Opinion ID: 170350
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Improper Duplication

Text: United States v. McCullah, 76 F.3d 1087, 1112 (10th Cir.1996), held that the use of duplicative aggravating factors creates an unconstitutional skewing of the weighing process. Fields argues that the aggravator for substantial planning and premeditation (SPP) was improperly double-counted in the weighing process here, because the victims were killed in a single episode that inherently involved a unitary plan but the SPP aggravator was applied to each murder victim and then both iterations were redundantly counted in the weighing process. In reply, the government argues that the SPP aggravators were properly applied to each victim, and, thus, were not duplicative or impermissibly double-counted. We agree with the government that both murder counts implicated the SPP aggravator, which was therefore properly applied to each. That point does not, however, respond to Fields' objection that the two instances of the aggravator were improperly aggregated when, in the unitary weighing process employed in this case, both murder counts were considered in combination. But, even on this favorable understanding of Fields' argument, relief on appeal is barred by the principle of invited error. Any double-counting potentially involved here is not a free-standing error, but just one aspect of the prejudice arising from the improper weighing process. As discussed above in connection with Fields' challenge to the general verdict, that weighing process was invited by the defense and for that reason is now beyond attack. Fields' objection to the double-counting of the SPP aggravator for both murders, caused by the same weighing process, is likewise not reviewable under the doctrine of invited error.