Supreme Judicial Court -- January 24, 2012
Procedural History: Defendant appeals from conviction of three indictments of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. Defendant argues that the trial court erred in three ways: (1) in allowing the Commonwealth to present evidence of the defendant’s demeanor (2) in denying defendant’s motion for a required finding of not guilty and (3) in denying motion for a mistrial because material was erroneously sent to the jury room. Defendant further asks the Court to exercise its power under G.L. c. 278, § 33E to reduce the verdicts to murder in the second degree.
Holding: Conviction affirmed; there is no merit to defendant’s claims of error.
Facts: Three victims, a woman and her two daughters aged 9 and 6 were found dead in their fifth floor apartment at 94 Pearl Street, Springfield on December 12, 2007. The medical examiner testified that the bodies showed “decomposition of a significant degree” and estimated that the woman had been dead for at least four to five days. The woman died of multiple stab wounds, throat slash to the spine, and blunt force trauma to the head. The older child died of manual strangulation. The younger child died of asphyxia caused by a pair of tights being forced into her throat. DNA of the defendant matched the minor DNA profile on the ropes found on the older child’s wrists and the “handler” DNA from the bruises on her neck.
Defendant was the husband and stepfather of the victims, and lived with them. On December 8 and 9, 2007, defendant was seen outside the apartment building dressed inappropriately for the cold, shaking from the cold, talking to himself and eating food from trash bags. He stood outside the front door of his apartment for several hours. He sat outside the window of one tenant’s apartment, repeatedly tapped on the window, and called the older daughter’s name. Another tenant called the police when the defendant tried to enter her apartment. The police called an ambulance. The defendant told the ambulance attendants that he had not taken his antipsychotic medication for approximately twenty days.
After the bodies were discovered, the defendant was questioned and arrested that evening at a hospital. He had small cuts and abrasions on his fingers and hands, blood stain on his toenail, and blood stains on his clothing that tested positive for his and someone else’s blood.
Issue #1: Should evidence of defendant’s demeanor when he was questioned at the hospital be excluded because he was not given Miranda warnings?
No. “Miranda warnings are only necessary when one is subject to ‘custodial interrogation.’” Commonwealth v. Morse, 427 Mass. 117, 112 (1998) quoting Commonwealth v. Jung, 420 Mass. 675, 688 (1995). The defendant was not in custody because he voluntarily accompanied the detective to a neutral location: the conference room at the hospital. While the detective knew the police were seeking an arrest warrant for the defendant and knew there was probable cause to arrest, these suspicions were never communicated to the defendant. Moreover, there was no interrogation because the questioning was brief and not aggressive. The detective made one statement that the police wanted to speak to the defendant about what “happened on Pearl Street” and asked one question of whether the defendant knew why he was in the conference room. The statement about Pearl Street was merely an introductory remark, and because the defendant was not in custody, whether the subsequent question was asked to elicit an incriminating response is irrelevant.
Issue #2: Should the defendant’s motion for required findings of not guilty have been granted because the Commonwealth’s entire case was based on defendant’s bizarre behavior and the handler DNA on the older daughter’s neck?
No. The Commonwealth’s evidence “may be entirely circumstantial, and . . . the inferences a jury may draw from the evidence ‘need only be reasonable and possible and need not be necessary or inescapable.’” Commonwealth v. Linton, 456 Mass. 534, 544 (2010), quoting Commonwealth v. Lao, 433 Mass. 770, 779 (2005). There was sufficient evidence here that the defendant, rather than a stranger, killed the victims because there was no indication of forced entry or burglary into the apartment. Circumstantial evidence further supported a reasonable inference that someone close to the victims committed the murders. There was also sufficient evidence that the murders were committed with deliberate pre-meditation because the victims were all bound and the methods of murder all required time. Finally, there is sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that a murder was committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty due to the injuries and nature of killings suffered by the victims.
Issue #3: Did the trial judge abuse his discretion in denying defendant’s motion for new trial because the jury was inadvertently exposed to an unsigned handwritten Spanish note outside the record?
No. There was no abuse of discretion in denying the defendant’s motion for a new trial because proper procedures were followed. The judge’s individual voir dire of each juror as required in Massachusetts upon jury exposure to non-record material to ascertain prejudicial effect revealed that no juror was fluent in Spanish and, of the seven jurors who saw the note and the two jurors who overheard some discussion about the note, none was able to determine its content. The judge also replaced the one juror that stated she could not remain impartial with the alternate juror.
Issue #4: Should the Court, pursuant to its plenary power under G.L. c. 278, § 33E reduce the verdicts to murder in the second degree because the defendant was psychotic?
No. The Court is not persuaded by the record that the defendant was suffering from a mental impairment that would justify reducing the verdicts. Further, there has been no post-trial motion charging ineffective assistance of counsel, no evidence concerning reasons why trial counsel did not pursue a defense of mental impairment, and no development of any evidence of the alleged impairment. (LP)
