Opinion ID: 2598537
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Atrocious or Cruel Aggravating Circumstance

Text: [ś 110] The first aggravating circumstance which Olsen complains was improperly applied states the murder was especially atrocious or cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim. Part of extensive 1989 amendments to the statute, this aggravating circumstance previously read, especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, and survived a vagueness challenge in Hopkinson I when we held that the statutory language provided the jury adequate guidance when imposing the death penalty. Hopkinson I, 632 P.2d at 153-54. That decision focused on the especially heinous portion of the statute's wording and found that the murder to be so classified must demonstrate that the consciencelessness of the defendant is not only an outrage but also a dangerous and unrestrainable threat to society. It found Florida's interpretation instructive: That court has recognized that while it is arguable that all killings are atrocious,    [s]till, we believe that the Legislature intended something `especially' heinous, atrocious or cruel when it authorized the death penalty for first degree murder. As a consequence the court has indicated that the eighth statutory provision is directed only at the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim. We cannot say that the provision, as so construed, provides inadequate guidance to those charged with the duty of recommending or imposing sentences in capital cases. Hopkinson I, 632 P.2d at 154 (quoting Proffitt, 428 U.S. at 255-56, 96 S.Ct. at 2968) (citations omitted). In further support, Hopkinson I concluded that the especially heinous aspect of the term was intended to achieve the proper state purpose of protecting society by sanctioning the death penalty to those individuals who not only may, but probably will, kill again. Id. The Hopkinson II jury was instructed: One of the aggravating circumstances set forth in this case is that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. To assist you in your evalution of this aggravating circumstance, heinous means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile; cruel means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others. What is intended to be included in this circumstance are those capital crimes where the actual commission of the murder was accompanied by such additional acts as to set the crime apart from the normal murder; that is, a consciousless [sic] or pityless [sic] crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim. Hopkinson II, 664 P.2d at 72. [ś 111] A similar narrowing construction had been approved in Proffitt, 428 U.S. at 255-56, 96 S.Ct. at 2968. Later, however, the Court invalidated the use of vaguely defined aggravating factors as violative of the Eight Amendment, including the especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravating circumstance, and the outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman aggravating circumstance. Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 363-64, 108 S.Ct. 1853 1859, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988); Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 428-29, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 1764-65, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980). Maynard stated that, although not specifically limited to this construction, if the especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravating circumstance were limited to murders involving some kind of torture or physical abuse, it would be constitutionally acceptable. Maynard, 486 U.S. at 365, 108 S.Ct. at 1859. The next year, the 1989 amendment to Wyoming's death penalty statute eliminated the use of heinous and limited those first degree murders deserving the death penalty to those especially atrocious and cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim. Despite this specific history indicating the legislature intended to limit this aggravating circumstance as discussed in Maynard, Olsen contends that it is unconstitutionally vague and improperly applied to him. The State contends that the trial court properly limited this circumstance by the instruction defining the terms of the aggravating circumstance, thus curing any vagueness issue, and that this aggravating circumstance applies to execution-type slayings. [ś 112] Claims of vagueness directed at aggravating circumstances defined in capital punishment statutes are analyzed under the Eighth Amendment and characteristically assert that the challenged provision fails adequately to inform juries what they must find to impose the death penalty and as a result leaves them and appellate courts with the kind of open-ended discretion held invalid in Furman v. Georgia. Maynard, 486 U.S. at 361-62, 108 S.Ct. at 1858. [ś 113] The State's view receives some support from decisions of the Court assessing and approving Arizona's limitation of its especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel factor by equating cruel with infliction of mental anguish or physical abuse. Walton, 497 U.S. at 654-55, 110 S.Ct. at 3057-58. In Shell v. Mississippi , however, the Court ruled that the following instruction limiting especially heinous, atrocious or cruel was constitutionally insufficient: The word heinous means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile; and cruel means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others. Shell, 498 U.S. at 2, 111 S.Ct. at 313. In a brief per curiam decision, the Court summarily ruled that this attempt to narrow the construction of a facially invalid aggravating circumstance violated Maynard and Godfrey. Id. at 3, 111 S.Ct. at 314. The distinction between Shell and Walton apparently rests not only upon Arizona's limitation of its especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel factor by defining that a crime is committed in an especially cruel manner when the perpetrator inflicts mental anguish or physical abuse before the victim's death, and that mental anguish includes a victim's uncertainty as to his ultimate fate, but also upon the Arizona Supreme Court's willingness to limit its application. Walton, 497 U.S. at 654-55, 110 S.Ct. at 3057-58. [ś 114] The facts of Walton establishing substantial mental anguish before the victim's death were that Petitioner Walton and his two codefendants, Robert Hoover and Sharold Ramsey, went to a bar in Tucson, Arizona, on the night of March 2, 1986, intending to rob someone at gunpoint. They encountered Thomas Powell, a young Marine, in the bar parking lot. After robbing him, they forced him into his car and he was driven out to a remote area of the desert. Id. at 644, 110 S.Ct. at 3052. Powell could not be certain of his fate, but as the city lights grew dim behind him, his fears for his life must have multiplied. He