Opinion ID: 2306564
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sufficiency of the Evidence for the Torture Aggravator

Text: Turning to appellant's penalty phase claims, appellant first contends that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's finding of the aggravating circumstance that [t]he offense was committed by means of torture. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(8). Appellant posits that there was no medical evidence presented establishing that P.B. suffered physical pain during the hours in which she was trapped and suffocating after appellant threw her into the radiator. He therefore argues that there was no evidence of pain and suffering and, consequently, no evidence to support a finding of torture. Appellant also argues that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that his abuse of P.B. could be considered as proof of torture. Appellant contends that evidence of the pain and suffering he inflicted over the months prior to P.B.'s death cannot support the torture aggravator because the suffering must be inflicted concurrently with the final event that brings about the victim's death. Thus, in appellant's view, the acts of abuse in the months, days, and hours leading up to P.B.'s death cannot constitute acts of torture for purposes of establishing the aggravator. In his view, it is only the single blow to the child and her subsequent hours trapped between the bed and the wall that may be considered in assessing whether the murder was committed by means of torture. Appellant also downplays the seriousness of the abuse he inflicted upon P.B., characterizing other cases where the torture aggravator has been upheld by this court as much more egregious. He urges this Court to find that the facts in the instant case cannot establish torture when we have held, in previous cases, insufficient evidence in more agonizing deaths than appellant's victim suffered. Appellant's Brief at 32, 34. The Commonwealth responds that the evidence amply supported the torture aggravator. The Commonwealth argues that the jury could consider the complete history of appellant's abuse of P.B. in determining whether the torture aggravator was present because the intent to torture is separate and distinct from the intent to kill. The Commonwealth points to this Court's decision in Commonwealth v. Ockenhouse, 562 Pa. 481, 756 A.2d 1130 (2000), in which we identified several factors that may be considered in determining whether the facts of a given case make out the aggravating circumstance of torture. The trial court found that the evidence fulfilled the Ockenhouse factors cited by the Commonwealth and unequivocally establish[ed] that P.B. was tortured. Trial Ct. Op. at 10. The trial court determined that the sole purpose of the physical and emotional abuse appellant inflicted upon P.B. was to cause her pain and anguish, and that the myriad wounds covering the majority of P.B.'s body clearly evidenced appellant's intent to cause pain and suffering beyond that necessary to kill. It is an aggravating factor in a capital case if the offense was committed by means of torture. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(8). A murder is committed by means of torture when the defendant intentionally inflicted on [the victim] a considerable amount of pain and suffering that was unnecessarily heinous, atrocious, or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity. Ockenhouse, 756 A.2d at 1136 (citing Commonwealth v. Karenbauer, 552 Pa. 420, 715 A.2d 1086, 1099 (1998)). Torture includes the infliction of pain to punish or coerce. Id. Thus, to determine whether a killing was committed by means of torture, this Court looks to several factors, including, but not limited to: (1) the manner in which the murder is committed; (2) whether the wounds were inflicted on a vital or non-vital area of the body; (3) whether the victim was conscious during the episode; and (4) the duration of the episode. Id. at 1137. The intent to torture may be proven from the circumstances surrounding the killing. Commonwealth v. Cox, 546 Pa. 515, 686 A.2d 1279, 1289 (1996). Because the plain language of the statute requires that the killing be committed by means of torture, there must be a connection between the torture and the killing itself. The question is fact-intensive, and thus a survey of relevant cases is instructive. In some cases, the connection is temporal, as the torture aggravator is sustained by evidence that the defendant carried out the actual killing in a particularly brutal, prolonged or painful manner. Thus, in Commonwealth v. Pursell, 508 Pa. 212, 495 A.2d 183 (1985), the defendant assaulted and killed a thirteen-year-old boy in a park. Prior to the victim's death, the defendant had subjected him to fifteen blows to the head with a blunt, jagged object later identified as a rock found near the body. The victim sustained bruises, a broken nose and swollen eyes. The defendant ultimately killed the victim by strangling him with a tree branch, resulting in internal hemorrhaging in the neck and a crushed windpipe. After his death, the victim's body sustained several burns on parts of his torso and trauma to the chest and scrotum. The defendant was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, with the jury finding the torture aggravator as the sole aggravating factor. On appeal, the defendant claimed that the torture aggravator was unconstitutionally vague. The defendant also challenged the sufficiency of the evidence