COMMONWEALTH VS. WILLIAM EARL.
No. 21-P-916.
Appeals Court of Massachusetts
June 7, 2023
Suffоlk. December 9, 2022. - June 7, 2023. Present: Rubin, Massing, & D‘Angelo, JJ.
Homicide. Assault and Battery by Means of a Dangerous Weapon. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress, Admissions and confessions, Voluntariness of confession, Harmless error. Constitutional Law, Admissions and confessions, Harmless error, Identification. Evidence, Admissions and confessions, Identification, Authentication, Medical record. Error, Harmless. Identification.
Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on February 12, 2014.
Pretrial motions to suppress evidence were heard by Robert N. Tochka, J., and the cases were tried before Linda E. Giles, J.
Joanne T. Petito for the defendant.
Paul B. Linn, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
MASSING, J. A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant, William Earl, of murder in the second degree of Samuel Constant
Background. The evidence at trial showed that one evening in January 2014, Hunter returned from work to her apartment in the Georgetowne Homes complex, located in the Hyde Park section of Boston. She found Constant, whom she was dating at the time, in her apartment with the defendant. Hunter did not know the defendant, and his behavior made her uneasy, so she gestured to Constant to follow her into one of the bedrooms. The defendant followed them into the room, where he pulled a knife from the waistband of his boxer shorts and lunged at Hunter. Constant intervened and began to struggle with the defendant, wrestling him back into the living room. While the defendant and Constant
Shortly thereafter, the defendant was apprehended nearby by Vincent Tranfaglia and Jean Thermitus, two uniformed security guards certified as special Boston police officers and employed by Longwood Public Safety, a private security company contracted to patrol Georgetowne Homes and the surrounding area. Thermitus saw the defendant running down the middle of Crown Point Drive in heavy traffic, knocking on the windshields of passing vehicles and attempting to stop them. As yet unaware of the stabbing, Thermitus аctivated the lights of his marked vehicle, parked in the middle of the street, and approached the defendant, who was bleeding heavily from his ear. Upon seeing Thermitus, the defendant fled. Thermitus ran after him, tackled
Tranfaglia, who had arrived on the scene and helped Thermitus secure the defendant, requested help from the Boston police and medical assistance for the defendant. About this time, the maintenance supervisor approached, yelling and gesturing for Tranfaglia‘s attention. Tranfaglia followed the maintenance supervisor to an area where Constant was lying on the ground, cradled in Hunter‘s arms. Constant had been stаbbed in the face, head, shoulder, and chest, and had no pulse. By the time emergency medical personnel arrived, Constant was dead.
The defendant was transported to the emergency room at Brigham and Women‘s Hospital (hospital), where he was treated for lacerations to his head and neck. Members of the Boston police homicide unit, who had arrived at the crime scene, arranged for Hunter to be taken to the hospital for an identification procedure. As soon as Hunter entered the emergency unit, she identified the defendant from across the room. The defendant was arrested and taken from the hospital to the police station for questioning. In a videotaped (recorded)
The day after the murder the police recovered a “KA-BAR” brand folding knife near the murder scene. A metal fragment from the knife was found in one of Constant‘s fatal stab wounds, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analyses of blood found on the knife‘s blade and knife‘s handle were consistent with the DNA profiles of Constant and the defendant, respectively. The statistical probability of random matches was infinitesimally small.
A letter the defendant wrote to Constant‘s mother from jail two years after the murder was admitted in evidence. In the letter, the defendant “apologize[d] about what happened to your son,” claimed that “it was not [his] intention to murder your son,” but that he was being attacked and the only way he could escape the apartment was “by assaulting your son and stabbing him twice in his chest area.” He added that he used “a kabar pocket knife.”
