Here because the intentional infliction of pain is such an integral part of these killings, the aggravating circumstance will be upheld. Persons who taunt and torture their murder victims as part of the killing process will not be allowed to escape this circumstance merely because the torturing is not the actual cause of death. As such the jury instruction departed from what the Supreme Court had previously determined to be constitutionally acceptable and failed to properly channel the jury s discretion. An aggravating circumstance based upon depravity of mind must include torture or mutilation beyond the mere act of killing. Mutilation is to cut off or permanently destroy a limb or an essential part of the body or to alter radically so as to make imperfect and requires an act beyond the act of killing.
Defendant challenges sufficiency of evidence to support depravity of mind instruction.
Court concludes that evidence of torture, eighteen stabbings, chipped skull, and thirty-six stabbings of another victim are sufficient to support the finding of this aggravating circumstance. Defendant further challenges the jury instruction regarding depravity of mind. The inclusion of torture, mutilation, or other serious and depraved abuse beyond the act of killing in a finding of depravity of mind effectively channels the jury's discretion and sufficiently narrows the number of death eligible defendants.