regarding the torture aggravator. Responding to the defendant's vagueness challenge, this Court stated that [t]he legislature's inclusion of the means of torture as an aggravating circumstance... is a sufficiently specific factor because we feel that the meaning of such a term is a matter of common knowledge, so that an ordinary man would not have to guess at what was intended. Pursell, 495 A.2d at 196. We reasoned that torture is understood as the infliction of a considerable amount of pain and suffering on a victim which is unnecessarily heinous, atrocious, or cruel manifesting exceptional depravity. Id. We added that, [w]hen the means of torture are employed, we can believe, without a reasonable doubt, that the user of such means intended to torture his or her victim to death. What is intended to be included are those murders of the first degree where the actual commission of the offense included such concurrent acts as to set the crime apart from the norm of capital feloniesthe conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily painful to the victim. Id. at 197. We then found that the evidence in Pursell was sufficient to sustain the aggravator, considering the number of blows, the manual strangulation, the asphyxiation with a ... tree branch, the screams heard by a witness, and the continued traumatization of the body after death.... Id. In Commonwealth v. Proctor, 526 Pa. 246, 585 A.2d 454 (1991), the defendant and his accomplice traveled from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Meadville, Pennsylvania, and found themselves without money. Defendant's accomplice knew an elderly gentleman in the area whom, she said, they could rob. The defendant and his accomplice went to the victim's home, where they talked with the victim for about half an hour, then went into the living room to watch television. The victim received a phone call and went into the kitchen, whereupon the defendant and his accomplice decided they needed to find some kind of weapon to knock him out with. After the victim returned to the living room, the defendant went into the kitchen, found a pair of scissors, and tucked them into his waistband. The defendant then hid and waited for the victim to come back into the room, whereupon he ambushed the victim, stabbed him with the scissors, and removed the money from his wallet. The defendant and his accomplice ransacked the house looking for more money, then fled, leaving the victim's body to be discovered by friends. The victim had been stabbed fifty-seven times. The defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and, following a penalty hearing, the jury found the presence of the torture aggravator and returned a sentence of death. On appeal, the defendant claimed that the evidence was insufficient to support the torture aggravator, arguing that his conduct did not show exceptional depravity and did not establish his intent to cause pain and suffering to the victim. We held that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the torture aggravator because it was clear that the victim in this case sustained considerable pain and suffering. Additionally, we noted that it was absurd to suggest that the murder of an eighty-four year old man by repeated, unrelenting, and unnecessary stabbing is by any stretch of the imagination the `norm' in capital felonies. Proctor, 585 A.2d at 461. Because Pursell and Proctor involved killings that were committed against strangers in single, brutal episodes, the torture at issue obviously occurred simultaneously with the act of killing the victim, and the defendant's broader course of conduct towards the victim was not at issue. A direct temporal connection, however, is not necessarily commanded by the statute and our cases make clear that there is no requirement that the torture be contemporaneous with the final act causing the victim's death. Thus, in Commonwealth v. Heidnik, 526 Pa. 458, 587 A.2d 687 (1991) the defendant hanged one of his victims by her wrist from a ceiling hook, fed her only bread and water, and subjected her to beatings. The victim collapsed and died after several days of this treatment. Performing its statutory review, this Court found that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the torture aggravator. In doing so, this Court did not limit its consideration to the final beating that preceded the victim's death, but considered the entire, sustained course of conduct that weakened the victim and eventually killed her. Id. at 692. [10] Also instructive is Commonwealth v. Daniels, 537 Pa. 464, 644 A.2d 1175 (1994), which found that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the torture aggravator where the defendants, prior to shooting the victim, beat him and held him in the trunk of a car for twenty-four hours. The court emphasized that evidence of torture could be found in the fact that the victim was bound, gagged, and immobilized in the trunk of his own car, terrorized by the fact that his friend had been killed and that he too would be killed. Id. at 1180. Again, the entire course of conduct was deemed relevant to determining whether the victim was tortured, not merely the defendants' final act in shooting the victim. More recently, this Court found that the torture aggravator was established in the context of prolonged child abuse that eventually caused the victim's death. Thus, in Commonwealth v. Powell, 598 Pa. 224, 956 A.2d 406 (2008), we held that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the