Court Opinion

ID: 9791921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:20:31.926484+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.419352
License: Public Domain

THOMAS C. KLEINSCHMIDT, Court of Appeals Judge,
dissenting in part; concurring in part.
I respectfully dissent because in my view this is not a case for the invocation of the death penalty. I say that because I do not believe the crime was especially heinous and depraved. I also believe that the trial judge was improperly influenced by the statements of the mother of the murder victim.
The defendant, an alcoholic, had lived with his putative wife, Marlyn Bechtel, and her children for a number of years. It was not a happy family. As the children grew, they began to lead a life style which dis*441pleased the defendant greatly. He looked upon them as undisciplined, and as coming between himself and his wife.
The relationship between the defendant and his wife’s seventeen-year-old daughter appears to have been particularly bad. For a considerable period of time before the killing they coexisted in the same household in a state of cold hostility.
On the night of the murder the defendant and his wife had an argument about the children. They went to bed about 10:30 in the evening and were awakened about three or four in the morning when the fifteen-year-old daughter came home. The defendant asked his wife if she knew where the girl had been. Sensing that the defendant wanted to start an argument, the wife got up and went downstairs to sleep in a chair. About twenty minutes later the defendant came downstairs and still wanted to fight. His wife was not paying attention to him, and after a short time he produced a pistol and shot her four times. The wife blacked out momentarily but then ran out of the house in an attempt to get help from neighbors.
While his wife was fleeing, the defendant proceeded to the seventeen-year-old daughter’s room and kicked down the door. The girl swore at him, and he shot her in.the head.
The defendant then ran after his wife, caught up with her and beat her over the head with the pistol until the weapon broke. He kicked her when she was on the ground and beat her head on some rocks. He then went back to the house and entered the daughter’s room. She was still alive so, to kill her, he beat her over the head with a large, glass tonic water bottle until the bottle broke. Because the girl was still alive, he went to the kitchen for a knife and returned and stabbed her repeatedly until she was dead. The wife survived.
The defendant then got in his car and drove around for awhile before turning himself in to the police. When interviewed, the defendant gave a fairly complete account of events but was unable to remember some of the details. He kept repeating to the police that he did it because he “couldn’t take it any more.”
It is entirely true that the murder was committed in a brutal manner. Brutality alone, however, does not necessarily render a murder heinous and depraved. As the majority correctly notes, the focus of the inquiry is on the mental state and attitude of the perpetrator at the time of the act. It is appropriate to consider whether the defendant relished the deed, whether he mutilated the victim needlessly, whether the victim was helpless and whether he inflicted gratuitous violence on her. State v. Fulminante, 161 Ariz. 237, 256, 778 P.2d 602, 621 (1988); State v. Gretzler, 135 Ariz. 42, 52-53, 659 P.2d 1, 11-12, cert. denied, 461 U.S. 971, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983). In summary, what the brutality of this murder tells us about the defendant is that he was berserk and bungling. I turn, however, to a more detailed consideration of the factors set out in Fulminante to see how they may apply in this case.
First, there is nothing to show that the defendant relished the killing. The state does not contend otherwise.
The factors of mutilation and the infliction of gratuitous violence are, in this case at least, interrelated. Here, after being shot, the victim did not die. The defendant had discarded his broken gun, so he beat the victim with a bottle. When she still failed to succumb, he stabbed her repeatedly. The mutilation that occurred was not mutilation for its own sake but was the result of the crude methods to which the defendant, in his rage, resorted. Not all of the violence was gratuitous. Much of it was simply an attempt to accomplish the deed. In my opinion, to the degree that the record does establish gratuitous violence, such is, without more, simply insufficient to justify a sentence of death.
The majority cites two cases, State v. Wallace, 151 Ariz. 362, 728 P.2d 232 (1986), cert. denied, 483 U.S. 1011, 107 S.Ct. 3243, 97 L.Ed.2d 748 (1987); and State v. Carriger, 143 Ariz. 142, 692 P.2d 991 (1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1111, 105 S.Ct. 2347, 85 L.Ed.2d 864 (1985), for the proposition that *442particular brutality will support a finding that a murder is especially heinous or depraved. In Wallace, the defendant beat the victims with uncommon savagery even though he could have killed them with his pistol. In Carriger, the court did not rely on the brutal nature of the killing alone for its finding that the crime was especially heinous and depraved.
It is true that the victim in this case was helpless in the sense that she was unarmed and was taken completely by surprise. I give this characterization relatively little weight in determining whether the death penalty can be applied because experience and common sense suggest that a great many, perhaps even most, victims of first degree murder are helpless.
