Title: Beauchamp v. Commonwealth
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SJC-12519
State: Massachusetts
Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court
Date: February 7, 2019

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SJC-12519 
 
ROBERT BEAUCHAMP  vs.  COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 
February 7, 2019. 
 
Supreme Judicial Court, Superintendence of inferior courts, 
Jurisdiction.  Practice, Criminal, Capital case. 
 
 
The petitioner, Robert Beauchamp, appeals from a judgment 
of a single justice of this court denying his petition for 
extraordinary relief pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3.  We affirm. 
 
Beauchamp was indicted for murder in 1971,1 and a jury 
convicted him of murder in the second degree in 1973.  For 
reasons that are not relevant here, his direct appeal was not 
decided until 1997.  See Commonwealth v. Beauchamp, 424 Mass. 
682, 683 (1997).  We reviewed the appeal pursuant to G. L. 
c. 278, § 33E, because that statute as it existed at the time of 
his offense required us to review every case "in which the 
defendant was tried on an indictment for murder in the first 
degree and was convicted of murder either in the first or second 
degree."2  G. L. c. 278, § 33E, as amended through St. 1962, 
                                                          
 
 
1 The indictment did not specify the degree of murder; 
therefore, as a matter of law, it charged murder in the first 
degree.  Metcalf v. Commonwealth, 338 Mass. 648, 649 (1959). 
 
 
2 Effective July 1, 1979, the definition of "capital case" 
in G. L. c. 278, § 33E, was changed to no longer include cases 
in which a defendant indicted for murder in the first degree is 
convicted of murder in the second degree.  St. 1979, c. 346, 
§ 2.  Our practice, which we followed in the 1997 appeal, has 
been to apply the statute as it existed prior to the amendment 
to cases in which the defendant has been tried for murder in the 
first degree and convicted of murder in the second degree for an 
2 
 
 
 
c. 453.  We reversed and remanded for a new trial based on 
errors in the jury instructions on self-defense.  Beauchamp, 
supra at 690. 
 
Beauchamp was retried in 1998.  Although, technically 
speaking, the indictment had not changed in the meantime, the 
Commonwealth was barred by double jeopardy principles from 
retrying Beauchamp for murder in the first degree, where 
Beauchamp "effectively was acquitted of that charge when the 
jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree" at his 
first trial in 1973.  Commonwealth v. Acevedo, 446 Mass. 435, 
451 n.20 (2006).  At the outset of the retrial, the Commonwealth 
confirmed that it no longer was pressing the indictment insofar 
as it charged murder in the first degree, and that it would try 
the defendant only for murder in the second degree.  The trial 
proceeded on that basis, and the jury found Beauchamp guilty of 
murder in the second degree. 
 
Beauchamp appealed again.  Both before and after his appeal 
was decided, this court considered the question whether the 
appeal should be entered in this court and heard by us in the 
first instance pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E, as it existed 
prior to the amendment in 1979, as was done with his first 
appeal (see note 2, supra), or whether the appeal should be 
entered in the Appeals Court and decided there in the first 
instance.  We decided that the latter course was correct.  As we 
explained in our order denying Beauchamp's motion to reconsider 
the denial of his application for further appellate review, 
"[t]he defendant having been retried on only so much of the 
indictment as charged murder in the second degree, his case was 
no longer a capital case within the meaning of [§ 33E], either 
before or after the statute's amendment."  In other words, 
because it was abundantly clear at the retrial that the 
Commonwealth was going forward on only so much of the indictment 
as charged murder in the second degree -- indeed, the 
Commonwealth was precluded from pursuing a charge of murder in 
the first degree -- the defendant was no longer being "tried on 
an indictment for murder in the first degree" within the meaning 
of the statute.  The case therefore remained in the Appeals 
Court and was decided there.  The Appeals Court affirmed his 
conviction, and, as stated, we denied his application for 
further appellate review.  See Commonwealth v. Beauchamp, 49 
Mass. App. Ct. 591 (2000), S.C., 432 Mass. 1107 (2000). 
 
                                                          
 
offense that was committed before the amendment.  See 
Commonwealth v. Davis, 380 Mass. 1, 15-17 (1980). 
3 
 
 
 
Not only did we expressly consider the question at the time 
of Beauchamp's second appeal, but Beauchamp has also continued 
to raise this same jurisdictional argument in subsequent 
proceedings before the Appeals Court and before this court, 
including in the present G. L. c. 211, § 3, petition.  Each time 
his claim has been rejected.  Beauchamp is simply not entitled 
to further review under G. L. c. 211, § 3, of an issue that he 
has already raised, and which has already been resolved, in the 
course of his direct appeal and in subsequent proceedings.  
Votta v. Police Dep't of Billerica, 444 Mass. 1001, 1001 (2005) 
("Our general superintendence power under G. L. c. 211, § 3, is 
extraordinary and to be exercised sparingly, not as a substitute 
for the normal appellate process or merely to provide an 
additional layer of appellate review after the normal process 
has run its course.").  Votta v. Commonwealth, 444 Mass. 1001, 
1001 (2005) ("Our general superintendence power cannot be 
invoked simply to get another bite of the apple.").    
 
The single justice did not err or abuse her discretion in 
denying the petition. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Judgment affirmed. 
 
 
Robert Beauchamp, pro se. 
 
Jamie M. Charles, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth.