Court Opinion

ID: 9652408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:23:28.08904+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:51.125488
License: Public Domain

concurring and dissenting.
As the writer, from whom this matter was reassigned, of the portion of the Opinion disposing of the claims of trial error and ineffective assistance of counsel, I cannot do other than join the Opinion to that extent. I dissent from the affirmance of the death penalty.
Examining first whether the shooting of Vann brings the Harding killing within the aggravating circumstance, on these facts I would hold that it does not. The Commonwealth suggests that aggravating circumstance (d)(7) applies because offenses which are logically and temporally related and share common issues of law and fact are part of a single criminal episode, citing Commonwealth v. Hude, 500 Pa. 482, 458 A.2d 177 (1983). The flaw in this reasoning is that in Hude the principal question was the meaning of the phrase “single criminal episode” in the statute barring a prosecution for one offense where a former prosecution of another offense had already occurred. Section (d)(7) applies not where the grave risk of death and the murder occurred in a “single criminal episode,” but where the defendant created a grave risk of death “in the commission of” the murder. Here, the assault on Vann occurred as a prelude to, not in the commission of, the murder.
Similarly, without minimizing that danger, I disagree with the Commonwealth’s assertion that whatever danger may *73have existed to the officer arriving at the scene implicates this aggravating circumstance. These actions occurred after the commission of the offense and are not properly considered in determining, as is the very purpose of the enumerated aggravating circumstances, whether this particular first degree murder is of a type meriting the extreme punishment of death.
The risk of danger to the children is clearly of the type contemplated by the language of (d)(7). I have thoroughly scrutinized the transcripts of the trial and of the sentencing proceeding, however, and must conclude that the Commonwealth did not meet its burden of proving this circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt. In holding otherwise, the majority erects a facade of certainty merely by repetitive use of the word “clearly”.
The evidence offered to prove this point came from two sources, the police officer who found the victim and Watson in the bedroom and Harding’s son Daral. The officer stated that he observed a bullet hole in the wall near the closet door frame, and that the victim, when he noticed her, was sitting with her back against the wall leaning against the doorjamb. No forensic testimony was offered to establish which of the several shots fired caused the hole. The evidence showed that Watson shot Harding twice, then left the room and reloaded before shooting her again, and that Harding was able to move even after she had been shot three times. In light of this, any inference that the hole was caused by one of the first bullets passing through Harding, and not the third bullet or the bullet Watson shot himself with, has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt. This point is necessary to the Commonwealth’s proof because it appears from the testimony that Harding’s daughter was no longer in the closet during any of the shooting, and Daral had left the closet before Watson returned and shot Harding a third time before shooting himself. Only if the hole near the closet was made by one of the first shots at Harding could it be said that Watson created a grave risk of death to the children. Unlike the *74majority, I find nothing in the testimony that establishes that the closet and Daral were in the line of fire of these first two shots.
More significantly, the Commonwealth failed to produce any evidence that Watson “knowingly” created a grave risk of death to the children. Daral Harding testified that he had entered the closet, which had doors to his room and to his mother’s room, after his mother and sister were already there. His testimony indicates that his sister was behind him and in front of his mother. The relative positions of the three is critical to the issue of whether Watson knowingly created a grave risk, because the Commonwealth argued, from the positioning described by Daral, that Watson must have been aware of the childrens’ presence when he pulled Sheryl Harding from the closet into her bedroom. However, if the three were in a line with Daral closest to the door to his room, his sister in the middle, and his mother next, then with reference to the door to Sheryl Harding’s room, she would have been first, her daughter next, and then Daral. Watson could thus have pulled Sheryl Harding into her room without being aware of Daral’s presence.
In Commonwealth v. Moser, 519 Pa. 441, 549 A.2d 76 (1988), we used the statutory definition of “knowingly”, as it is used in determining culpability with respect to a material element of an offense, 18 Pa.C.S. § 302(b)(2), in applying this aggravating circumstance.
A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when:
(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist; and
(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.
Although circumstantial evidence may support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant was aware that his conduct in committing a murder also created a grave *75risk of death to persons other than the victim, I am not satisfied that the evidence here reached this level of proof.
Pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(h)(3)(ii), since I find that “the evidence fails to support the finding of an aggravating circumstance specified in subsection (d),” I would vacate the sentence of death and remand for imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment.