Court Opinion

ID: 9608227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:07:47.446348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:44.460341
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
I dissent to the penalty judgment because the aggravating circumstance “mutilation” is not defined in a manner that is constitutionally acceptable and because the incomplete and erroneous definition given by the trial court, even if correct, would not apply to the facts of this case.
The aggravating circumstance “mutilation of the victim,” NRS 200.033(8), is not defined in the statute. The trial court defined this aggravating circumstance by giving two instructions. The first instruction defined “mutilate” in a manner approved by this court in Deutscher v. State, 95 Nev. 669, 601 P.2d 407 (1979), thus:
[Tjhe term “mutilate” means to cut off or permanently destroy a limb or essential part of the body, or to cut off or alter radically so as to make imperfect.
Id. at 677 n.5, 601 P.2d at 413 n.5.
The trial court did not stop with this definition, however, and went on to give this second, qualifying instruction to the jury:
In order for mutilation to be found as an aggravating circumstance there must be mutilation of the victim beyond the act of killing.
The first instruction defines what is meant by mutilation; the second instruction imposes a qualifying limitation on the aggravating circumstance by requiring that the act of mutilating must “be . . . beyond the act of killing.” I conclude that in this case the first, defining instruction is constitutionally insufficient and that the second, limiting or qualifying instruction, the beyond-the-act-of-killing instruction, is confusing, is unsupported by case authority, and creates an unreasonable and unnecessary impediment to the prosecution in proving this aggravating circumstance.
With respect to the defining instruction, the only part of the definition that is applicable to the present case is the following: “permanently destroy a[n] essential part of the body, or to . . . alter radically so as to make imperfect.” (I have deleted the part of the definition referring to the cutting off or destroying of a *319limb, because this part of the definition does not apply in this case.) In the case at hand, it is certainly arguable that there is evidence to support a jury finding that Browne permanently destroyed, made imperfect or radically altered an “essential part of the body” of his victim. (Although, I suppose, it could be argued that the face is not an “essential” part of the body and that one could live with an imperfect or radically altered face.) Defense counsel takes the position that even if it were conceded that Browne destroyed or altered “an essential part” of the victim’s body, destruction or radical alteration of an essential part of the body accompanies every killing and every death. Consequently, argues the defense, the definition of mutilation as applied to this case fails entirely because it describes a condition that is present in every murder and does not, therefore, constitute an aggravating circumstance.
I agree with the defense argument. If we can agree on the meaning of “essential part of the body” (that is, I think, indispensable to the body, that which makes the body what it is), we can probably agree that a destroying, radically altering or making “imperfect” some essential part of the body was present in this case. If this, then, is to be our definition of mutilation, it has no “narrowing” effect and does not create a more culpable class of “death-deserving” murderers. I would submit that even if the jury concluded that Browne did destroy, radically alter or make imperfect an essential part of his victim’s body, this would not, of itself, justify from a constitutional standard, the imposition of the death penalty.
With regard to the second, limiting or qualifying instruction, the beyond-the-act-of-killing instruction, I find a number of logical and legal defects. The first problem that I see with this limiting instruction is that it is incoherent. There is no relationship that I can see between mutilation and the phrase “beyond the act of killing.” If as part of a killing the murderer also intentionally defaces, disfigures, dismembers or maims his victim, there is no point in making the unnecessary and disconnected inquiry as to whether the mutilation did or did not go “beyond the act of killing.” The closest that I can come to understanding what it means for a murderer to go beyond the act of killing is that it means continuing to inflict injury upon the victim after he or she is dead. This is the way that defense counsel interpreted the phrase.
I see no reason for restricting mutilation to post mortem inquiry.1 There is no logical basis for distinguishing between *320beyond-the-act-of-killing mutilation and included-in-the-act-of-killing mutilation. Mutilation is mutilation and, in my view, is committed whenever a person kills intentionally with the added and accompanying intention of mutilating his victim irrespective of whether the mutilation was committed before or after the death of the victim.
To help in understanding the unnecessary narrowness of the beyond-the-act-of-killing limiting instruction, I would offer the example of a killing by a murderer who shot his victim with the intention of mutilating and obliterating his victim’s face. The gun shot would kill the victim and would not be an act that went beyond the killing, thus, under the present instruction, freeing such a murderer from being found guilty of mutilation as an aggravator.2 It seems rather obvious that there is a pressing need for formulating a new instruction on mutilation, an instruction that is not dependent upon the commission of an act which goes “beyond” the killing.
I would note further that the second, limiting instruction is unsupported by case law. The phrase, “beyond the act of killing’’ was first mentioned by this court in the case of Robins v. State, 106 Nev. 611, 629, 798 P.2d 558, 570 (1990), in a discussion of the need to eliminate “depravity of mind” as an aggravating circumstance. In connection with depravity of mind this court in Robins remarked that the United States Supreme Court in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356 (1988), had “implied that torture or serious physical abuse could be a limiting and saving construction of an otherwise vague aggravating circumstance [e.g., depravity of mind].” Robins, 106 Nev. at 629, 798 P.2d at 570. This court went on to “construe” NRS 200.033(8) “as requiring torture, mutilation or other serious and depraved physical abuse beyond the killing itself, as a qualifying requirement to an aggravating circumstance based in part upon depravity of *321mind.” Robins, 106 Nev. at 629, 798 P.2d at 570. All this language says to me is that NRS 200.033 is to survive constitutional challenge merely by deleting “depravity of mind” and leaving in effect torture and mutilation. It does not say that either torture or mutilation must be performed as an act that goes “beyond the act of killing”; and, as discussed above, such an added requirement makes no sense. There is no reason why torture and mutilation cannot be present in a murder without muddying up the definition with the phrase “beyond the act of killing.” Torture is torture and mutilation is mutilation and can be performed either as part of the act of killing or “beyond” (whatever that means) the act of killing.
