Court Opinion

ID: 9745406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:54:37.939028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:00.265833
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
The trial court found one mitigating circumstance, namely that appellant had no significant history of prior eriminal conduct. The trial court rejected a second mitigating circumstance claimed by the defense, namely that appellant's capacity to conform his conduct to legal requirements was substantially impaired by mental disease. Upon review, I find that the evidence of mental disease, when viewed with an open mind, convincingly supports this second mitigating cireumstance.
Appellant was in his forties in 1987 when he shot and killed. In 1970, his first marriage ended. He had four children by that marriage. His second marriage of thirteen years ended in 1986, within a year of these killings. His adult children testified that he was always an alcoholic throughout their lifetimes, but that he had been a good father to them and had not been violent at home.
In 1979 appellant was severely injured on the job. Over the next seven years he underwent four laminectomies, was treated at the Mayo Clinic, suffered constant and severe back pain, and became addicted to a variety of prescription narcotic drugs. In 1982 and 1986 he was diagnosed by differ*441ent psychiatrists as suffering from the mental disease of depression. During this period he was disabled and received social security payments. During this period he reported repeatedly to the emergency room of a hospital, suffering from acute back pain and under the influence of alcohol. His second wife testified that his mental condition deteriorated greatly with the added addiction to pain killing medications and that the one time that he struck her occurred at the end of their marriage.
In January of 1987, shortly after his second divorce, appellant and the victim Sharon Oke moved in together. They argued violently, and in the summer and fall of 1987 he twice beat her and threatened to kill her. A month later, still under the care of a physician for severe back pain, under the influence of Percodan, a prescription medication of the opium family, and alcohol, in the immediate aftermath of a heated argument with Sharon Oke in the tavern, he opened fire upon her and her husband, killing two and wounding three. He then ealled the police, saying that they should come and get him as he was tired of killing people.
Juxtaposed to this array of impressive evidence is the weak evidence of the two court-appointed physicians. - They conferred with appellant briefly in the jail and relied upon his brief statements about his medical history in arriving at their opinions that he was legally sane at the time of the killings. On cross-examination each admitted great gaps in their knowledge of his actual medical history. I cannot but find the mental disease impairment mitigator present in this case. It resembles the impairment due to alcohol and contraband drug abuse present in Johnson v. State (1992), Ind., 584 N.E.2d 1092, but is entitled to greater mitigating weight due to appellant's battle with pain and the resulting addiction to legal pain killing drugs and analgesics. Appellant's lack of a history of criminal conduct at age forty is also entitled to greater weight than present in some capital cases. Appellant's circumstance resembles that present in Fleenor v. State (1987), Ind., 514 N.E.2d 80 in that case however, there was no extreme physical ailment and Fleenor fled the state rather than turning himself in. Appellant should fare better than Johnson and Fleenor.
I would affirm this conviction but grant these mitigating circumstances - more weight than did the trial court and conclude that they are not outweighed by the aggravating circumstance of the double murder. 1.C. 35-50-2-9(b)(8). The death sentence should be vacated and a term of years for each murder imposed.
DICKSON, J., concurs.