Commonwealth v. Knight
Decision Date | 18 November 2020 |
Docket Number | No. 775 CAP,775 CAP |
Citation | 241 A.3d 620 |
Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Melvin KNIGHT, Appellant |
Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Timothy Paul Dawson, and James H. Robinson Jr., Esqs., for Appellant.
Leo Joseph Ciaramitaro, John W. Peck II, Katie Lynne Ranker, Esqs., Westmoreland County District Attorney's Office, Ronald Eisenberg, Esq. Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, for Appellee.
OPINION
Melvin Knight appeals the judgment of sentence of death imposed by the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas following his second penalty trial for his role in the 2010 torture and murder of Jennifer Daugherty ("the Victim"), a 30–year-old intellectually disabled woman. For the reasons that follow, we affirm Appellant's judgment of sentence.
This Court set forth the disturbing facts of this case in our opinion disposing of Appellant's appeal from his first judgment of sentence:
, abrasions, and contusions, and several prescription drugs were found in the victim's system. Dr. Wecht concluded the cause of death was a combination of all of the injuries, but was primarily due to stab wounds of the chest, which penetrated the left lung and went into the heart, producing a substantial hemorrhage. Dr. Wecht opined these injuries were inflicted shortly before death, with the intent to cause pain and suffering: the victim would have remained conscious after the initial infliction of the wounds, bled for a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and finally died within four to six minutes.
Commonwealth v. Knight , 638 Pa. 407, 156 A.3d 239, 241-43 (2016) (footnotes omitted).
Appellant pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.1 At Appellant's first penalty phase trial, the Commonwealth pursued two aggravating circumstances: the killing was committed while in the perpetration of a felony, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(6) ; and the killing was committed by means of torture, id. § 9711(d)(8). Appellant asserted four mitigating circumstances, including no significant history of prior criminal convictions, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(1) ; his age at the time of the crime, id. § 9711(e)(4)2 ; extreme duress, id. § 9711(e)(5) ; and the "catch-all" mitigator, id. § 9711(e)(8). The jury found that the Commonwealth established both aggravating circumstances, and that Appellant established the catch-all mitigating circumstance; it concluded, however, that the aggravators outweighed the mitigating circumstances, and thus recommended that Appellant be sentenced to death. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(c)(1)(iv).
On direct appeal, Appellant raised fourteen...
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