torture aggravator where the defendant physically abused his young son for a period of several months before the final incident which ended the child's life. We noted that the defendant capped a sustained period of abuse by beating a helpless, six-year-old child to death. Id. at 417. In Powell, as here, there was an accumulation of abuse that gave rise to complications that resulted in death. Id. In considering the sufficiency of the evidence to support the torture aggravator, we looked to the defendant's entire course of conduct towards his six-year-old son, not the conduct limited to the night of the murder itself. We explained that Powell's abuse of [the victim] was not limited to the night of the murder; rather, [Powell] isolated and abused [the victim] for a period of several months, subjecting him to prolonged beatings severe enough to be audible to [Powell's] neighbor.... The frequent beatings inflicted severe injuries, both visible and internal, that disfigured the six-year-old's face and irreparably damaged his brain. Id. at 426, 956 A.2d 406. We noted that the defendant in Powell beat his six-year-old son to death over the course of at least several hours, or, viewed more broadly, the course of months. Id. We stated in Pursell that the torture aggravator is intended to distinguish those murders of the first degree where the actual commission of the offense included such concurrent acts as to set the crime apart from the norm of capital feloniesthe conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily painful to the victim. Pursell, 495 A.2d at 197. Appellant now urges us to focus solely on the phrase concurrent acts, and find that the Pursell case established that the torturous act, in order to constitute torture for purposes of the statute, must occur immediately before the victim's death. Appellant's interpretation is premised upon an unreasonable constriction of the language in Pursell, as well as the plain language of the statute, and gives insufficient consideration to the ensuing cases. Pursell ties its formulation of concurrent acts to the time period in which the actual commission of the offense occurred. What is truly at issue, then, is how to define the commission of the offense, and not the moment of death alone. In Pursell, the offense was begun and completed in a brief period of time, temporally linking the acts of torture with the moment of death in that case. However, as Powell, Daniels, and Heidnik recognize, murders committed by means of torture are often not so expeditiously carried out. Indeed, some of the more conscienceless or pitiless crimes that are most unnecessarily painful to the victim are those in which the offense is committed over an extended period of time. Appellant poses two questions here: first, whether the history of abuse could be considered at all; and second, whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the jury finding of the aggravator. On the first question it is clear that the jury may properly consider acts by the defendant that ultimately contributed to the victim's death. Here, the medical evidence established that the abuse appellant inflicted upon P.B. before the night when he carried out the final act directly contributed to her death. The jury considered those actsappellant's course of conductas evidence of appellant's intent to kill. It would be illogical to permit the jury to consider the defendant's course of conduct as part of the murder itself for the purpose of evaluating specific intent, and then prevent the jury from considering the very same course of conduct as part of the actual commission of the offense for purposes of the torture aggravator. While torture may often occur contemporaneously with the killing blow or blows, this is not necessarily requiredas reflected in our case law as, for example, when the victim is held against his or her will and terrorized for a lengthy period of time. It would defy logic and common sense to interpret the statute so that defendants who inflict pain and suffering over a course of time on their victims are deemed immune from the aggravator. The evidence here was sufficient to support the jury's finding of the aggravator. The beatings and neglect appellant inflicted upon P.B. took place over the course of months and caused bruises, abrasions, and scars over most of her body. She suffered sudden and serious weight loss, and was underweight from lack of food. The severe physical and emotional abuse caused her to suffer from inanition, making her more susceptible to severe injury resulting from further abuse. The months of torture then culminated on the night of the killing, as appellant beat P.B. with an extension cord in a cold shower, then beat her again later that evening, just before throwing her into the radiator with sufficient force to leave indentations in her face and head. Appellant then threw the three-year-old behind the bed, where she slowly suffocated over the course of hours. Appellant did nothing to assist the child and prevented others from tending to her while in extremis. Indeed, this action alone suggests torture, independent of the prior course of abuse. When abuse such as appellant inflicted here contributes to death, we cannot separate the abuse from the death it caused. From the facts presented at trial, the jury reasonably could conclude that appellant intended to inflict substantial pain and suffering, over and above his intent to, ultimately, kill. Accordingly, no relief is due on this claim of error.