Court Opinion

ID: 9697034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:04:16.40629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:28.660184
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I join that portion of the majority opinion which affirms Appellant’s conviction of murder of the first degree, but must dissent from the vacation of the sentence of death and imposition of a life sentence in this case.
We have already found that the application of our Death Penalty Statute’s aggravating circumstance eight (42 Pa. C.S. § 9711(d)(8)), “the offense was committed by means of torture,” by a jury in its determination of whether a convicted murderer should receive the penalty of life or death is not dependent upon the recitation of any particular formula or the incantation of specific magic words, because, in our view, we feel the meaning of such a term is a matter of common knowledge so that an ordinary man would not have to guess at what was intended. Commonwealth v. Pursell, 508 Pa. 212 at 238, 495 A.2d 183 at 196 (1985).
*285We also indicated that if a jury concluded that the means of torture are present “we can believe, without a reasonable doubt, that the user of such means intended to torture his or her victim to death.” Pursell, 508 Pa. at 239, 495 A.2d at 197. The majority’s present attempt to discredit the trial court’s charge at the sentencing hearing because it did not point out that a specific intent to cause pain and suffering was necessary or that the death had to be caused, by acts separate and distinct from the torture” (Maj. opinion p. 280), in reality, only seeks to undermine Pursell’s teachings and the more basic assumption that underlies Pursell, i.e., that the term is a matter of common knowledge.
The court’s charge clearly set out the statutory language and that the jury had to find that the Commonwealth’s evidence on the subject was credible beyond a reasonable doubt. The statutory language itself, “the offense was committed by means of torture,” simply and sufficiently conveys to the ordinary man that the killing had to be caused by torturous methods. Not to repeat this information by any other formula as suggested by the majority, is not fatal to the charge, it only represents non-redundancy.
Apparently, the majority feels that such repetition is mandated by virtue of the facts which led to the untimely death of Appellant’s victim. As I read the majority opinion, it would have us believe that the brutal assault on Appellant’s wife with the claw hammer, stabs by a chisel, and choking with an extension cord, were separate, distinct episodes unrelated in time or purpose. This is illogical.
In Pursell, we found that torture was more than present, inferred same by the number of blows, manual strangulation, asphyxiation and continued traumatization of the body after death, which acts were held to be part of the same act of killing.
Here, Appellant dragged his wife into the basement of a beauty salon, assaulted her with a hammer and chisel, and when that didn’t finish off her life, went upstairs and secured an electric cord and returned to the basement *286where he effectively used the cord to accomplish his purpose, her death by means of torture.
I believe that a common understanding of this sequence of events would indicate that Appellant inflicted a considerable amount of pain and suffering on his victim, which was unnecessarily heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity, and that the acts themselves prove that Appellant intended to torture his victim to death.
I would conclude that the record contains substantial evidence to support the jury’s finding of aggravating circumstance 8 and that, in light of Pursell, the subsection is constitutionally valid and that the charge was sufficient for the jury to understand the law on this issue.
I, therefore, join the Concurring and Dissenting Opinion authored by Mr. Justice McDermott.
Accordingly, I would affirm the conviction of murder of the first degree and affirm the sentence of death.
McDERMOTT, J., joins this concurring and dissenting opinion.