Unnecessarily and illogically adding the limiting beyond-the-act-of-killing factor to either torture or mutilation creates a nightmare for both prosecution and defense. The prosecution is faced with having to prove an almost impossible-to-prove and virtually unintelligible additional element when proving either torture or mutilation as an aggravating factor. The defense is faced with having to defend by bringing in evidence that certain acts were or were not “beyond” the act of killing, without having the vaguest idea of what it means to torture or mutilate “beyond the act of killing.” Understandably, there is no explanation and no discussion of any kind in Robins as to the meaning of the phrase “depraved physical abuse beyond the act of killing itself”; and it is clear to me that this language arose only in the context of our trying to save NRS 200.033(8) from the “otherwise vague” depravity element of that statute and that it was not intended to create an added, limiting and qualifying definition of the mutilation or torture aggravator.
In Domingues v. State, 112 Nev. 683, 917 P.2d 1364 (1996), we considered the phrase “beyond the act of killing” in the context of the “torture” aggravator. In Domingues, we explained that in torture cases “the murderer must have intended to inflict pain beyond the killing itself.” Id. at 702, 917 P.2d at 1377 (emphasis added). Thus, what distinguishes torture killings from other killings is the murderer’s intention to do something more than to kill, an intention to do something “beyond the killing itself,” namely, an intention to inflict pain upon the victim. In Domingues, we held that torture could not be present because the “evidence does not indicate that Domingues’s intent was anything other than to kill the child.” Id. (emphasis added). “There is no evidence that the specific intent behind the attempted electrocution or the stabbing was to inflict pain for pain’s sake or for punishment or sadistic pleasure.” Id. (emphasis added).
It is pretty clear to me that torture and mutilation fall into the same category and that, for a mutilation aggravator to stand, there *322must be a “specific intent” to mutilate. The principal defect in the instruction given in this case is that the element of specific intent is missing. Rather than requiring the act of mutilation plus the intent to mutilate, the given instruction required the act of mutilation plus an act that could be described as going “beyond the act of killing.” Domingues requires both act and intent for a finding of torture, actus reus and mens rea. The same principle should be applied to mutilation. In order for the aggravating factors of torture or mutilation to be present there must be the act of torture or mutilation and there must be “the specific intent. . . to inflict pain” (in the case of torture) or the specific intent to mutilate (in the case of mutilation). Id.
Once the necessity for dealing with specific intent as an element of torture and mutilation is understood, it is not difficult to come up with a working definition of the aggravating circumstance “mutilation of the victim.”
The word mutilation comes from the Latin word mutilus, which means “maimed.” The aggravating circumstance, mutilation, is closely related to maiming and to the crime, mayhem. “Mayhem consists of unlawfully depriving a human being of a member of his body, or disfiguring it or rendering it useless.” NRS 200.280.3 Mutilation as an aggravating circumstance amounts to murder plus mayhem, murder accompanied by intentionally “depriving a human being of a member of his body, or disfiguring it or rendering it useless.”
If, as I propose, aggravating mutilation equals murder plus mayhem, it is not difficult to derive appropriate definitions to be provided to juries in mutilation cases. Consider the following:
Mutilation means intentionally depriving a human being of a member of his body, or disfiguring or rendering it useless. Mutilation of the victim, as used in NRS 200.033(8), means mutilation of a murder victim. This aggravating circumstance is present when, at the time of the killing, in addition to having the intention to kill, the murderer has the added specific intention to mutilate and does in fact mutilate the murder victim.4
*323If the jury in this case had been instructed along the lines suggested in the above working definition of this aggravating circumstance, none of the issues raised by Browne would have their present force. Under the proposed definition of mutilation, or one like it, the jury would be faced with a decision as to whether it was Browne’s intention during this beating to mutilate his victim’s face. If the jury found (as well it could have) that Browne intended to “disfigure” the victim’s face and that he carried out this intention “in addition” to his intention to kill her, then Browne would be guilty of mutilation, whether the wounds were inflicted post mortem or not and whether one of the successive “multiple blunt trauma[s]” was or was not “beyond the act of killing.” The jury would have necessarily focused on Browne’s intent and not on which blows were lethal and which were not.5
In sum, then:
1. This case must be reversed because (a) the definition of mutilation given to the jury describes acts that are present in every murder and therefore do not have the distinguishing characteristics that must accompany the definition of aggravating circumstances, and (b) the “beyond-the-act-of-killing” element of mutilation given to the jury was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. Any definition of mutilation as an aggravating factor must include the intent to mutilate as an essential element. The beyond-the-act-of-killing element that was given to the jury in this case must be abandoned as being unnecessary, illogical, unsupported by case authority and virtually impossible to prove.
3. The court should provide for use by the trial court a definition of mutilation that will be clear, understandable and constitutionally unobjectionable.

