Court Opinion

ID: 9761862
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:57:16.347109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:27.176261
License: Public Domain

*451PAPADAKOS, Justice, concurring and dissenting.
I join that portion of the majority opinion which affirms Appellant’s convictions of murder of the first degree, but must dissent from the vacation of the sentences of death and the imposition of life sentences in this case.
First, I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that our Death Penalty Statute does not permit this Court to affirm a sentence of death when we find that one aggravating circumstance is unsupportable by the record where there are mitigating circumstances found by the jury. See my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Aulisio, 514 Pa. 84, 522 A.2d 1075 (1987).
Secondly, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the evidence presented during the sentencing phase was insufficient to support a finding of aggravating circumstance 8, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(8), (namely, that “the offense was committed by means of torture”) based on my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Nelson, 514 Pa. 262, 523 A.2d 728 (1987).
I also dissent to the majority’s conclusion that the Commonwealth must introduce evidence of a specific intent to torture separate and apart from the acts leading to a victim’s death in order to support a finding of aggravating circumstance 8. As we made clear in Commonwealth v. Pursell, 508 Pa. 212, 495 A.2d 183 (1985), the element of intent can be inferred from the circumstances of the case. In that case, we noted that torture was more than present and inferred same by the number of blows, manual strangulation, asphyxiation, and continued traumatization of the body after death.
Here, Appellant brought a knife and rope with him to the murder scene intending to tie and kill his victims, an elderly husband and wife, who had hired him to do odd jobs in the past. After overpowering the couple, the elderly people were bound in chairs facing each other. The couple were seated in the living room and forced to watch while their home was pillaged by Appellant and his co-conspirators. As the pillage ended, Appellant pushed back the head of *452Sarah Gibson and, using a sawing motion, sliced the throat of Mrs. Gibson in full view of her husband, who was seated facing her, only seven feet away, and unable to help her. Ignoring the pleas and cries of Boykin Gibson, Appellant sliced his throat in the same manner. As Mrs. Gibson sat helplessly bleeding, Appellant returned to her and stabbed her in the chest. Appellant then turned back to Mr. Gibson and stabbed him twice in the chest. Knowing that his actions had not killed his victims, Appellant left the Gibsons in that condition to die an agonizing death. Appellant could perceive signs of life in these two old people when he returned to the house to remove evidence of his actions, and again left his victims alone to die witnessing each other’s agony.
In my view, this evidence, and all reasonable inferences therefrom, is more than enough to establish a finding that Mr. and Mrs. Gibson met their death by means of torture. And this is all that the statute requires. The legislature has not seen fit to add “Specific Intent” as an element to aggravating circumstance 8. The majority now rewrites the statute to include specific intent and, in effect, exonerates those tortuous deaths which occur as the result of bunglers who never formed the specific intent to kill by means of torture.
As in Pursell, the intent to subject the Gibsons to heinous, atrocious or cruel suffering can be inferred from the circumstances of this case. To conclude that the element of specific intent to torture cannot be proved by examining the acts themselves, in effect, reverses Pursell, a case in which this entire court joined except for the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Zappala only two years ago.1
By arbitrarily discarding recent precedent, the majority “bring(s) adjudications of this tribunal into the same class as a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and this train only.” Mezvinsky v. Davis, 500 Pa. 564, 570, 459 A.3d *453307, 310 (1983), (Roberts, C.J., dissenting and citing Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 669, 64 S.Ct. 757, 766, 88 L.Ed. 987 (1944)).
Accordingly, I must dissent to that portion of the opinion which vacates the penalties of death. I would affirm both convictions and penalties in this case.

. I note that even though the Chief Justice dissented in Pursell, he agreed with the majority that the specific intent to torture could be proved by the nature and force of the acts themselves.