The Court is unable to offer a definitive answer regarding the source of the jury’s confusion on defendant’s parole ineligibility. The mere fact that the Court found two plausible readings, and that it was reduced to speculation in attempting to resolve the ambiguity, see ante at 293, 736 A.2d at 502 (quoting Bey III, supra, 129 N.J. at 606, 610 A.2d 814), reveals the deficiency in the Court’s conclusion. Moreover, even if the Court fortuitously resolved the ambiguity correctly, the jury still would have engaged in the kind of speculation that our decisions on jury instructions have continuously sought to avoid. Despite our efforts to prevent jurors from improperly inserting into their balancing process the alternatives to death, see Nelson, supra, 155 N.J. at 505, 715 A.2d 281 (<HOLDING>), it is incontrovertible that whether or not a
holding imposition of the death penalty proportionate where the trial court found two aggravating circumstances ccp and contemporaneous murder two statutory mitigating factors and a number of nonstatutory mitigating factors holding that a trial courts weighing of mitigating and aggravating factors will not be disturbed absent a showing that the trial court abused its discretion holding that although court should inform jury about defendants prior sentences the court should instruct the jury that it should not consider prior sentences in its decision to impose a life or death sentence because they are not statutory aggravating or mitigating factors holding that the penaltyphase juryneed not find that aggravating factors sufficiently outweighed mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt holding that juries should be informed of noncapital sentences but that they should base sentencing decision solely on aggravating and mitigating factors