decided July 28, 2009
LaVECCHIA, J., writing for the Court.
In this case in which the defendant, Lavar Winder, advanced an insanity defense to a first-degree murder charge, the Court considers whether the trial court erred in denying Winder's request for a variation of the jury instructions that would have explained to the jury that a criminally insane person may be capable of comprehending that an act is legally wrong while not understanding it to be morally wrong.
In early 2003, Winder, age 25, was a high school graduate with an IQ in the low seventies. After leaving his job with an armored car company in January 2003, Winder was shot in the groin under circumstances that are unclear. Thereafter, Winder began exhibiting paranoid behavior, including talking to himself and expressing a belief that his parents were trying to kill him. On April 16, 2003, Winder's father took him to a hospital because he was complaining about severe headaches. The hospital released Winder after finding no medical cause for the headaches. After Winder told his father that he did not feel safe in his own apartment, he was taken to a hotel. Later that night, Winder's father received a telephone call from police reporting that Winder had been detained for causing a disturbance. Winder's parents decided to have him involuntarily committed. While his parents were en route with him to the hospital, Winder threatened to kill himself or someone else if he was not put in jail.
At the hospital, Winder tested positive for the controlled dangerous substance of phencyclidine (PCP). He was diagnosed with a psychosis and possible PCP dependence. Winder was released from involuntary commitment at the hospital on April 18, 2003. Leaving the hospital, Winder ran away from his parents, jumped into his car, drove to his apartment, retrieved his gun, and then departed for Atlantic City. In Atlantic City, Winder hailed a cab and requested that the driver take him to the police station. When the cab stopped outside the police station, Winder told the driver, "I'm sorry I have to do this," and shot him twice in the back of the head. Winder then walked over to a police officer sitting in a nearby police car and calmly reported to the officer that he had just shot someone in the cab. Winder was arrested, his Miranda rights were read, and his confession was tape recorded. He told the officers that he killed the cabdriver so that he could go to prison for the rest of his life because prison was the only place he would be safe. He explained that he randomly chose the cabdriver as the victim, but added that he would not have killed a child or his own parents. Winder did not appear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Three mental health experts testified at Winder's trial. Dr. Dougherty, a psychologist, testified that Winder suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was obeying voices in his head that told him to kill someone, and his PCP use only exacerbated the pre-existing condition. Dr. Doughtery opined that Winder could not appreciate that shooting the cabdriver was wrong because he irrationally believed that it was the only way for him to get into jail, which he irrationally believed was the only place he would be safe. Dr. Weiss, a psychiatrist, testified that Winder was suffering from schizophrenia, had been hearing voices before using PCP, and that his actions were caused by his mental illness rather than drug use. Dr. Weiss also testified that Winder knew that shooting the cabdriver would give the impression to others that he needed to be locked up, but did not know it was wrong because his intent was to be safe so that he could preserve his own life. Finally, Dr. Voskanian, a psychiatrist testifying for the State, opined that Winder was not schizophrenic and that his irrational thoughts were the result of PCP use. Dr. Voskanian asserted that Winder knew that killing the cabdriver was the wrong thing to do, as demonstrated by his apology to the victim and his statement to police that he would not have chosen a child as a victim because that would be wrong.
Defense counsel requested an insanity instruction that included the definition of legal and moral wrong, citing State v. Worlock, 117 N.J. 596 (1990). The trial court determined that a Worlock tailoring of the model jury charge was unnecessary because in this case the legal and moral wrong were coextensive. The court instructed the jury with the model charge on insanity. The jury found Winder guilty of first-degree murder, among other charges.
The Appellate Division affirmed Winder's conviction. On the insanity charge, the panel agreed with the trial court that legal and moral wrong were coextensive in this case. The Supreme Court granted certification. 196 N.J. 461 (2008).
HELD: In this first-degree murder case, the trial court properly denied defendant's request for a tailoring of the model jury charge on insanity to explain to the jury that a criminally insane person may be capable of comprehending that an act is legally wrong while not understanding it to be morally wrong.