The defendant was indicted on charges of murder in the first degree and assault by means of a dangerous weapon. The murder charge was submittеd to the jury on theories of
Discussion. A. Motions to suppress. Prior to trial, the defendant filed a motion to suppress statements -- his initial roadside confession and his subsequent recorded interview at the police station -- and a motion to suppress Hunter‘s hospital identification. After a two-day evidentiary hearing, the motion judge denied the motion to suppress the identification from the bench; he later issued written findings denying the motion to suppress statements. On appeal, the defendant argues that both motions were wrongly decided.
“When reviewing a ruling on a motion to suppress, we are bound by the judge‘s subsidiary findings of fact, unless they are clearly erroneous; [h]owеver, where the ultimate findings and rulings bear on issues of constitutional dimension, they are open for review. Our appellate function requires that we make our own independent determination on the correctness of the judge‘s application of the constitutional principles to the facts as found” (quotations and citations omitted). Commonwealth v. Groome, 435 Mass. 201, 211 (2001). Accord Commonwealth v. Tremblay, 480 Mass. 645, 651-652 (2018) (voluntariness of defendant‘s Miranda waiver and statements
We address the suppression motions in chronological order by subject matter: the roadside confession, the hospital identification, and the recorded interview.
1. The roadside confession. a. Motion judge‘s findings. The defendant argues that his incriminating statements to special police Officer Thermitus should have been suppressed because Thermitus failed to give him Miranda warnings. We set forth the facts found by the motion judge, supplemented with uncontroverted testimony from the suppression hearing that does “not detract from the judge‘s ultimate findings.” Commonwealth v. Garner, 490 Mass. 90, 93-96 (2022), quoting Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429, 431 (2015).
As noted above, Thermitus and Tranfaglia were security guards employed by a private security company and certified as
Special police Sergeant Tranfaglia arrived at the scene in response to Thermitus‘s radio call. Tranfaglia saw Thermitus yelling at the defendant to stop.2 Thermitus tackled the defendant to the ground and immediately placed him in handcuffs.
According to Tranfaglia, “the defendant stated that he had been shot down the street,” although neither officer saw any evidence of gunshot wounds. Tranfaglia stepped away to request assistance from the Boston police and emergency medical services. Thermitus remained with the defendant and asked him “why he ran,” tо which the defendant replied, “I just killed somebody, and if you walk straight ahead you will find something.” Thermitus asked the defendant, “[W]hy?” The defendant responded that “this person was running his mouth, so I did what I had to do.”3 Thermitus remained with the defendant, who was still handcuffed, until an ambulance arrived and the Boston police took over.
The motion judge found that the defendant was not in custody when he made the incriminating statements and that Thermitus‘s questioning did not amount to interrogation.
b. Custody. “It is well settled that Miranda warnings are necessary only when a defendant is subject to custodial interrogation, Commonwealth v. Jung, 420 Mass. 675, 688 (1995), and that it is the defendant‘s burden to prove custody, Commonwealth v. Larkin, 429 Mass. 426, 432 (1999).” Commonwealth v. Vellucci, 98 Mass. App. Ct. 274, 277 (2020).
