21 Mass. App. Ct. 989 | Mass. App. Ct. | 1986
The appeal is from three convictions under G. L. c. 265, § 23, and five convictions under G. L. c. 265, § 13B. 1. The defendant offered no evidence to support the broad allegations of the concluding paragraph of his motion to sever, which were to the effect that he might wish to testify in some of the cases and invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in other cases. He even facilitated joinder to the extent that he waived indictment on two of the charges and consented to be tried on complaints for each type of offence. G. L. c. 263, § 4A. Mass.R.Crim.P. 3(d), 378 Mass. 848-849 (1979). In the exercise of the judge’s discretion, the jury would have learned of the defendant’s commission of the other offences even if each pair of indictments or complaints had been severed and tried separately. Requiring the child witnesses to testify at as many trials as there were alleged victims would have been out of the question. (See now G. L. c. 278, § 16D, inserted by St. 1985, c. 682.) At the outset of the case, following the reading of the indictments and immediately prior to the commencement of the prosecutor’s opening statement, the judge explained to the jury that there was a total of twelve charges and instructed that “they are separate cases and they should be considered by you as separate matters, each one independent of each other.” There was no objection to the portion of the prosecutor’s closing argument which is set out in the defendant’s brief
Judgments affirmed.