Commonwealth v. ConaghanCommonwealth v. Conaghan
Lead Opinion
We granted the defendant’s application for further appellate review, see Commonwealth v. Conaghan,
1. The standard. A postsentence motion to withdraw a plea is treated as a motion for a new trial. See Commonwealth v. Russin,
We conclude that Conaghan’s motions cannot be decided without examination or examinations by an expert in the field of battered woman syndrome. We therefore vacate the order denying her an examination or examinations pursuant to
2. Conaghan’s plea hearing. At the plea hearing, the assistant district attorney read Conaghan’s statement to the police concerning the events surrounding her son’s death. Conaghan told the police that no one else was in the house when she pushed her son and that she previously had pushed him in the same manner four or five other times. Additionally, she stated
(a) Materials in support of motion to withdraw guilty plea and for new trial. In support of her motion to withdraw the guilty plea and for a new trial, Conaghan filed supplementary materials regarding Paul Haynes’s violent conduct with other women and children; an affidavit narrating her own history of physical and psychological abuse, and some of her psychiatric and medical records since her incarceration. The judge concluded that there was nothing in Conaghan’s affidavit creating a substantial issue that would require a psychiatric examination or examinations and an evidentiary hearing.
(b) Conaghan’s affidavit. In 1991, Conaghan met Paul Haynes. Shortly after beginning a relationship with Haynes, he moved in with her. Because Haynes was unemployed, Conaghan used her earnings and child support payments to pay his rent and bills. Haynes told Conaghan that he worked for an individual named “Tony” who was affiliated with the mafia. Haynes would often threaten Conaghan with Tony if she did not obey him or if she displeased him in any way. While she was living with Haynes, she learned that Haynes also owned a gun. Haynes ordered Conaghan to punish her son physically in order to cure his behavioral problems and illnesses. Haynes also physically punished Conaghan’s son. At Haynes’s direction, Conaghan assisted him. According to Conaghan, prior to Haynes’s moving in she had only punished her son through nonphysical means.
Conaghan stated in her affidavit that Haynes instructed her to lie to the authorities about her son’s death. Haynes told her to “cover for him” because, if charged, he would receive life imprisonment given his prior criminal record. Haynes also
(c) Conaghan’s psychiatric records. Conaghan submitted some of her mental treatment records since her incarceration. She has received extensive therapy for severe bipolar disorder. These records also make references to her “past tendencies to be lorded over by abusive males.” Conaghan has not been evaluated for battered woman syndrome while at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham, because diagnosis of and treatment for battered woman syndrome is beyond the mandate of the prison’s medical services department.
(d) Evidence at Paul Haynes’s trial. One year and eleven months after Conaghan’s plea, Haynes was convicted by a jury of forcible rape of a child, indecent assault and battery on a child under fourteen years of age, assault and battery, and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon in connection with his abuse of James and Joyce Sanford.
Haynes moved in with Rebekah Sanford. He brought Conaghan with him and told Sanford that Conaghan was his sister. The testimony reveals that the Sanford children, especially James, were continually “disciplined” by Haynes. The testimony revealed the Sanfords’ fear of Haynes and fear of being killed. Conaghan’s affidavit expressed the same fear.
Conaghan testified at Haynes’s trial. She said Haynes would beat the Sanford children and afterward show her the bruises to humiliate the children. According to Conaghan, Haynes was particularly violent toward James.
Haynes also would talk to Conaghan about Tony who was involved in the mafia and was “very mean and . . . when he wanted something, he got it and didn’t care how he got it.” Conaghan also said that Haynes had a gun in his briefcase and that he would carry his briefcase with him “all the time.” After Conaghan and Haynes separated in May, 1992, they continued
(e) Investigative reports from the district attorney’s office. The district attorney’s office interviewed friends of Rebekah and various other women involved with Haynes prior to his trial. These reports reveal Paul Haynes as a violent and abusive person, especially toward women and children.
