the Death Penalty Pursuant Thereto are DENIED. An appropriate Order will issue. The Clerk is directed to forward a copy of the Memorandum Opinion to counsel. 1 . Defendant’s remaining contentions moving to strike the alleged statutory and non-statutory aggravating factors as invalid under the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution aré addressed in the Court's accompanying Memorandum Opinion issued today. 2 . Also, while Justice Thomas opines that "the core crime and the aggravating fact together constitute an aggravated crime, just as much as grand larceny is an aggravated form of petit larceny,” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 501, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (Thomas, J., concurring), the narrow holdings of Jones, Apprendi, and Ring do not require such a result. See Ring, 122 S.Ct. at 2443 (<HOLDING>); Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348
holding that sixth amendment requires that a jury not a judge find the existence of any aggravating circumstance and that they be found beyond a reasonable doubt holding because arizonas enumerated aggravating factors operate as the functional equivalent of an element of a greater offense the sixth amendment requires that they be found by a jury holding that when the jury finds facts that are so closely related to the omitted element that no rational jury could find those facts without also finding the omitted element this exercise amounts to the functional equivalent of the omitted element holding that if a jury is to be provided the defendant at capital sentencing regardless of whether the sixth amendment requires it the jury must stand impartial and indifferent to the extent commanded by the sixth amendment holding that under the sixth amendment right to trial by jury aggravating factors that operate as the functional equivalent of an element of a charged offense must be found by a jury