Opinion ID: 1124360
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 22

Heading: Torture as an aggravating circumstance

Text: Rippo argues that insufficient evidence exists to support the aggravating circumstance of torture set forth in NRS 200.033(8). The State argues that the testimony of Hunt and Dr. Green are evidence that Rippo tortured the victims. Hunt testified that Rippo instructed her to hit Jacobson over the head with a beer bottle; Rippo continually stunned Lizzi with a stun gun; Rippo tied the hands and feet of Jacobson, dragged her across the floor, and placed a gag in her mouth; Rippo tied the hands and feet of Lizzi; and while Rippo was choking Lizzi, the whole front of her body was off the ground and she was making an animal-like noise. Dr. Green testified that both women's injuries included scrapes, stab wounds, and ligature marks. He testified that Lizzi died from manual and ligature strangulation, but could not testify as to whether the stab wounds or the ligature wounds occurred first. Dr. Green testified that Jacobson died from asphyxiation due to manual strangulation. The State also points out that it takes several minutes to strangle someone to death manually. In sum, the State argues that the stunning, stab wounds, scratches, and slow strangulation are evidence that Rippo tortured the women before he killed them. Most of the evidence presented by the State is comprised of evidence of Rippo's attempts to kill the women by strangling. These killing acts, by themselves, do not constitute torture. The only evidence that can support a finding of torture murder is Hunt's testimony that Rippo repeatedly assaulted each of the women. NRS 200.030 defines murder by torture in terms of murder that is [p]erpetrated by means of ... torture. This language would seem to indicate that the torturing acts must be the killing acts, that is to say killing by means of torture. The district court instructed the jury that in order to find torture, it must find that the act or acts which caused the death must involve a high degree of probability of death, and the defendant must commit such an act or acts with the intent to cause cruel pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, persuasion, or for any other sadistic purpose.... [T]orture ... [does not] require any proof that the defendant intended to kill the deceased, nor does it necessarily require any proof that the deceased suffered pain. Under the instruction as given, the jury was required to find that the acts of torture must have caused the death and must have involve[d] a high degree of probability of death. Like the statute, the instruction seems to require that the killing itself was accomplished by means of torture. In other words, the actions which inflict the pain must also be the cause of the victim's death. I CALJIC § 8.24, at 401 (6th ed.1996) (murder by torture requires that acts of perpetrator be the cause of victim's death). Obviously, these two murder victims were not killed by means of a stun gun; and, even if it were to be argued that the use of the stun gun was done sadistically, under a strict reading of NRS 200.030 and the proffered instruction, Rippo's' shooting his victims with a stun gun would not involve murder by torture. Nonetheless, we conclude that there is evidence which would support a finding of murder by means of ... torture because the intentional infliction of pain is so much an integral part of these murders. Persons who taunt and torture their murder victims as part of the killing process will not be allowed to escape the murder-by-torture aggravating factor merely because the torturing is not the actual cause of death. Our interpretation of murder by torture finds support in the California case, People v. Proctor, 4 Cal.4th 499, 15 Cal.Rptr.2d 340, 842 P.2d 1100 (1992). In Proctor the California Supreme Court held that acts of torture may not be segregated into their constituent elements in order to determine whether any single act by itself caused the death; rather, it is the continuum of sadistic violence that constitutes the torture. There seems to be little doubt that when Rippo was shocking these victims with a stun gun, he was doing so for the purpose of causing them pain and terror and for no other purpose. Rippo was not shocking these women with a stun gun for the purpose of killing them but, rather, it would appear, with a purely sadistic purpose. When we review the facts of this case and consider the entire episode as a wholethe strangulation and restraint, accompanied by the frightful, multiple blasts with a painful high voltage stun gunwe conclude that even though the stun gun shocks were not the cause of death, there is still evidence, under our interpretation of murder perpetrated by means of torture, to support a jury finding that there was, as an inseparable ingredient of these murders, a continuum or pattern of sadistic violence that justified the jury in concluding that these two murders were perpetrated by means of ... torture.