It may be appropriate to categorize a murder as “senseless,” for death penalty purposes in cases like State v. Zaragoza, 135 Ariz. 63, 659 P.2d 22, cert. denied, 462 U.S. 1124, 103 S.Ct. 3097, 77 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1983), where it was unnecessary to kill the victim to accomplish the defendant’s other criminal goals, or in cases like Carriger, where the killing was not necessary to effect the defendant’s escape. Here, murder — a murder born of hatred and rage— was the goal. I do not think it advances the inquiry much in a case like this to observe that the crime was senseless.
Something else about this case bolsters my confidence in my own assessment of this crime. The case was originally the subject of a plea agreement that called for the defendant to receive a sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of release on any basis until 25 calendar years were served for murder and a consecutive 21 years for the assault on the wife. The matter proceeded through a change of plea proceeding, through a presentence hearing pursuant to A.R.S. section 13-703(B) and through sentencing. Before sentencing, the defendant moved to withdraw his plea, but this was denied. The defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment and a consecutive 21 years in accordance with the plea agreement. A subsequent petition for post conviction relief was granted on the grounds that the defendant’s motion to withdraw from that agreement had been timely and should have been granted as a matter of right. The plea and sentence were set aside, and the defendant was tried before a jury, found guilty and sentenced to death by a different judge than the one who had imposed the life sentence.
As this case progressed through the court the first time, there was not the slightest suggestion that this was a crime that cried out for the death penalty. The detective who investigated the case thought the plea agreement was appropriate and so did the adult probation officer who wrote the presentence report. The deputy county attorney urged the judge to accept the plea agreement and the judge, at the first sentencing, specifically found that no aggravating factors existed.
I do not mean to suggest that the state is forever foreclosed from seeking the death penalty just because it once agreed to a life sentence, or that the imposition of a life sentence will preclude a subsequent death sentence for the same crime if resentencing to death is otherwise authorized and appropriate. There may be many reasons, a weak case being the one that comes to mind first, for the state to settle for a life sentence even when a death sentence would be truly appropriate. Indeed here, the prosecutor told the author of the presentence report, which was prepared after the defendant had been convicted by a jury, that the prosecutor had originally agreed to the life sentence to save the defendant’s wife and her surviving fifteen-year-old daughter the ordeal of a trial. No such explanation was offered when the defendant originally pled guilty and was sentenced, and one could argue that if the death penalty was truly appropriate, the desire to spare the family further trauma was not a sufficient reason to forego the effort to inflict that sentence. But that aside, from all that this record shows, neither the investigating officer, the probation officer nor the judge weighed this desire to save the family the ordeal of a trial in considering whether the original life sentence was appropriate. From all this record shows, they simply believed that a *443life sentence was the correct punishment for the crime.
Wretched stories like this one are played out all over this country with regularity. An ineffectual member of a dysfunctional family smolders, ignites, and kills. In this case, rage, however unprovoked or inappropriate, coupled with an unintended failure to kill quickly, account for the manner in which the defendant murdered his victim. I would vacate the sentence of death and resentence the defendant to life imprisonment on his conviction for first degree murder.
I also disagree with the majority on the question of the victim impact statement. Assuming that Booth v. Maryland, 482 U.S. 496, 107 S.Ct. 2529, 96 L.Ed.2d 440 (1987) does not automatically apply to sentences imposed by a judge alone, I believe that this record reflects that the sentencing judge, in finding that the crime was especially heinous and depraved, was influenced by the testimony given by Marlyn Bechtel, the murder victim’s mother, at the sentencing hearing. The mother’s testimony was not confined to the effects of the defendant’s assault upon herself. She told the judge about the great difficulty she has had dealing with her daughter’s death and how she had, after a long fight with the state for custody, taken over the rearing of the victim’s child, her grandson. She characterized the murder as “senseless” and “depraved” and exhorted the judge to impose the death penalty.
In the supplemental presentence report the judge was told in more detail about Marlyn Bechtel’s difficulty in securing custody of her grandchild and how she fears for his future welfare. The report reflects her strong urging that the defendant receive the death penalty.
At the time of sentencing the trial judge observed, among other things, that in deciding to impose the death penalty she was considering the fact that the victim’s child was left without a mother. Thus, she made at least one explicit reference to the impact on a victim. In addition, the judge’s finding, wholly unsupported by the record, that the murder victim suffered “immense physical and mental pain,” suggests that her attention had been diverted from proper sentencing considerations. Accordingly, since under the decision of the majority the defendant still faces a possible death sentence, resentencing should be conducted before a judge who has not been exposed to influences improper under Booth.
I agree with the majority that the judge should not have considered the defendant’s prior conviction as an aggravating circumstance. As I have already indicated, I also agree that the evidence will not support a finding that the murder was especially cruel.