Court Opinion

ID: 9559834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:36:23.269446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:46.709213
License: Public Domain

MARTONE, Justice,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
¶ 60 I join the court in affirming this conviction and sentence. I dissent only from the court’s holding that this is not a case of pecuniary gain.
¶ 61 To support a finding under (F)(5), pecuniary gain must be at least one of the motives for the murder. State v. Spencer, 176 Ariz. 36, 43, 859 P.2d 146, 153 (1993). The majority believes that this ease is like State v. Rienhardt, 190 Ariz. 579, 951 P.2d 454 (1997), rather than State v. LaGrand, 153 Ariz. 21, 734 P.2d 563 (1987). The opposite is true.
¶62 In LaGrand, we said “[w]hen the defendant comes to rob, the defendant expects pecuniary gain and this desire infects all other conduct of the defendant.” LaGrand, 153 Ariz. at 35, 734 P.2d at 577. LaG-rand murdered an employee in the course of an attempted bank robbery. The victim could not open the safe so LaGrand killed him. The court said that the defendant does not have to “intend beforehand to kill as well as to rob to satisfy the statute.” Id. at 36, 734 P.2d at 578. See State v. Landrigan, 176 Ariz. 1, 6, 859 P.2d 111, 116 (1993) (adopting the LaGrand pecuniary gain analysis to hold Landrigan’s expectation of pecuniary gain infected all other conduct). See also, State v. Greene, 192 Ariz. 431, 439, ¶ 32, 967 P.2d 106, 114, ¶ 32 (1998).
*518¶ 63 Conversely, in Rienhardt there was never an expectation of pecuniary gain. Rienhardt “came to buy drugs, not to steal.” Rienhardt, 190 Ariz. at 591, 951 P.2d at 466.
¶ 64 The evidence here is like the evidence in LaGrand, not the evidence in Rienhardt. Medina came to rob. The day after the killing he told his girlfriend that he had intended to steal Hodge’s car and its radio. As the court notes, the knobs had been pulled off and Medina was convicted of robbery.
¶ 65 In Rienhardt, we said that LaGrand did not apply because Rienhardt did not “come to rob.” Rienhardt, 190 Ariz. at 591, 951 P.2d at 466. In contrast, Medina did come to rob. That should be the end of this case. The “removed in time and place” language from Rienhardt were words of description, not the basis for the court’s decision.
¶ 66 But even if the court now chooses to attach more significance to that language than it deserves, this is not a case in which the murder was removed in time and place from the robbery. In contrast to Rienhardt, who killed out on the desert away from the apartment, the robbery and the murder here occurred where Hodge had parked and slept in his ear. And, in contrast to Rienhardt, who killed his victim hours after the drug deal, Medina tried to hot wire the car at about the same time as the murder.
¶ 67 Finally, the court doubts the existence of pecuniary gain because, having been incapacitated, Hodge could not prevent the theft. Ante, at ¶ 30. But this sort of reasoning is not grounded in any of our (F)(5) jurisprudence. Pecuniary gain does not have to be the exclusive motive for a killing, but only a motive for the killing. And we have said that when the defendant comes to rob, the defendant expects pecuniary gain and that “desire infects all other conduct.” LaGrand 153 Ariz. at 35, 734 P.2d at 577.
¶ 68 Today’s decision revises our pecuniary gain analysis on facts that do not support the new analysis. As a result, this already murky area is now likely to be more so.