“An interview is custodial where ‘a reasonable person in the suspect‘s shoes would experience the environment in which the interrogation took place as coercive.‘” Commonwealth v. Cawthron, 479 Mass. 612, 617 (2018), quoting Larkin, 429 Mass. at 432. “The crucial question is whether, considering all the circumstances, a reasonable person in the defendant‘s position would have believed that he was in custody. Thus, if thе defendant reasonably believed that he was not free to leave, the interrogation occurred while the defendant was in custody, and Miranda warnings were required” (citations omitted). Commonwealth v. Damiano, 422 Mass. 10, 13 (1996).4
In a myriad of cases assessing custody, “the court considers several factors: (1) the place of the interrogation; (2) whether the officers have conveyed to the person being questioned any belief or opinion that that person is a suspect; (3) the nature of the interrogation, including whether the interview was aggressive or, instead, informal and influenced in its contours by the person being interviewed; and (4) whether, at the time the incriminating statement was made, the person was free to end the interview by leaving the locus of the interrogation or by asking the interrogator to leave, as evidenced by whether the interview terminated with an arrest.” Groome, 435 Mass. at 211-212. The so-called “Groome factors,” see Carnes, 457 Mass. at 819, are not exclusive; the court must consider the totality of the circumstаnces. See Commonwealth v. Medina, 485 Mass. 296, 301 (2020). The Groome factors merely provide a framework for assessing the ultimate question: “whether the defendant was subjected to ‘a formal arrest or
In concluding that the defendant was not in custody, the motion judge focused on the first three Groome factors. The judge found, first, that “[t]he questioning took place on a neutral site near a public road” and not in a “police-dominated atmosphere.” Second, the special police officers did not convey to the defendant that he was suspected of Constant‘s murder; indeed, the officers had not yet learned of the stabbing. Third, “the questioning was informal and investigatory, and not aggressive, accusatory, or coercive.” In light of these factors, the judge did not consider the fact that the defendant was handcuffed to be a sufficient restraint on his freedom tо turn the encounter into the equivalent of a formal arrest. Our independent review of the facts as found by the motion judge leads to the opposite conclusion.
We begin, rather than end, by recognizing that restraints on the defendant‘s freedom of movement defined his encounter with the special police officers: in response to the defendant‘s erratic conduct in the middle of a busy street, the officers chased him down, tackled him, handcuffed him, and pat frisked him before seating him by the side of the road for questioning. Such conduct would typically be perceived as
The Groome factors, which derived in part from Commonwealth v. Bryant, 390 Mass. 729 (1984), were developed because often “the problem whether interrogation has taken place in custodial circumstances is a vexing one, susceptible to resolution . . . only by close scrutiny of the particular questioning session.” Bryant, 390 Mass. at 736. A nuanced analysis of the Groome factors is unnecessary, however, for “obvious cases in which a suspect has been formally arrested or otherwise deprived of his physical freedom by police agents.” Bryant, supra. To illustrate the point, if a defendant is under arrest, the second and third Groome factors, which go to the nature of the communications between the officers and the defendant, are irrelevant: even if the arresting officer‘s questions are conversational and not accusatory, the defendant is no less in custody. Simply put, in this case it is obvious that a reasonable person in the defendant‘s position would not have believed that he was free to leave.
Notwithstanding the Groome factors’ questionable utility here, we address them in the interest of completeness.
i. Place of the interrogation. The fact that questioning takes place on the street or in a public area often weighs against a finding of custody. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Tejada, 484 Mass. 1, 9 (2020) (fact that “interrogation was in a public parking lot, not in a police station or other secluded area” weighed against determination that defendant was in custody); Vanhouton v. Commonwealth, 424 Mass. 327, 331 n.7 (1997), quoting Pennsylvania v. Bruder, 488 U.S. 9, 10 (1988) (“‘traffic stops commonly occur in the “public view,” in an atmosphere far “less ‘police dominated’ than that surrounding the kinds of interrogation at issue in [Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)] itself‘“); Commonwealth v. Smith, 35 Mass. App. Ct. 655, 657-658 (1993) (defendant not in custody where police stopped his car to investigate motor vehicle accident and asked preliminary “street-side” questions).
