Opinion ID: 2966454
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: resulted in the death of the victim.

Text: Appellants' facial challenge is based on the claim that the (n)(1) aggravating factor fails, as is constitutionally required, adequately to guide and channel sentencing discretion in imposing the death penalty. Roane Br. 133. We disagree. Appellants properly point out that under the Supreme Court's decision in Arave, [w]hen the purpose of a statutory aggravating circumstance is to enable the sentencer to distinguish those who deserve 28 capital punishment from those who do not, the circumstance must provide a principled basis for doing so. If the sentencer fairly could conclude that an aggravating factor applies to every defendant eligible for the death penalty, the circumstance is constitutionally infirm. 113 S. Ct. at 1542 (citations omitted). And, they also point out, correctly we may assume, that the four separate circumstances, (A)-(D), set out as bases for finding the (n)(1) aggravating factor to exist essentially replicate the threshold mental states constitutionally required for death-penalty eligibility under Tison v. Arizona , 481 U.S. 137, 158 (1987), and Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 788, 792 (1982). From these two propositions, they then contend that because every murderer must constitutionally satisfy one of these requirements to be subject to the death penalty, the several (n)(1) circumstances that merely replicate the required threshold eligibility states fail under Arave to provide a principled basis for distinguishing those who deserve capital punishment from those who do not. This contention fails in its conclusion. The four (n)(1) circumstances do essentially replicate the required mental states for constitutional imposition of the death penalty, but in doing so they reflect four distinctly different levels of moral culpability, ranging downward from direct intentional killing, (A), to intentionally engaging in conduct with known potential for causing death that did in fact cause it, (D). Depending upon the evidence, a properly instructed jury which has returned an unspecific general verdict of guilty on a § 848(e) capital-murder count may have found either that the defendant intentionally kill[ed] or only counsel[led], command[ed], induce[d], procure[d], or cause[d] or aid[ed] and abet[ted] the intentional killing. § 848(e)(1)(A); 18 U.S.C. § (2)(a). 18 In requiring the jury at sentencing then to address and make findings respecting these different circumstances--some of which are necessarily implicit in any guilty verdict on a§ 848(e)(1)(A) murder count--§ 848(n)(1) provides precisely the constitutionally required, _________________________________________________________________ 18 The alternative means to intentional killing that are provided in § 848(e)(1)(A) as elements of the offense simply replicate--for whatever reason--the alternative means, in addition to aiding and abetting, that make one punishable as a principal under the generally applicable provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 2(a). 29 principled basis for further distinguishing between those murderers thought deserving of death and those not thought to be. See Arave, 113 S. Ct. at 1543 (degree of culpability, as measured by specific mental state, is proper basis for making death penalty choices among murderers); Tison, 481 U.S. at 157-58 (highly culpable mental state . . . may be taken into account in making a capital sentencing judgment). They might well, for example, guide a discretionary decision to recommend death for one defendant found guilty under § 848(e) because he intentionally killed, i.e. , was a direct executioner, but not to recommend death for another defendant also found guilty not because he had been the actual executioner of a victim but because he had caused or procured his intentional killing by another and thereby had intentionally engaged in conduct intending that the victim be killed. We therefore reject appellants' facial challenge to the constitutionality of § 848(n)(1).19