1. The test for criminal insanity is found in N.J.S.A. 2C:4-1, which states that a person is "not criminally responsible for conduct if at the time of such conduct he was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong." This standard, more commonly known as the M'Naghten test, tracks back to a British judicial opinion that was adopted in 1846 by this Court. Although what precisely was meant by the term "wrong" in M'Naghten was unclear, the upshot of the test was that, in some limited circumstances, a defendant could be excused because of his inability to recognize his actions as morally wrong, even though he may have understood them to be legally wrong. The current Model Jury Charge for insanity reflects that a defendant, who knows the nature and quality of his or her criminal act, must have had the capacity to appreciate that the act was wrong. In addition to reciting the language contained in N.J.S.A. 2C:4-1, the charge explains that the "question is not whether the defendant, when (he/she) engaged in the deed, in fact actually thought or considered whether the act was right or wrong, but whether defendant had sufficient mind and understanding to have enabled (him/her) to comprehend that it was wrong if defendant had used (his/her) faculties for that purpose." (Pp. 11—18).
2. The issue in Worlock was whether, when instructing a jury on insanity, a trial court was required to define the term, "wrong," to explain "moral wrong" as distinct from "illegal." Although the Worlock Court emphasized that in most instances, legal wrong is coextensive with moral wrong, it acknowledged that there could be circumstances in which, even for murder, legal and moral wrong would not be coextensive. The Court explained that the insanity defense requires an inquiry into the defendant's ability to comprehend whether his actions would ordinarily be disapproved by society, therefore the concept of moral wrong could not be judged by the personal standard of the individual defendant. Because the standard was a non-subjective one, the Worlock Court concluded that, as a general rule, it would not be sufficient that a defendant's personal moral code justified a killing otherwise prohibited by law and societal morals. The Worlock Court then hypothesized that a killing on obedience to a "command from God" was an example of a situation in which society could distinguish between a legal and moral wrong. Although it noted that other "delusion-based exceptions" might arise where legal and moral wrong were not coextensive, the Court did not identify those situations and concluded that it would be the exceptional case where legal and moral wrong would be objectively discernible and accepted by society as distinct. (Pp. 18—22).
3. Winder's delusion—that jail was the only safe place for him because his parents were trying to kill him—was the hub of his insanity claim. However, he does not assert that his delusion commanded him to kill the cabdriver or that it would not be wrong to kill and he demonstrated knowledge of the social unacceptance of his deed by apologizing to his victim and by consciously excluding children and his parents from his potential victims. This case does not present the kind of command-type delusion that renders its hearer incapable of appreciating what society deems right from wrong. Such delusions are exceptional. The hurdle to overcoming societal disapproval of the killing of another human being cannot be accomplished by references to subjective beliefs, personal preferences, or alternative notions of morality, unrelated to mental illness, that clash with the law and the mores of society. That Winder had a personal motivation for his action, known to be contrary to law and society, does not entitle him to an instruction asking the jury to separate moral wrong. Because the law and society's mores are coextensive in this case, the Court finds that there was no error in the form of the trial court's jury instruction on insanity. (Pp. 22—25).
4. Worlock's dicta on delusional commands allowed for a specific distinction between legal and moral wrong in only the clearest and narrowest category of cases where a delusional command could be objectively recognized to confound the difference between lawful behavior and a moral imperative. Courts have identified few examples as fitting the narrow class of cases contemplated (the few mentioned examples falling into such categories as God-like commands or presidential orders). The Court disapproves an interpretation of Worlock suggesting that any delusion-based voices instructing or commanding a behavior would justify a specialized adjustment to the model charge on insanity. (Pp. 25—26).
5. The Court also rejects Winder's claims that 1) the jury voir dire was deficient because neither the trial court nor defense counsel probed the prospective jurors' views about the propriety of an insanity defense or their prejudices on mental illness; and 2) ineffective assistance of counsel resulted from defense counsel's failure to request an insanity instruction that distinguished between legal and moral wrong early during the trial, failure to voir dire prospective jurors to uncover bias toward the insanity defense and the mentally ill, and misstatement of the insanity defense burden of proof during summation. Finally, the Court rejects Winder's argument that the trial court's limiting instructions regarding his past drug activities deprived him of a fair trial. (Pp. 26—35).
The judgment of the Appellate Division is AFFIRMED.
JUSTICE LONG, in a separate CONCURRING opinion in which JUSTICE ALBIN joins, agrees that in this case the absence of a Worlock charge did not affect the outcome or deny Winder a fair trial, but maintains that there should be no limitation on the type of command hallucination that would trigger an explanation of moral as opposed to legal responsibility.
CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES WALLACE, RIVERA-SOTO and HOENS join in JUSTICE LaVECCHIA'S opinion. JUSTICE LONG filed a separate, concurring opinion, in which JUSTICE ALBIN joins.