3. Delay. The Commonwealth asserts that Conaghan’s delay makes her claim not credible. The Commonwealth also asserts that Conaghan is not credible because she did not come forward until after Haynes’s trial.
Evidence of battered woman syndrome is “material to the issue whether [Conaghan] could assist her counsel in preparing a defense that served her best interests.” McMaugh v. State,
4. Conclusion. Conaghan’s motion raises a serious question as to her mental competency to assist her attorney in establishing a defense and to plead guilty voluntarily. On this record, Conaghan is entitled to an examination or examinations by an expert in battered woman syndrome under
The order denying the motion for a competency examination or examinations is vacated. The matter is remanded to the Superior Court proceeding consistent with this opinion and for such further proceedings as may be needed after the expert has rendered an opinion.
So ordered.
Notes
Connghan's Monaghan’s motion to withdraw her guilty plea was based on the grounds that (1) there is substantial evidence that her former boy friend inflicted the fatal injuries on Conaghan’s son; (2) to the extent that she may have contributed to her son’s death she suffered from battered woman syndrome and lacked the competency to plead voluntarily; and (3) that plea was the product of intimidation and coercion and therefore not voluntary. She also
These punishments began shortly after one Paul Haynes moved in with Conaghan.
The motion judge was not the trial judge. The trial judge had retired prior to the filing of the motion for a new trial. The motion judge thus did not see Conaghan at the time of the plea. Cf. Commonwealth v. Robbins,
These are the same fictitious names used in the Appeals Court opinion.
Conaghan turned herself in to the police on or about May 6, 1992. Conaghan pleaded guilty in September, 1992, and the letters stopped in October, 1992.
We note that Conaghan did not come forward until two years and eight months after Haynes’s trial.
We reject the Commonwealth’s argument that
Concurrence Opinion
(concurring, with whom Abrams, J., joins). I would add that the record also reveals that, nine days after Conaghan pleaded guilty, she filed a motion to revise and revoke her sentence. See Mass. R. Crim. R 29 (a),
The question of the reasonableness of Conaghan’s delay in seeking a hearing on the motion is a matter for a trial judge. See Commonwealth v. Barclay,
If Conaghan seeks a hearing on the motion to revise and revoke, I would hold that a trial judge, see ante at 107 n.4, may use the new trial submissions and may order, in the judge’s discretion, a psychiatric examination to aid in sentencing, pursuant to
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting, with whom Greaney and Ireland, JJ., join.) The majority opinion holds that a competency examination under
The motion judge below had before him a motion to withdraw a guilty plea, coupled with a motion for funds to conduct a psychiatric examination. The defendant acknowledges that the motion judge was correct in denying the motion for funds. See Commonwealth v. Davis,
The proposed use of
For example, a judge may order an evaluation whenever he or she “doubts whether a defendant in a criminal case is competent to stand trial” (emphasis added).
Taken together, these provisions concerning evaluations for competence and the consequences of a finding of incompetence all illustrate that what is at issue is a pretrial assessment of the defendant’s present competence. The only reference to any evaluation occurring after trial is an evaluation in aid of sentencing: “After a finding of guilty on a criminal charge, and prior to sentencing, the court may order a psychiatric or other clinical examination .... The purpose of such observation or examination shall be to aid the court in sentencing.”
The majority twists
The defendant met Paul Haynes in May or June, 1991, and began living with him in July of that same year. She was aware that Haynes had a handgun. Haynes also told the defendant that he knew a person named “Tony” who was allegedly affiliated with organized crime and, on occasions when the defendant “displeased” Haynes, Haynes would “mak[e] reference to Tony.” The defendant’s affidavit does not recite ever seeing “Tony,” ever seeing anyone who had had any dealings with “Tony,” or ever having any information as to what “Tony” had ostensibly done to anyone or what “Tony” would do to her. Ownership of a handgun and references to “Tony” do not suffice to make out a case of battered woman syndrome.
When Haynes started abusing the defendant’s son in September, 1991, and urged the defendant to engage in such child abuse herself, he did so by advising her that it was the only way to cure her son’s behavioral problems. Haynes convinced the defendant that he had “consulted a child
The defendant’s affidavit then chronicles specific instances of child abuse in which she participated at Haynes’s instruction. Nowhere does she state or even suggest that Haynes abused her, threatened her, or that he invoked the name of “Tony,” in obtaining her participation in this ongoing physical abuse of her son.
On the day of the beating from which the child died, the defendant merely recites that she participated “[a]t the direction of Haynes.” Again, there is no reference to Haynes’s physically abusing the defendant herself at any time prior to this incident, nor any reference to Haynes threatening her with abuse (or with “Tony”) in order to obtain her compliance with his “direction” to take part in the fatal beating.
When interviewed by the police on the day of her son’s death, the defendant claimed that the child had been injured when he slipped on a wet floor and hit his head. The police questioned the defendant again five days later, at which time she confessed to having pushed her son as “punishment.” She admitted that she had pushed him to the floor and that, each time he got up, she had pushed him down again. On his final fall to the floor, he had “a seizure.” She also admitted to prior instances of physical punishment inflicted on the child. She did not inculpate Haynes in either the beating that led to the child’s death or in any of the earlier incidents of child abuse. As of the date of her confession, October 17, 1991, there is no indication in any of the materials submitted that Haynes had subjected the defendant
The defendant and Haynes subsequently went to live with Rebekah Sanford. According to the testimony in Haynes’s later trial, the move to the Sanford household occurred sometime in February, 1992, four months after the defendant’s son had died and four months after the defendant’s confession to the police. The defendant’s affidavit describes the physical abuse that Haynes perpetrated on the Sanford children. The defendant then provides the sole allegation set forth in her entire materials concerning any physical abuse she herself suffered at the hands of Haynes: “While at Sanford’s home, Haynes became physically abusive to me and struck me.” She does not say when during their stay at the Sanford home this began, how many times or how often any such abuse occurred, or provide any further information whatsoever concerning this alleged abuse by Haynes.
While one could have considerable sympathy for a defendant who put forth a compelling array of facts and details of abuse but who was unable, due to lack of funds, to provide an expert opinion that those facts did indeed make out a case of battered woman syndrome, this defendant has put forth only that single
The defendant pleaded guilty on September 1, 1992, after spending approximately four months in jail awaiting trial. Although she was in contact with Haynes during the time she was in jail and she claims that he “instructed” her to plead guilty, she does not recite or allege any threat on the part of Haynes, or even any veiled references to “Tony,” occurring during the months prior to her change of plea. Instead, she describes how Haynes told her that, because of his own prior record, he would be imprisoned for fife if he were convicted in connection with the child’s death. By that time, of course, the defendant had long since given the police a confession in which she took full blame for her son’s death and, even on her current version of events, she would be culpable as a joint venturer with Haynes. Thus, faced with the fact that she would likely (and properly) be found guilty, the only issue was whether she would inculpate Haynes (and send him to prison as well) or whether she would continue with the version in which she took sole responsibility for her son’s fatal beating. Haynes “pressured” her to plead guilty by telling her what drastic consequences there would be for him if she ever implicated him in their joint crime. That is apparently all the “pressure” it took, as the affidavit recites no other form of “pressure.”
