Court Opinion

ID: 9722591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:40:30.390329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:37.560629
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring in result.
I agree with appellant that the trial court did not properly evaluate the evidence of his mental disturbance as a mitigating circumstance. The specific finding on this mitigating circumstance is:
(b) The defendant had a history of depression and anti-social personality resulting from drug abuse "which does not rise to the level of either a mental illness or insanity."
One of the psychiatrists who testified with respect to the defense of insanity at the initial phase of the trial, while being of the opinion that there was no insanity, nevertheless testified that appellant had long suffered from chronic clinical depression and from drug and alcohol abuse and addiction. He became addicted in the 8th grade. He joined the Marines at age 17 under pressure from authorities. He was discharged in 1984 on a basis that was less than honorable because of his drug and alcohol addiction. When separated from the service, he was hospitalized for a month for this condition. He then lived with his mother without working for a year and a half, before getting a job from the victims. His addiction continued and he stole money from his mother and others. He was fired by the victims in December of 1987. On February 1, 1988, his mother told him that he had to leave her house by March 1. Later in February, when appellant was 25 years of age, in anger over not having been called back to work, and for perceived mistreatment, he killed the two victims, took money from the body of one, wiped his fingerprints from the area, hid the weapon, and then proceeded over a few days to spend the stolen money on personal pleasures. The intent to kill with respect to each victim was separate in time and different in kind.
At the sentencing hearing before the trial judge, one of the psychiatrists was called again by the defense. He testified that while in jail, Benirschke was receiving 5 mg. Haldol, a strong phychotropic drug 10 mg. Cogentin and 100 mg. Allavil. In remarking about his total lack of remorse over the killings, the psychiatrist said that the appellant was so sick that he could not have feelings of remorse with respect to his crime. Under the circumstances reiterated above, the extreme mental disturbance mitigator, I.C. 35-50-2-9(c)(2), has more weight than that accorded it by the trial court. Its weight is certainly in the middle range. The other two mitigators, lack of criminal history and military service, have somewhat less weight.
The circumstances here are similar to those present in Moore v. State (1985), Ind., 479 N.E.2d 1264, a capital case in which Moore shot and wounded his mother-in-law, and shot and killed his ex-wife, father-in-law, and a police officer, in a single violent episode, a few days after his divorce. There, the multiple murder aggravator was also operative, and so also was a second aggravator, namely the killing of a police officer. The level of mental disturbance *584was more extreme than in the present case, and Moore, to his credit, had made significant efforts in overcoming his alcoholism and in. helping others. The weight of miti-gators, in the case of Benirschke, is somewhat less than that of the mitigators in Moore, while the weight of aggravators, in the case of Benirschke, is somewhat more than that of the aggravators in Moore.
Upon review in the foregoing fashion, I reach the same result as did the trial court. I find that the three mitigating circumstances, when properly and accurately determined and evaluated, are outweighed by the two aggravating cireumstances which included the conduct of shooting the two victims several times, the formation in serial fashion in the course of the episode of the conscious objective to kill one and then the other, both while having maintained the conscious objective to rob. The sentence is not arbitrary or capricious and is not manifestly unreasonable. I therefore concur in result.