But the defendant was not questioned in connection with a traffic stop, which generally does not rise to the level of custodial interrogation. See Vellucci, 98 Mass. App. Ct. at 277 (“As a general rule, persons temporarily detained during an ordinary traffic stop are not in сustody for purposes of Miranda, even though they may not feel free to leave“). Nor
ii. Conveying that defendant was a suspect. Questioning that conveys the message that the defendant is suspected оf a crime lends to a coercive environment and typically supports the conclusion that the defendant is in custody. See Cawthron, 479 Mass. at 619; Commonwealth v. Jones, 42 Mass. App. Ct. 378, 382 (1997). Brief, preliminary questions asked in an effort to confirm or dispel suspicion of criminal activity typically do not. See Commonwealth v. Kirwan, 448 Mass. 304, 311 (2007). An open-ended preliminary question such as “What happened?” does
Here, the judge erroneously focused on the officers’ subjective point of view, emphasizing that they did not yet know about the murder and that “Thermitus placed handcuffs on the defendant in order to find out what was going on. The defendant was not under arrest.” “[C]ustody must be determined based on how a reasonable person in the suspect‘s situation would perceive his circumstances, not on the subjective views harbored by either the interrogating officers or the person being questioned” (citations omitted). Medina, 485 Mass. at 303.5
After being forcefully detained, the first statement that the defendant made was that he had been shot. The officers did not respond by asking neutral questions such as “what happened” or where he had been shot. Instead, Thermitus asked “why he ran.”6 From Thermitus‘s perspective, the question may have been
iii. Nature of the interrogation. The nature of the questioning was also consistent with a custodial atmosphere. As we have already noted, even after the defendant said he had been shot, Thermitus questioned him about “why he ran.” The follow-up question -- “why” the defendant had “just killed somebody” -- was even more clearly intended to gather inculpatory evidence. Even if Thermitus‘s questioning was “not aggressive, accusatory,
iv. Defendant‘s freedom to end the encounter. From beginning to end, the special police officers’ interaction with the defendant communicated to a reasonable person in the defendant‘s position that he was not at liberty to end the interview and leave. After using force to prevent the defendant from running away, the special police officers did not leave his side, nor remove the handcuffs, until Boston police detectives took over and the defendant was transported by ambulance to a hospital. The defendant was later formally arrested. The fourth Groome factor, whether the defendant “was free to end the interview by leaving the locus of the interrogation or by asking the interrogator to leave, as evidenced by whether the interview terminated with an arrest,” Groome, 435 Mass. at 212, supports a finding of custody.
v. Totality of the circumstances. Viewed in their totality, the facts as found by the motion judge depicted a coercive environment. Moreover, the judge erroneously discounted the officers’ use of handcuffs to restrain the defendant throughout the encounter. Placing a suspect in handcuffs is usuаlly considered a physical restraint on freedom tantamount to arrest. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Pinney, 97 Mass. App. Ct. 392, 396-397 (2020);
Although “[i]t is not dispositive that the defendant was handcuffed,” Commonwealth v. Williams, 422 Mass. 111, 118 (1996), cases holding that a handcuffed suspect was not in custody usually arise where the defendant had been detained to allow officers to complete a threshold inquiry justified by reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Where handcuffing the suspect is considered a reasonable step to ensure officer safety or to prevent flight, it does not transform an investigative stop into an arrest. See, e.g., id. at 117-119; Vellucci, 98 Mass. App. Ct. at 277, 279; Commonwealth v. Dyette, 87 Mass. App. Ct. 548, 556-557 (2015);
While our independent analysis of the Groome factors supports our view that the defendant‘s detention by the special police officers was custodial, as discussed supra, it is largely beside the point: it is obvious that a reasonable person in the defendant‘s position would have experienced the interaction as coercive, would not have believed that he was free to leave, and would have perceived the restraint on his freedom of movement as
c. Interrogation.
“Miranda warnings are required when a person is subjected to ‘custodial interrogation,’ i.e., ‘questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.‘” Commonwealth v. Doyle, 12 Mass. App. Ct. 786, 792 (1981), quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444. The defendant was subject to “express questioning” beyond that “normally attendant to arrest and custody.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 300-301 (1980). See Commonwealth v. Kacavich, 28 Mass. App. Ct. 941, 941 (1990). After taking the defendant into custody, Thermitus asked him “why he ran,” and when the defendant responded that he had just killed somebody, Thermitus asked, “Why?”