Defense counsel, during oral argument, expressed his belief that mutilation beyond the act of killing had to involve some post-mortem harm to the *320victim’s body. I think it was reasonable for defense counsel to think that mutilation that was beyond the act of killing meant mutilation performed after the killing had been accomplished. In this case defense counsel argued that there was no evidence of post-mortem injury and that, therefore, the second, limiting instruction was not applicable in this case. There is no reason to limit mutilation to acts that are either after or “beyond” the killing. This problem is addressed in the definition of mutilation which I offer in this dissenting opinion.

During the dialogue between the court and counsel for both prosecution and defense, during oral argument, the importance of intent to this aggravating circumstance became more and more apparent; and it appeared to me, and, I believe, to counsel that specific intent was an essential element of mutilation and must be included in any instruction relating to mutilation. I have included the element of intent in the instruction which I have offered in this dissenting opinion.

The statute gives an inexhaustive list of examples of what it means to maim, viz., “cuts out or disables the tongue, puts out an eye, slits the nose, ear or lip, or disables any limb or member.”

We noted in Domingues that torture “involved a calculated intent to inflict pain” and that prosecutors ought “to be more discriminating in charging torture” unless they were able to provide proof of a calculated intent to inflict pain. In my judgment, prosecutors should not charge mutilation unless they are prepared to prove, in accordance with the instruction proposed in the text, that the murderer had a specific (calculated) intent to mutilate.

Defense counsel pointed out during oral argument that under the definition of mutilation given by the court in this case Browne could have accomplished the same end (defacing his victim) merely by shooting her with a shotgun, point blank, in the face. Under these circumstances, the killing and the maiming would be accomplished in the performance of a single lethal act, and there could, therefore, be nothing “beyond the act of killing” upon which a finding of mutilation could be based. Under the definition which I propose, this would not be the case because the hypothetical shotgun assailant could very well be found to have had intentions beyond those of just killing his victim. If a murderer shoots a victim in the face with the intent to deface his victim and has this intention in addition to the intention of just killing the victim, the murderer could be found guilty of mutilation.