Court rules that man can receive life sentence
Steven Fortin was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of a mother of four in Avenel
BY KATHY CHANG Staff Writer
A44-year-old former handyman from Carteret, who was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of a 25-yearold mother of four as she was walking home from the Quick Chek on Route 1 in Avenel, can receive a life sentence without parole.

The state Supreme Court, Trenton, on May 12 overturned the state Appellate Court Division's ruling in a 5-2 decision that concurred with the N.J. Superior Court to let Steven Fortin be sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 30 years.

Superior Court Judge James Mulvihill, sitting in New Brunswick, cited in February 2008 that the penalty of life without parole came six years (2000) after Fortin killed Melissa Padilla on Aug. 11, 1994.

The judge said that to sentence Fortin to life without parole would be "ex post facto" sentencing, which, he said, is prohibited by the federal and state constitutions.

At the conclusion of Fortin's second trial in 2007, he was facing a sentence of death, but Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed a bill on Dec. 17, 2007, that abolished the state's death penalty.

In June 2008, a state appeals court agreed with Mulvihill's decision.

The Supreme Court agreed in part, but the court will leave it up to a jury to decide the fate of the former handyman.

The court said the case presented them with a unique set of circumstances.

"Although the guilt phase jury found defendant guilty of murder, a jury never decided whether the State met its burden for the imposition of a death sentence under the former statute because defendant's trial had not yet proceeded to the penalty phase when the murder statute was amended," the court said.

The court concluded in its decision that the state should proceed to the penalty phase of the defendant's trial as if the Legislature had not amended the law. At the penalty phase trial, the court said, the state "will have the burden of proof to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors."

The decision goes on to say that if the jury concludes that the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors, rendering the defendant to a death sentence, then there would be "no violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause for the court to impose a life-without-parole sentence under the amended statute."

If the jury rejects the state's position, then "in order to avoid an unconstitutional application of the new statute, defendant must be sentenced under the former statute as it existed at the time of the offense, which was thirty years to life with a thirty-year parole disqualifier."

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan said in a prepared statement that he was "grateful" for the decision.

"We believe that [a] defendant that had been convicted of murder should be exposed to a sentence of life without parole under the same statute that repealed the death penalty," he said.

Assistant Prosecutor Keith Warburton, who represented the state in Fortin's second trial, will represent the state in the sentencing phase.

In Fortin's second trial, which lasted approximately three weeks, Fortin was also found guilty of first-degree aggravated sexual assault; however, the nine-man, threewoman jury found Fortin not guilty of robbery of Padilla's pants and underwear, one of the cheese steaks she had purchased at the Quick Chek, and some change.

Fortin was indicted on Sept. 6, 1995, and was charged with the first-degree murder of Padilla. She had picked up some food for her four young children around 11 p.m. at the Quick Chek and was walking back to the Gem Motel on Route 1, where she resided with her children and her boyfriend, Hector Fernandez. The motel is a short walk from the Quick Chek.

Padilla's body was discovered naked from the waist down in a concrete pipe alongside Route 1. She had been brutally beaten about the face and head, resulting in a broken nose, she had been sexually assaulted and had bite marks on her chin and left breast, and she had been strangled to death.

Police had exhausted all of their leads, and the case remained unsolved until the Maine State Police contacted Woodbridge Township police inquiring about Fortin in April 1995 because he was a township resident at the time. He was under investigation for the assault of a Maine state trooper. Fortin pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced in November 1995 to 20 years in a Maine prison.

Fortin completed the Maine sentence on Feb. 11, 2008, after serving 13 years of the 20-year sentence.

After being contacted by the Maine State Police, police in New Jersey learned that in August 1994 Fortin had been living at the Douglas Motel with Dawn Archer, his girlfriend of five months at the time, near the Quick Chek, and had made a purchase at the convenience store the day of Padilla's murder.

Archer testified that she had an argument and physical altercation with Fortin in the parking lot of Bud's Hut, which is within five minutes of the crime scene; the altercation took place about an hour before Padilla's murder.

In light of the similarities between the Maine state trooper assault in 1995 and Padilla's murder — sexual assault, beating about the face resulting in a broken nose, and bite marks to the chin and left breast — Woodbridge police traveled to Maine to question Fortin.

Police did not uncover any forensic evidence linking Fortin to the Padilla murder.

The N.J. Supreme Court cited in March 2007 in a decision granting the second trial for Fortin, that the testimony of former FBI Agent Robert Hazelwood concerning linkage analysis lacked sufficient scientific reliability to establish that the same perpetrator committed the Maine and New Jersey crimes. Also in that decision, the court found that Judge Joyce Munkacsi, who presided over the original trial and is now retired, did not ask the jurors if they could remain fair and impartial in the case after hearing testimony about the sexual assault in Maine.