The motion judge, however, did not consider Thermitus‘s questioning to amount to “interrogation” because the judge viewed the questions as “preliminary in nature and directed to discovering who the defendant was and what had happened to him.” In so concluding, the judge erroneously relied on Commonwealth v. Gonsalves, 445 Mass. 1, 9 (2005), cert. denied, 548 U.S. 926 (2006) (“Questioning by law enforcement agents to secure a volatile scene or establish the need for or provide medical care
The Commonwealth‘s reliance on Kirwan, 448 Mass. at 311 (officer‘s “questioning was generally of a fact-finding nature, intended to verify or dispel a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, for which Miranda warnings are not required“), is also misplaced. This language was taken from the Kirwan court‘s analysis of the Groome factors and concerned whether the defendant was in custody, not whether he was subjected to interrogation. See Kirwan, 448 Mass. at 313.9
The defendant was subject to custodial interrogation. Because he was not given Miranda warnings, his motion to suppress his statements to Thermitus should have been allowed.10
d. Harmless error analysis.
The question remains whether the improper admission of the defendant‘s statements was
The defendant claims that Hunter‘s identification of him in the hospital should have been excluded because the procedure was unreliable and unnecessarily suggestive. At the suppression hearing, Boston police Detectives Francis McLaughlin and Robert Kenney, whose testimony the motion judge “found to be truthful in all respects,” testified that the identification proceeded as follows.
McLaughlin accompanied Hunter, in the back seat of a police cruiser, as she was transported to the hospital. He explained that there was a person at the hospital who might or might not have been involved in the stabbing of Constant -- the police did not know -- and that it was important to determine if this person was or was not involved. Before bringing Hunter into the emergency room, McLaughlin asked the police officers standing near the defendant to move away; he intended to walk Hunter around the perimeter of the emergency room, past the partitioned areas where the patients were being treated, to see if she recognized anyone. However, as soon as McLaughlin and Hunter rounded the corner from the hallway to the treatment area, Hunter saw the defendant across the roоm and said, “That‘s him, that‘s him. He‘s the one.” At the time, the defendant had just
The motion judge found that the police did “an exemplary job of trying to make sure the identification procedure was done fairly and orderly,” that it was conducted promptly after the incident, and that the lighting did not make the procedure “unduly suggestive.” We agree.
“Although one-on-one showup identification procedures are generally disfavored as inherently suggestive, they only raise due process concerns if it is determined that the procedure was unnecessarily or impermissibly suggestive” (quotation and citation omitted). Commonwealth v. Moore, 480 Mass. 799, 811-812 (2018). Moreover, showup identifications are appropriate “if there is ‘good reason’ to secure prompt identification of a suspect.” Id. at 812, quoting Commonwealth v. Dew, 478 Mass. 304, 306 (2017). See Commonwealth v. Austin, 421 Mass. 357, 361-362 (1995); Commonwealth v. Travis, 100 Mass. App. Ct. 607, 613 (2022). The burden is on the defendant to prove not only that the identification procedure being challenged “was suggestive, but [also] that it was ‘unnecessarily suggestive.‘” Johnson, 473 Mass. at 597, quoting Commonwealth v. Crayton, 470 Mass. 228, 235 (2014).
Here, the police had good reason to conduct the hospital identification promptly, during the investigation of a violent
As to the lighting, which was the result of medical rather than a police procedure, we discern no abuse of discretion in the judge‘s determination that it did not create “highly or especially suggestive circumstances” that would render the identification unreliable. Johnson, 473 Mass. at 598, 602. Even when suspects are illuminated as the result of police procedure during a showup, this circumstance does not make an identification impermissibly suggestive. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Meas, 467 Mass. 434, 442 (2014), cert. denied, 574 U.S. 858 (2014); Commonwealth v. Phillips, 452 Mass. 617, 628-629 (2008). The defendant‘s suggestion that Hunter positively identified the defendant based on the wound to his head is mere speculation. Moreover, the appearance of a suspect based on his recent involvement in the crime under investigation is part of the inherent suggestiveness of a showup procedure, not a special element of unfairness. See Commonwealth v. Chotain, 31 Mass. App. Ct. 336, 341-342 (1991) (hospital identification reliable notwithstanding officers’ statement to witness “that the man he
