Court Opinion

ID: 9697033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:04:16.402295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:28.658449
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I join in the affirmance of appellant’s conviction. However, I must dissent from the decision to vacate the sentence of death.
To kill by “means of torture”, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(8), does not mean that one must intend to kill only by torture. What is proscribed is an intentional killing that is inflicted by means of intense pain, “the infliction of a considerable *284amount of pain and suffering on a victim which is unnecessarily heinous, atrocious, or cruel manifesting exceptional depravity.” Commonwealth v. Pursell, 508 Pa. 212, 238, 495 A.2d 183, 196 (emphasis added). A killing by “means of torture” does not require that torture be the reason for the employment of painful means. The means of killing are evidence of intention that when proved are subsumed by the intention to kill, and where that intention is manifested by the unnecessary infliction of pain the torture proscribed by the statute may be considered in imposing sanction.
What is proscribed is the infliction of pain that accompanies the intention to kill. It cannot matter to the victim that his killer is a bungler, unfamiliar with the state of the art, or did his best with the means at hand. If the means employed inflict pain as defined in Pursell, supra, the killer ought not be heard to say that the pain was a mere by-product of his killing.
PAPADAKOS, J., joins in this concurring and dissenting opinion.