Opinion ID: 170350
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Congressional Preemption

Text: Fields contends that Congress has preempted the use of the non-statutory aggravator for mental anguish through promulgation of the statutory aggravator for murder committed in a heinous, cruel, or depraved manner. 18 U.S.C § 3592(c)(6). According to Fields, the mental-anguish aggravator is subsumed within the statutory aggravator, which demonstrates that Congress did not intend the jury to account for mental anguish during the selection stage. We disagree. Even if we assume Fields is correct that the non-statutory mental anguish aggravator is subsumed within the statutory heinous, cruel, or depraved manner aggravatoran argument Fields has not supported with any relevant authorityit does not follow that the former reflects a deviation from the Congressional intent of the latter. Non-statutory aggravators, relevant only at the selection stage, may be similar or related to statutory aggravators, operative at the eligibility stage, without implicating preemption concerns, as each factor serves an independent purpose tied to the stage at which it functions: [This] argument mistakenly assumes that non-statutory aggravating factors serve the same function as aggravating factors. In reality, statutory factors narrow the class of defendants eligible for the death penalty, whereas non-statutory factors serve the separate individualizing function that ensures the jury [has] before it all possible relevant information about the individual defendant whose fate it must determine. [ United States v. ] Walker, 910 F.Supp. [837] at 855 [(N.D.N.Y.1995)] (quoting Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 276, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976)). There is no reason to believe that by choosing one factor for one purpose Congress excluded the use of related (and even broader) factors for a completely separate purpose. United States v. Johnson, 1997 WL 534163, at  (N.D.Ill. Aug.20, 1997). The mental-anguish aggravator properly focused the jury on the facts of this particular casei.e., the anguish Shirley Chick felt seeing her husband Charles shot in the face right in front of her, and then being shot, chased down, and killed herself by an armed stranger cloaked in the freakish, de-humanizing ghillie suit displayed at trial. As discussed above in connection with Fields' overbreadth argument, this individualized assessment was sufficient under Jones to satisfy the purpose of a non-statutory aggravator at the selection stage of sentencing.