438 Mass. 584 | Mass. | 2003
On June 21, 1999, the defendant, Carl E. Vatcher, fatally shot his eleven year old son, James. A Superior Court jury convicted him of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation. The defendant does not contest that the evidence supports the jury’s verdict. Rather, on appeal, he argues that the trial judge’s denial of his request for a voluntary manslaughter instruction was reversible error. The defendant also asks that we exercise our power under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the verdict to voluntary manslaughter or, alternatively, to murder in the second degree. We decline to reduce the verdict and affirm the conviction.
1. Viewed in a light most favorable to the Commonwealth,
Some time after James’s mother left for work, an argument erupted between father and son, the details of which we reserve for later discussion. The argument escalated, culminating with the defendant firing one shot from a bolt-action .22 caliber rifle into James’s abdomen.
After the shooting, the defendant covered James’s body with
When officers arrived, James’s mother directed them to the audiotape recording, which they played in full. Among other things, the defendant admitted that he “bought a rifle and [he] shot [James],” then “strangled him cuz he wasn’t dead.” He stated that James’s body was in the basement. The defendant explained that, “I was gonna do this a long time ago, but I kept putting it off. I couldn’t put it off anymore. . . . All I wanted was a normal kid, an average kid, but no, I didn’t get that.” He also stated, “[T]he only way I could’ve done this is if I lost control and I did. I lost control this morning.”
The following day, a New Hampshire State trooper who had spotted the defendant driving in his car arrested him following a
The defendant did not testify at trial. The Commonwealth introduced in evidence his audiotape recording, the confession given to police, the suicide note, and other notes written by the defendant. The defendant was convicted as charged and filed a timely appeal.
2. The defendant argues that the judge committed reversible error by denying his request for a voluntary manslaughter instruction. In so doing, the judge concluded that the evidence did not show an “adequate, reasonable provocation” and thus, that under “no view of the evidence could a rational jury validly return a voluntary manslaughter [verdict].” We agree. “Voluntary manslaughter has been defined as a killing committed in ‘a sudden transport of passion or heat of blood, upon a reasonable provocation and without malice, or upon sudden combat.’ ” Commonwealth v. Garabedian, 399 Mass. 304, 313 (1987), quoting Commonwealth v. McLeod., 394 Mass. 727, 738, cert. denied sub nom. Aiello v. Massachusetts, 474 U.S. 919 (1985). See Commonwealth v. Hicks, 356 Mass. 442, 445 (1969).
The evidence was that on the morning of the shooting, James threw waffles in the trash, threw other objects around the house, kicked a brass planter, attempted to destroy his mother’s birthday cards, got into a “wrestling match” with the defendant, hit the defendant with an afghan, kicked the defendant, followed him around the house and into the cellar three times, told the defendant he wanted him to leave the house, cursed at him, and laughed at the defendant when he cried. In short, the evidence described a child having an extended temper tantrum, which, according to his mother’s testimony, was not atypical behavior for her son when he was at home.
It is well settled that “[ijnsults and quarreling alone cannot provide a reasonable provocation,” even between adults. Com
This confrontation was between an adult and a child. However “provocative” in the ordinary sense of the term the actions of this eleven year old physically challenged boy may have been, however frustrating, annoying, and even infuriating his behavior, it did not rise to “adequate provocation” within the meaning of our laws. James’s behavior may have warranted ordinary parental discipline, but such behavior cannot reasonably be said to have called forth the stark breakdown in self-control that may attend “the heat of blood” or sudden combat requirements and thereby mitigate murder to manslaughter. Commonwealth v. Garabedian, 399 Mass. 304, 313 (1987). As the judge noted, no evidence suggested that James acted in “a way above and beyond causing a guardian or father to be exasperated, bothered, upset, impatient, lose one’s temper.”
The defendant argues, however, that the judge should have considered the defendant’s actions “in the broader context of
3. The defendant asks that, in the interests of justice, we employ our extraordinary power under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the jury verdict from murder in the first degree to voluntary manslaughter or, alternatively, to murder in the second degree.
The defendant’s own clear, unequivocal admissions in the audiotape recording, his handwritten note, and a voluntary confession to police, all entered in evidence at trial, amply support the
Judgment affirmed.
James’s mother testified that “hypotonia” is a condition that causes low muscle tone throughout the body.
