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

Heading: Impact on Co-Workers and the Community

Text: Barrett did not involve an inquiry into the impact of the victim's death on the community at large. Indeed, we are not aware of any precedent approving such an inquiry. The same is true regarding impact on the victim's co-workers. While one of the friends who testified in Barrett had worked with the victim, the defendant's challenge was framed solely in terms of testimony from friends of the victim, id. at 1098, impact on co-workers was not cited in the aggravator presented to the jury, id. at 1087, and we did not invoke the friend's status as a co-worker in our analysis approving admission of the testimony, id. at 1099.
Barrett supports the validity of victim-impact evidence regarding friends who (also) worked with the victim. But as to co-workers per se, a victim-impact inquiry would have a qualitatively different character. The loss of a co-worker in this sense (for example, the loss of her contribution to an office, unit, or team; the kind of loss that businesses insure with key man policies) is very far afield from the personal loss discussed in cases following the Supreme Court's initial approval of victim-impact evidence from family members in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720 (1991). Without additional guidance from the Court encouraging further expansion of the victim-impact inquiry, we are not willing to extend it to the impersonal utilitarian considerations included within the idea of a loss to co-workers. But any error in this regard was purely formalistic. The sole co-worker to testify, Charles Miliara, was also Charles Chick's close friend. He only briefly alluded to their work together, once to note their first meeting (a story illustrating Chick's easy-going manner in the face of an apprehensive and testy Miliara), R. Vol. 15 at 2607-08, and once to point up an irony in another personal story (involving the two men, whose jobs entailed creating instructions for assembling fighter jets, trying to assemble a train set for Miliara's son on Christmas without instructions), id. at 2620-21. In substance, Miliara's testimony concerned the loss of a friend and was not categorically different from that allowed in Barrett. Nor did the government argue' the matter differently to the jury. While the concept of victim impact should not have extended to the category of co-workers per se, that category was in fact empty and the error was harmless.
Including the community in the victim-impact inquiry is fraught with complication. It would involve not just the incremental extension from family to friends (and even to co-workers), but a radical change in perspective: replacing a close-in focus on persons closely or immediately connected to the victim with a wide view encompassing generalized notions of social value and loss. Even if justified in principle, such an approach would be difficult to delimit and police to ensure it stayed within proper bounds. And there is no guidance to be gleaned from the case law, which is still on the first step of extending the victim-impact inquiry from family to friends. Lacking clear direction from the Supreme Court, we do not approve further expansion of the inquiry to the community. But, once again, any error here is essentially academic in light of the evidence actually adduced in this case. There is nothing in the victim-impact testimony addressing community impact directly, nor did the government press the point in closing argument to the jury. As far as one can tell from the testimony of the Chicks' family and friends, everything this loving and generousbut decidedly unconventional and individualisticcouple, did for, and meant to, others was direct and personal. And in that respect the aggravator properly presented a powerful consideration in the weighing process, supported by moving testimony demonstrating the unique value of these particular people. In short, any error involved in formally framing the victim-impact aggravator to include community-level consequences was harmless given the lack of evidence directly relating to that improper consideration and the otherwise weighty considerations the aggravator properly put before the jury.