## Facts

- William Lawton was badly beaten in a bar by as many as eight to ten people; witnesses described his face as swollen and deformed, with one eye swollen shut.
- Lawton left the bar, went home, obtained a handgun, and returned to the bar about ten minutes later.
- After returning, Lawton shot and killed a person he believed had been among the group that beat him.
- The State charged Lawton with first-degree murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(a)(1), and possession of a handgun for an unlawful purpose, N.J.S.A. 2C:39-4(a).
- At trial, the court charged the jury on murder and the lesser-included offense of passion/provocation manslaughter; the instructions (including a later recharge) were challenged as confusing and as blurring who bore the burden of proof on passion/provocation.
- The jury convicted Lawton of murder and unlawful-purpose handgun possession.
- On direct appeal, Lawton’s convictions were affirmed; the appeal did not raise the asserted defects in the passion/provocation instructions.
- Lawton later filed a petition for post-conviction relief (PCR), arguing that the jury instructions violated due process and that appellate counsel was ineffective for not challenging the charge on direct appeal.
- The PCR court denied relief, and Lawton appealed from that denial.

## Issues

1. Whether the jury instructions on murder and passion/provocation manslaughter were so confusing and contradictory that they failed to clearly tell jurors the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of passion/provocation to convict of murder.
2. Whether those instructional errors, raised on PCR after an unsuccessful direct appeal, warranted relief because they produced a fundamental injustice and involved constitutional error.
3. Whether appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise the jury-charge defects on direct appeal, allowing the claim to be considered on PCR.

## Decision

- The Appellate Division reversed the order denying PCR as to the murder conviction.
- The court held that the charge and recharge did not tell the jury in clear, unambiguous terms that once passion/provocation was in issue, the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing was not the product of passion/provocation in order to obtain a murder conviction.
- The court found the overall instructions risked jurors believing either that Lawton had to prove passion/provocation or that the jury could not seriously consider manslaughter until after it resolved murder in a way that could dilute the State’s burden.
- The court concluded the instructional errors caused a fundamental injustice and a deprivation of constitutional rights.
- The court remanded for a new trial on the murder charge and did not reach Lawton’s other PCR arguments.
- The opinion did not disturb the handgun-for-an-unlawful-purpose conviction.

## Legal Principles

- Passion/provocation manslaughter is a mitigating form of intentional homicide; once the evidence fairly raises it, the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of passion/provocation to secure a murder conviction.
- Jury instructions must communicate that burden plainly; language that suggests the defendant must persuade the jury of passion/provocation, or that the jury must “get past” murder before it can meaningfully consider manslaughter, is error.
- When assessing an instruction, courts consider the charge as a whole, including any recharge, and ask whether jurors could have been misled about the State’s burden on an element that separates murder from manslaughter.
- On PCR, relief may be granted despite prior appellate review when a jury-charge defect affecting the burden of proof creates a fundamental injustice and implicates due process.
- Appellate counsel’s omission of a substantial jury-instruction issue can satisfy the Strickland/Fritz standard where the missed issue was likely to have altered the result of the appeal and the reliability of the murder verdict.

## Conclusion

Because the trial court’s murder and passion/provocation manslaughter instructions did not clearly and consistently tell the jury that the State had to disprove passion/provocation beyond a reasonable doubt to convict of murder, the Appellate Division reversed the denial of post-conviction relief on the murder conviction and remanded for a new trial on that charge, leaving the handgun conviction intact.


State v. Lawton, 298 N.J. Super. 27 (1997)