Source: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/404/404mass532.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 10:29:32+00:00

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COMMONWEALTH vs. WILLIAM L. ASKEW.
INDICTMENT found and returned in the Superior Court Department on July 10, 1985.
The case was tried before Robert J. Hallisey, J.
WILKINS, J. The defendant was convicted of involuntary manslaughter on the theory that his wanton or reckless conduct caused the death of Curtis Moore (victim). See Commonwealth v. Campbell, 352 Mass. 387 , 397 (1967); Commonwealth v. Welansky, 316 Mass. 383 , 399 (1944). In his appeal, which we transferred here on our own motion, he challenges certain aspects of the judge's charge to the jury. We affirm the conviction.
We recite the evidence most favorable to the Commonwealth. On June 8, 1985, the defendant engaged in an argument with Albert Tompkins outside 24 Arlington Street in Haverhill. The defendant entered the building, went to the second floor apartment, and returned with a shotgun owned by one George Sales. He pointed the gun at Tompkins. The defendant said the gun was loaded. The argument subsided, and the defendant, Tompkins, one Neville, and the victim entered the building at 24 Arlington Street.
Argument continued, however, in the hallway of 24 Arlington Street. George Sales, who lived on the second floor, woke up and recognized the voices of the defendant and the victim who were swearing at each other. Sales went out into the hallway and saw the defendant on the second step from the top of the stairs and the victim, twelve to fifteen feet away from Sales, standing on the second step up from the bottom. Sales recognized that the defendant was holding Sales's shotgun with one finger on its trigger. The shotgun was pointed down the stairs where the victim was standing, but it was not aimed at the victim. Sales grabbed the shotgun because "it was my gun and I didn't want no trouble." The gun fired and killed the victim.
Sales's conduct was an independent, intervening cause of death, relieving the defendant of criminal responsibility.
The defendant was entitled to an instruction that the Commonwealth had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant's conduct, if wanton or reckless, was the legal cause of the victim's death. The judge gave such an instruction, consistent with the views expressed on proximate cause in Commonwealth v. Rhoades, 379 Mass. 810 , 823-825 (1980). He said, quoting language approved in the Rhoades opinion (id. at 825), that "proximate cause is a cause which in the natural and continuous sequence produces the death and without which the death would not have occurred."
The general rule is that the intervening conduct of a third party will relieve a defendant of culpability only if such an intervening response was not reasonably foreseeable. See Commonwealth v. Diaz, 19 Mass. App. Ct. 29 , 37 (1984); United States v. Marler, 756 F.2d 206, 216 (1st Cir. 1985); State v. Govan, 154 Ariz. 611, 615-616 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1987). 1 W.R. LaFave & A.W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law Section 3.12, at 406-407 (1986); R.M. Perkins & R.N. Boyce, Criminal Law 809-812 (3d ed. 1982). This is just another way of saying that an intervening act of a third party that was not reasonably foreseeable in the circumstances would prevent the victim's death from following naturally and continuously from the defendant's conduct.
satisfied that this was not just an accident for which no one really is to blame."
2. There was no reversible error in other aspects of the judge's charge.
v. Weaver, 400 Mass. 612 , 619-620 (1987). The jury were entitled to consider that evidence.
The defendant complains that the judge misled the jury into believing that, if the defendant knew the gun was loaded, he was guilty of manslaughter. The defendant makes this argument because the judge referred to the facts in decided cases. In Commonwealth v. Bouvier, 316 Mass. 489 (1944), to which the judge referred stating the basic facts, the defendant did not know the gun was loaded and a verdict of guilty of manslaughter was not warranted. In Commonwealth v. Wallace, 346 Mass. 9 (1963), to which the judge also referred in factual detail, a manslaughter verdict was warranted where, among other things, the evidence showed that the defendant knew the gun was loaded. Surely the charge would have been improved by eliminating any recitation of facts from other cases. Commonwealth v. Santos, 402 Mass. 775 , 778 (1988). We consider the charge as a whole, however, and conclude that the judge did not indirectly tell the jury to find the defendant guilty of manslaughter if they found that the defendant knew that the gun was loaded.
[Note 1] In treating this issue as we have, we have assumed (without deciding) that the evidence would have warranted a reasonable doubt as to whether the intervention by Sales was foreseeable.

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