Court Opinion

ID: 9537041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:11:41.568716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:50.122372
License: Public Domain

CAMERON, Justice,
specially concurring.
I agree that the death penalty is properly imposed in this case. However, because I disagree with the majority in its holding that the crime was especially heinous and depraved, I feel that I must specially concur.
I do so not because I am insensitive to the tragic consequences of defendant’s criminal conduct, but because I believe that if the death penalty statute in Arizona is to pass constitutional muster, it must be interpreted in such a way that only those who clearly come within the mandate of our legislature and the United States Supreme Court are given this punishment. The death penalty is reserved only for those crimes which are above the norm of first degree murders, or for defendants who are above the norm of first degree murderers. State v. Zaragoza, 135 Ariz. 63, 68, 659 P.2d 22, 27-28 (1983); State v. Watson, 129 Ariz. 60, 63, 628 P.2d 943, 946 (1981).
The majority finds this crime to be especially heinous and depraved under A.R.S. § 13-703(F)(6), based on two of the criteria set out in State v. Gretzler, 135 Ariz. 42, 659 P.2d 1 (1983), the infliction of gratuitous violence on the victim, and the needless mutilation of the victim. I do not believe the facts of this case fit within the proper boundaries of these criteria.
The infliction of gratuitous violence was found and the death penalty imposed in State v. Ceja, 126 Ariz. 35, 612 P.2d 491 (1980), in which the defendant continued to shoot his victims after it was apparent they had been fatally wounded, and then began kicking one of the victims in the face repeatedly while the victim was already unconscious or dead. We said,
We think that defendant’s conduct in continuing his barrage of violence, inflicting wounds and abusing his victims, beyond the point necessary to fulfill his plan to steal, beyond even the point necessary to kill, is such an additional circumstance of a * * * depraved nature so as to set it apart from the ‘usual or the norm.’ 126 Ariz. at 40, 612 P.2d at 496, quoting State v. Ceja, 115 Ariz. 413, 417, 565 P.2d 1274, 1278 (1977). See also State v. Gretzler, supra, 135 Ariz. at 52, 659 P.2d at 11.
We similarly held that gratuitous violence was inflicted in State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. 404, 661 P.2d 1105 (1983), where after the killing the defendant climbed on top of the *323corpse and beat its face repeatedly with his fists, resulting in facial wounds and bleeding. In State v. Woratzeck, 134 Ariz. 452, 657 P.2d 865 (1982), we also held that gratuitous violence was employed where the defendant strangled, stabbed and bludgeoned the victim to death, and the force used by each of these three methods was sufficient to kill. The death penalty was properly imposed in both Jeffers and Woratzeck.
In the instant case the victim was killed by being run over by an automobile. The evidence adduced at trial indicates the automobile was likely backed over the victim, and then driven forward over the victim. There is no evidence to suggest that the defendant knew or should have known that the victim was dead after the first pass of the car. Cf. State v. Gerlaugh, 134 Ariz. 164, 654 P.2d 800 (1982) (victim still alive after defendant ran over him with his automobile several times). Therefore, unlike the defendants in Ceja, Jeffers, and Woratzeck, supra, there has been no showing that this defendant inflicted any violence on the victim which he must have known was “beyond the point necessary to kill.”
The criterion of mutilation of the victim was demonstrated by State v. Vickers, 129 Ariz. 506, 633 P.2d 315 (1981), where the defendant strangled to death his prison cellmate and then carved the word “Bonzai” into the victim’s back. Similarly in State v. Smith, 131 Ariz. 29, 638 P.2d 696 (1981), after suffocating the female victims the defendant proceeded to mutilate their sex organs and breasts with sharp objects. The death penalty was imposed in these two cases based in part on the finding that the crime was committed in a heinous and depraved manner. The facts of these cases are in marked contrast to the present ease. Here there is no suggestion of distinct acts, apart from the killing, specifically performed to mutilate the victim’s body. Any disfigurement of the victim in this case was the direct result of the killing itself. I do not believe we should stretch the definition of “mutilation” to cover all murders in which the victim’s body is disfigured, where there is no indication of a separate purpose to mutilate the corpse.
It is true, of course, that the appearance of the victim in this case was “ghastly” as the majority states. But as the United States Supreme Court has recently said in Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980) (reversing an application of Georgia’s statutory aggravating circumstance of “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman”),
[I]t is constitutionally irrelevant that the petitioner used a shotgun instead of a rifle as the murder weapon, resulting in a gruesome spectacle in his mother-in-law’s trailer. An interpretation of [the aggravating circumstance] so as to include all murders resulting in gruesome scenes would be totally irrational. Id. at 433, n. 16, 100 S.Ct. at 1767, n. 16, 64 L.Ed.2d at 409, n. 16 (plurality opinion). See also id. at 435, 100 S.Ct. at 1768, 64 L.Ed.2d at 410-11 (Marshall, Brennan, J.J., concurring) (“[We] also agree that * * * the fact that the murder weapon was one which caused extensive damage to the victim’s body is constitutionally irrelevant.”)
Our statutory aggravating circumstance of a heinous or depraved killing focuses on the state of mind of the killer, see State v. Graham, 135 Ariz. 209, at 212, 660 P.2d 460 at 463; State v. Jeffers, supra, 135 Ariz. at 429-430, 661 P.2d at 1130-31; State v. Zaragoza, supra, 135 Ariz. at 69-70, 659 P.2d at 28-29; State v. Gretzler, supra, 135 Ariz. at 51, 659 P.2d at 10; State v. Wortazeck, supra, 134 Ariz. at 457, 657 P.2d at 870, not on the appearance of the corpse. Although the resulting scene was gruesome, I believe the proper application of the criteria discussed above fails to support a finding that the killer acted in a state of mind which was especially heinous or depraved. This crime is therefore not above the norm of first degree murders.
The criminal record of this defendant, however, clearly places him above the norm of first degree murderers. He has been convicted of another first degree murder and a kidnapping, each arising in separate incidents. This history of serious violent *324crime justifies the imposition of the death penalty.
I concur in the opinion of the majority except its finding that this crime was heinous and depraved, and I concur in the result.