Court Opinion

ID: 9789342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:34:56.300907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:21.952977
License: Public Domain

DURRANT, Justice
concurring:
¶ 711 concur in Justice Wilkins’ opinion. I write separately only to note my view that whether the victim was alive at the time defendant sexually assaulted her is irrelevant.
¶ 72 Defendant’s conviction for aggravated murder was supported, in part, by the jury’s findings that he committed or attempted to commit three sexually-related aggravating felonies: object rape, forcible sodomy, and aggravated sexual assault. Further, in the sentencing phase of the trial, the district court relied upon object rape and aggravated sexual assault as statutory aggravating factors. Defendant contends that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that he committed these felonies and for the judge to consider his commission of two of them in sentencing. Specifically, defendant argues that the State failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was still alive at the time he sexually assaulted her, and that, if she was dead at that time, he was guilty not of the felonies of object rape, forcible sodomy, or aggravated sexual assault, but of desecration of a corpse.
¶ 73 Justice Wilkins concludes that the expert testimony of Dr. Frikke provided a sufficient evidentiary basis for the jury to find that defendant sexually assaulted the victim while she was still alive, and further concludes that even if it were assumed that the victim was not alive at the time of the sexual assault, the evidence was sufficient to support the aggravating factors of burglary and aggravated burglary. I do not take issue with these conclusions. In my view, however, whether defendant was guilty of the sexual crimes does not turn on whether the victim was still alive at the time of the sexual contact.
¶ 74 We have never addressed the question of whether sexual assault requires that the victim be alive at the time of the sexual contact.1 Defendant argues that the existence of a corpse desecration statute in Utah, Utah Code Ann. § 76-9-704 (1995), forecloses application of statutes relating to sexual assault in cases where the victim dies before the sexual contact. This is the case, he claims, because the corpse desecration statute applies more specifically to his conduct than those statutes relating to sexual assault.
¶ 75 While it is certainly true that the statutes proscribing object rape, forcible sodomy, and aggravated sexual assault generally contemplate a living victim, I do not believe this forecloses their application in circumstances where the victim dies before the sexual contact occurs. Nor do I believe that the corpse desecration statute is necessarily more specifically addressed to the circumstances of this case than these statutes relating to sexual assault.
*997¶ 76 None of the sexually-related statutes at issue here expressly requires a living victim, see Utah Code Ann. § 76-5M02.2 (1999) (object rape); id. § 76-5-403(2) (forcible sodomy); id. § 76-5-405 (aggravated sexual assault), and defendant admits that each of these statutes can be read generally as encompassing offenses against dead victims. Further, an essential aspect of each of these statutes is the use of force to override the will of the victim. In the case at bar, defendant clearly achieved his sexual objectives through the use of force. The fact that the force was so great as to also result in the death of his victim, and that her death may have occurred before the sexual contact, should not reduce his culpability. The concept of force, so central to these statutes relating to sexual assault, does not appear, however, in the statute proscribing the desecration of a corpse. I find it difficult to believe that the legislature, in enacting the corpse desecration statute, intended it to apply, to the exclusion of other statutes relating to sexual assault, in eases where a defendant’s single, continuous assault on a victim results in the victim’s death and in sexual contact. To the contrary, the statutes proscribing object rape, forcible sodomy, and aggravated sexual assault strike me as being more directly applicable to the circumstances presented by this case than those proscribing desecration of a corpse. Cf. Lipham v. State, 257 Ga. 808, 364 S.E.2d 840, 842-43 (1988) (applying rape statute instead of necrophilia statute to factual situation in which it was unclear whether defendant killed victim before raping her).
¶ 77 We therefore adopt a rule that considers the entirety of a defendant’s conduct from the beginning of the assault through completion of the sexual contact. Where a defendant both kills and sexually assaults a victim in a single, continuous act, or in a series of closely related acts, and where the express elements of the sexual offense are met — including compelling the victim to submit against her will through the application of force, albeit deadly — the fact that the victim may have died moments before the sexual contact does, not reduce the defendant’s conduct to the relatively minor offense of desecration of a corpse.
¶ 78 In the case before us, the State presented evidence establishing that six minutes elapsed between the neighbor’s call to 911 and the arrival of the police. During this time, defendant attacked the victim, severely beat and bit her, slit her throat four times, vaginally raped her numerous times with a knife, and attempted to commit forcible sodomy on her. Dr. Frikke testified that the victim could have lost consciousness within thirty seconds of infliction of the throat wounds, and died within a minute. Dr. Frikke could not state definitively whether the sexual mutilation occurred before or after death, although she testified that there was definitely blood pressure present when the wounds were inflicted, supporting the determination that the wounds occurred either before or shortly after death. Regardless of the precise time of the victim’s death, however, her genital injuries were inflicted by the defendant as part of a single, continuous assault that resulted in her death. Accordingly, whether or not the victim was alive at the time of the sexual contact, the sexually-related felonies were properly relied upon in both the guilt and sentencing phases of the trial below.
¶ 79 Associate Chief Justice RUSSON and Justice DURHAM concur in Justice DURRANT’s concurring opinion.

. There is a split in jurisdictions on the question of whether a victim must be alive at the time of the sexual contact in order for a defendant to be guilty of sexually-related crimes. Compare People v. Hutner, 209 Mich.App. 280, 530 N.W.2d 174, 176 (1995) (holding that the crime of felonious sexual conduct "requires a live victim at the time of penetration”), Doyle v. State, 112 Nev. 879, 921 P.2d 901, 912-14 (1996) (holding that evidence establishing that tire penetration occurred at or around the time of death will not support a conviction for sexual assault), and Commonwealth v. Sudler, 496 Pa. 295, 436 A.2d 1376, 1379-80 (1981) (holding that victim must be alive at time of penetration for rape conviction), with Lipham v. State, 257 Ga. 808, 364 S.E.2d 840, 842-43 (1988) (noting that crime of rape requires that a defendant sexually assault the victim forcibly and against her will, and concluding that these requirements are satisfied by an assault that causes death prior to penetration), State v. Whitsell, 69 Ohio App.3d 512, 591 N.E.2d 265, 278 (1990) (holding that "the mere fact that the victim might have been dead by the time the penetration occurred does not detract from [defendant's] culpability” for felonious sexual penetration), and State v. Brobeck, 751 S.W.2d 828, 832 (Tenn.1988) (construing aggravated rape statute as being applicable to a situation in which a rapist kills the victim before penetration because (1) neither the language of the statute nor its official code commentary indicated that the legislature intended to impose a "live only” requirement, and (2) requiring the victim to be alive "encourages rapists to kill their victims”); see generally John E. Theuman, Fact that Murder-Rape Victim was Dead at Time of Penetration as Affecting Conviction for Rape, 76 A.L.R.4th 1147 (1990).