3. Recorded interview.
The defendant argues that his recorded interview at the police station following his arrest should have been suppressed because the Commonwealth failed to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his waiver of his Miranda rights, and the statements themselves, were voluntary. See Tremblay, 480 Mass. at 655-656, 661-662 (“Due process requires a separate inquiry into the voluntariness of [a defendant‘s statement] apart from the validity of the Miranda waiver” [citation omitted]). Because the motion judge‘s ruling on the defendant‘s motion to suppress the recorded interview was based entirely on his review of the recording and not drawn from any live testimony, our review is de novo, without deference to the motion judge‘s findings of fact. See Yusuf, 488 Mass. at 385; Tremblay, supra at 646-647, 656-657.
The recorded interview begins with the defendant walking into the interview room, taking a seat, standing up when directed to a different chair, remaining standing as an officer removes his handcuffs, and then sitting again, all without assistance. The defendant listened and responded appropriately
Although “[t]he voluntariness of the waiver on the basis of Miranda and the voluntariness of the statements on due process grounds are separate and distinct issues,” Commonwealth v.Edwards, 420 Mass. 666, 673 (1995), the defendant‘s argument does not distinguish between the two. He argues that his “incoherent” responses to questions, his statements that he did not know what was going on, and his voluntary consumption of substances13 rendered his waiver and statements involuntary. In any event, both issues are “determined in light of the totality of the circumstances and they share many of the same relevant factors.” Id. These include the defendant‘s conduct, his “age, education, intelligence and emotional stability, . . . his physical and mental condition, . . . and the details of the interrogation, including the conduct of the police.” Commonwealth v. St. Peter, 48 Mass. App. Ct. 517, 519 (2000). See Commonwealth v. Welch, 487 Mass. 425, 438 (2021). “The Commonwealth bears the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt, in the totality of the circumstances, that a defendant‘s waiver was voluntary, knowing, and intelligent, and that his statements were voluntary.” Commonwealth v. Auclair, 444 Mass. 348, 353 (2005).
Having conducted an independent review of the recorded interview, we agree with the motion judge that the defendant‘s waiver and statements were voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt.
B. Authentication of letter from jail.
The defendant contends that the trial judge erred in admitting, without sufficient authentication, the handwritten letter received by Constant‘s mother. To admit the letter in evidence, the judge had to make a preliminary determination that the jury could find it more likely than not that the defendant was the author. See Commonwealth v. Purdy, 459 Mass. 442, 447 (2011); Commonwealth v. Johnson, 102 Mass. App. Ct. 195, 200-201 (2023);
Abundant confirming circumstances were present here. The letter was mailed from the Nashua Street jail, where the defendant was being detained prior to trial, and his name was handwritten in the return address corner of the envelope. The letter contained details that only someone familiar with the
C. Defendant‘s medical records.
The defendant also argues that the trial judge abused her discretion in excluding medical records regarding his two-week admission to Carney Hospital, six months before the murder, for what the records describe as a “psychotic break associated with significant aggression.” The records of that admission also state that the defendant experienced “auditory hallucinations and paranoia” and that his history was “complicated by marijuana usage.” At the final pretrial conference, the defendant argued that the evidence could be relevant to his ability to form the requisite intent for deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty. The judge granted the Commonwealth‘s motion “to preclude testimony about any alleged mental health diagnosis of
The records were excluded in the context of a trial for murder in the first degree. Any new trial will be on a charge of murder in the second degree. See note 11, supra. As the evidence of the defendant‘s prior mental illness may have different relevance at any new trial, and as it was excluded based on the deficiencies of the defendant‘s particular showing at the time of the first trial, we decline to address whether the trial judge abused her discretion in excluding the records. Before any new trial, the defendant is free to renew his attempt to introduce relevant, admissible evidence of his mental health status prior to the murder.
Judgments reversed.
Verdicts set aside.