was so clearly terrified by the time they stopped that Sharold Ramsey tried to reassure him that they would not hurt him. But even if Powell took temporary refuge in her assurances, he soon realized that they meant to kill him. The defendant and Hoover forced Powell to lie face down on the ground outside the car while they argued over his fate. Although they had agreed to tie him up, the defendant, armed only with a gun but no rope to tie him, marched Powell off into the darkness, telling his companions to turn up the radio. The implication was clear to Powell, who was so upset that he urinated on himself and begged the defendant not to kill him. This evidences that Powell suffered great mental anguish both during the car ride when his fate was uncertain and in his final march into the desert when his fate had become certain. State v. Walton, 159 Ariz. 571, 769 P.2d 1017, 1033 (1989). Powell was shot and left for dead; however, he survived another six days alone in the desert. [ś 115] In Walton, the Arizona Supreme Court demonstrated that it limits the cruelty circumstance to situations where the suffering of the victim was intended by or foreseeable to the killer because, on direct appeal, it rejected the State's argument that the six days that Powell suffered after being shot constituted cruelty within the meaning of the statute when the evidence showed that the killer intended to kill the victim immediately. The court was further assured that Arizona appropriately applied its narrowing construction based upon those facts of Walton which did establish intentional infliction of substantial mental anguish. [ś 116] The limiting instruction submitted to Olsen's jury is structurally similar to aspects of the instructions submitted in Hopkinson and Walton in that it defines some terms of the aggravating circumstance especially atrocious and cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim. It is dissimilar because both Hopkinson and Walton defined terms of the aggravating circumstance especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. For the limiting instruction submitted to the Olsen jury to be proper, it must be decided that the change to the statutory language in the 1989 amendment did not change in meaning. The legislative intent of the change, however, was to change the meaning of this particular aggravating circumstance. First, it eliminated the use of heinous and limited those first degree murders deserving the death penalty to those especially atrocious and cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim. Plainly the second phrase describes the first phrase and is deliberately joined to mean that the murder was especially atrocious and cruel because it was unnecessarily torturous to the victim. This change evidences an apparent legislative intent to establish torture as a core element of this particular aggravating factor. This interpretation finds support when we consider, as we must, that in Maynard, published the year before the amendment, the Court approved a limited application of the aggravating circumstance to murders involving some kind of torture or serious physical abuse. Each term of this aggravating circumstance does not establish separate, aggravating factors having an independent core meaning as the Olsen jury was instructed. Strictly construed, the standard set by this aggravating fact will be met by those murders which are accompanied by intentionally inflicted torture, either physical or mental, distinguishable from the usual, the ordinary, the normal sort of homicide in the typical murder case. See Hopkinson II, 664 P.2d at 73. [ś 117] Having determined that this term plainly limits itself to murders involving intentionally inflicted torture as was described in Hopkinson II, we do not find that the term is facially invalid for vagueness under our limiting construction. Olsen's jury, however, was improperly instructed that each word of the term especially atrocious or cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim established separate, aggravating factors having an independent core meaning other than torture. Under our interpretation of the state statute, this instruction is improper and reversible error. Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U.S. 738, 747, 110 S.Ct. 1441, 1447-48, 108 L.Ed.2d 725 (1990) (state's interpretation of its own law controls). In this case, there was no evidence of physical torture, and Olsen's jury was presented with argument that conviction was appropriate under this aggravating circumstance because uncertainty as to his or her ultimate fate constituted mental torture. Our task is to determine whether the evidence shows that this mental torture was intentionally inflicted to an extreme degree. [ś 118] Our standard of review for whether sufficient evidence supports a jury's finding of an aggravating circumstance is the same that is used in determining sufficiency of evidence of guilt. Hopkinson II, 664 P.2d at 57-58. [T]he critical inquiry on review of the sufficiency of the evidence to support a criminal conviction must be not simply to determine whether the jury was properly instructed, but to determine whether the record evidence could reasonably support a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But this inquiry does not require a court to ask itself whether it believes that the evidence at the trial established guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. (citations and emphasis omitted). [ś 119] Relying upon Olsen's statements, the State describes the murders as establishing that mental anguish was caused by Olsen's having the victims lay down on the floor and wait to be shot, and that the mental anguish must have increased for at least two of the victims after the first victim was shot. This set of facts does not establish any intentional infliction of mental torture that proves beyond a reasonable doubt the murders were especially atrocious or cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim. The facts of Hopkinson II establish the extreme degree of physical torture contemplated by the statutory language. In that case, the evidence was that, before death, the murder victim, while tied down, received over 140 burns on his body, including his eyes; five knife cuts on his neck and breasts; a bullet wound; bludgeoning; and extreme physical torture that could only have been intentionally inflicted over several hours. The facts of Walton discussed earlier establish the extreme degree of mental torture contemplated by Wyoming's statutory language. In comparison, the evidence of this case establishes a degree of mental anguish that, while significant, is not sufficient to be atrocious by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Were we to decide otherwise, we would not be upholding the clear legislative intent to limit Wyoming's death penalty to the most culpable of murderers.