The defendant acquired the rifle in May, 1999, in exchange for a semiautomatic rifle he had purchased in March, 1999. The defendant was not known to his family or his neighbors to be interested in guns or hunting or to own a gun.
The evidence at trial was that the defendant was over one foot taller than James and more than double his weight.
In various statements introduced at trial, the defendant stated that he had not wanted a child, that he considered James “an intrusion” into his married life, and that he did not believe he was or could be a good father. Evidence at trial showed that James had been the frequent target of his mother’s verbal abuse and his father’s physical abuse. Over the years, the defendant had banged James’s head on the floor, struck James in the chest, and hit James’s head against the bathroom door. The defendant told police that on one occasion he had hit James so hard that he, the defendant, broke his own finger. In
The record indicates that the defendant tried to kill himself on two other occasions prior to his arrest the next day.
In addition to the statement on the audiotape recording, the defendant made several other statements admitted in evidence, including statements in a suicide note written the day of the killing and a statement to police made after his arrest. The defendant filed various motions to suppress these statements, all of which were denied, except that his statement to police was redacted in part.
The quotations are from a transcript of the audiotape recording admitted in evidence.
The evidence consisted of two notes in the defendant’s handwriting, a discharged cartridge casing, a spent projectile, and traces of blood. A few days later, the police secured a second warrant and retrieved a gun box and a shoelace or bootlace from the home. In a separate search, officers retrieved from the defendant’s automobile a suicide note, a box of live rounds of .22 caliber ammunition, a gun lock, and a rifle which an expert subsequently
The Commonwealth argues that there is no evidence that the defendant acted on “sudden” provocation adequate to support an instruction on voluntary manslaughter. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. LeClair, 429 Mass. 313, 317 (1999), and cases cited (revelation “must constitute a ‘sudden discovery’ in order to reduce the degree of culpability”). The evidence indicates, among other things, that the defendant had been frustrated with James for some time and was “gonna do this a long time ago, but [he] kept putting it off.” Years of frustration do not make for “sudden” passion or heat of blood. See, e.g., Tripp v. State, 36 Md. App. 459, 471-472 (1977) (“The law . . . recognizes human frailty when one is in the clutches of blind and sudden fury. The long-smoldering grudge, by way of contrast ... is a telltale characteristic of premeditation”). The defendant’s self-recorded and self-justifying statement after the incident that “the only way I could’ve done this is if I lost control and ... I lost control this morning,” even if claimed to be “sudden” provocation, was not provocation otherwise adequate at law to mitigate the murder of a misbehaving child by a parent.
Commonwealth v. Schnopps, 383 Mass. 178 (1981), S.C., 390 Mass. 722 (1984), on which the defendant relies, does not persuade us that a different result is warranted. In that case, the critical factual issue was how long the defendant had known about the allegedly provocative act, the sudden discovery by the defendant of his spouse’s infidelity. See id.
The defendant cites Commonwealth v. Azar, 435 Mass. 675 (2002); Commonwealth v. Woodward, 427 Mass. 659 (1998); and Commonwealth v. Vizcarrondo, 427 Mass. 392 (1998), S.C., 431 Mass. 360 (2000), for the argument that we should reduce the verdict in this case to voluntary manslaughter. Those cases, whióh involve the so-called “third prong” of malice, are inapposite. Here, the evidence of a specific intent to kill was clear, indeed overwhelming.
Commonwealth v. Kane, 388 Mass. 128, 134 (1983); Commonwealth v. Starling, 382 Mass. 423, 425-426 (1981); and Commonwealth v. Cadwell, 374 Mass. 308, 316-320 (1978), on which the defendant also relies, do not persuade us to reduce the verdict to murder in the second degree. Each of these cases involved beatings to young children where the evidence of deliberate premeditation was either nonexistent or insufficient. See Commonwealth v. Kane, supra at 129 n.1 (unclear under which theory of murder in the first degree Commonwealth proceeded, but judge entered required finding of not guilty on that portion of the indictment); Commonwealth v. Starling, supra at 425; Commonwealth v. Cadwell, supra at 316-317 (although evidence of deliberate premeditation could “perhaps be pieced out of the evidence,” the “surest surmise is that the lethal blows were struck by the defendant in an excess of anger and frustration,” and thus there was “an irreducible doubt in all the circumstances whether the defendant consciously formed a purpose that morning to do the child mortal injury”). In this case, the jury had strong evidence, including the defendant’s own words, to support a finding of deliberate premeditation.