At the defendant’s change of plea hearing, the prosecutor recited the contents of the defendant’s October 17, 1991, statement to the police. The defendant adopted as true that prior confession. The facts on which her change of plea was based and accepted did not include any additional information or details beyond what was already in her October 17, 1991,
Notwithstanding the defendant’s claimed inability to resist Haynes’s “pressure” on her to protect him, the undisputed record then shows that the defendant testified against Haynes less than two years later when he was prosecuted for his physical and sexual abuse of the Sanford children. On August 2, 1994, the defendant was called as a witness for the prosecution as part of its case-in-chief against Haynes. The defendant gave direct testimony against Haynes with respect to his severe physical abuse of one of the Sanford children, and gave testimony that corroborated the claim that Haynes had sexually abused Sanford’s daughter.*
As the majority opinion of the Appeals Court notes, the defendant then waited until April 29, 1997, more than two and one-half years after testifying against Haynes, before filing her motion to withdraw her guilty plea. Battered woman syndrome could certainly explain a woman’s delay in coming forward, but where the defendant was sufficiently free of the effects of her alleged syndrome to be able to testify freely against Haynes in August, 1994, she would have been sufficiently free of it to
In my opinion, the defendant’s claim that her plea was involuntary because it was the product of abuse suffered at the hands of Paul Haynes, abuse that allegedly gave rise to battered woman syndrome, is utterly unsupported by the defendant’s submissions. As such, her motion to withdraw guilty plea was properly denied without an evidentiary hearing. “Appellate courts generally defer to the sound discretion of the trial judge on whether a motion for a new trial requires an evidentiary hearing or whether it can be decided on the basis of the facts alleged in the affidavits.” Commonwealth v. DeVincent,
What is disturbing on this record, and what presumably has given the majority its sense that justice may not have been done, stems not from Haynes’s alleged abuse of the defendant (evidence of which is limited to a single conclusory sentence in the defendant’s affidavit and in any event postdates the defendant’s confession) but from Haynes’s horrific abuse of the Sanford children. The record amply demonstrates that Haynes was capable of inflicting horrendous child abuse, and it is quite possible that Haynes was, as the defendant alleges, the principal culprit in the beating death of her son. The fact remains that the defendant permitted Haynes to abuse her son repeatedly, and participated in that abuse herself (based solely on Haynes’s advice that such abuse was necessary in order to raise the child “properly”), long before Haynes subjected the defendant herself to any form of physical abuse. The defendant then confessed to this crime within a few days, also long before Haynes had subjected her to any physical abuse. That she took all of the blame herself, out of perversely misguided loyalty to the man who had just killed her son, does not make her plea involuntary. Her desire to cover up for Haynes, which had already surfaced back in her original September, 1991, confession, cannot be at
The motion judge acted within his discretion in denying the defendant’s motion to withdraw her plea, and nothing in this record compelled him to send the defendant for an evaluation under
“Battered woman syndrome has been described as a ‘series of common characteristics that appear in women who are abused physically and psychologically over an extended period of time by the dominant male figure in their lives.’ ” Commonwealth v. Pike,
By that time, the defendant had been living with Haynes for only three months. Again, three months of references to “Tony” will not suffice to make out a case of battered woman syndrome. See note 1, supra.
By comparison, the defendant’s affidavit is highly detailed and specific in recounting the various forms of severe physical abuse that Haynes inflicted on the defendant’s son and the Sanford children.
The defendant’s affidavit recites that she was subjected to physical punishment by her parents and that her former husband had abused her from 1986 until her divorce in 1987. She then had a relationship with another man who allegedly abused her son, but the affidavit does not contain any allegation that that boy friend abused the defendant at all. Her relationship with Haynes commenced in 1991. While abuse by others prior to her relationship with Haynes might well contribute to the defendant’s susceptibility to abusive relationships, it does not alter the fact that Haynes did not subject her to any physical abuse until after the relevant time frame.
Haynes was convicted of forcible rape of a child, indecent assault and battery on a child, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon (a cigarette lighter), and assault and battery. Commonwealth v. Haynes,
Nothing in the trial transcript suggests any hesitation, reluctance, fear, or unwillingness on the defendant’s part with respect to giving this incriminating testimony against Haynes. Indeed, Haynes’s counsel attempted to attack the defendant’s credibility by suggesting that she was testifying against Haynes out of vengeance because he had “jilted” her.