Opinion ID: 202062
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trial in the Massachusetts Superior Court

Text: 11 Lynch was charged with murder in the first degree. Lynch's defense at trial was that he had stabbed Geremia in self-defense or by accident, and that his sense of reality was altered at the time of the stabbing because of his heavy drinking. He testified he did not intentionally stab Geremia; the stabbing was inadvertent and happened during a struggle in which Geremia tried to stab him with the knife, kneed him in the groin, and slapped him. Lynch and his trial counsel reenacted the struggle for the jury (Lynch as himself, counsel as Geremia). Lynch testified that when he realized Geremia had been stabbed, he tried to stop her bleeding by pressing a towel onto the stab wound. The defense also presented evidence of Lynch's heavy consumption of alcohol earlier and expert testimony about the effects of alcohol addiction and excessive drinking. The expert opined that when Lynch awoke from his passed-out state, he would have felt numb and could have been in a blackout or hallucinating when Geremia was stabbed. 12 Defense counsel's closing argument focused on Lynch's extreme intoxication and lack of sleep — as counsel put it, [h]e drank and he drank and he drank before going home with Geremia, and then he drank some more. Counsel argued that Geremia had violated Lynch's rights and the sanctity of Lynch's home by stealing money from the dresser, but this was presented not as justification for an attack on Geremia, but rather as the precursor to Lynch's simply asking Geremia to leave. Counsel stressed not rage, but the notion that Lynch didn't know what [Geremia] was capable of once Geremia pull[ed] a knife. Lynch reacted as any reasonable person would: he tried to get the knife out of Geremia's hand, whereupon she took a swipe at his hand, and a struggle ensued, in which Geremia continued to kick and hit Lynch, until at some point Lynch noticed some blood. Lynch then panicked, tried to stop the bleeding with a towel, and ultimately concealed Geremia's body on the grounds of the hog farm. 13 Counsel suggested that the supposed multiple stab wounds had actually occurred later on, when Geremia's body was being recovered. Counsel portrayed Lynch as scared and concluded that the killing was self-defense, and it was an accident, that [a]t the very worst . . . it was recklessness, and that there certainly wasn't malice. 14 At the heart of Lynch's habeas argument are the jury instructions distinguishing murder from voluntary manslaughter. At the beginning of the jury charge, the trial judge correctly instructed the jury that [a]ll of my instructions are equally important. Do not single out some and ignore others. The court also stated that [w]e can't decide that one law is a good law and another is a bad law . . . . You must accept the entire law that I'm going to give you. 15 When it came to the substantive law governing the charges, the court started with murder: Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice afore-thought. Murder committed with deliberately premeditated malice aforethought or with extreme atrocity or cruelty is murder in the first degree. Murder which does not appear to be murder in the first degree is murder in the second degree. 16 On malice itself and on voluntary manslaughter, the court said: 17 [T]he crime is voluntary manslaughter, not murder, if malice is negated by reasonable sudden provocation or sudden combat or at least by a reasonable doubt whether those circumstances were absent. I will . . . instruct you on voluntary manslaughter in a few minutes. 18 The existence of malice has not been proved if you find the death resulted when the defendant was in the state of hot blood upon a reasonable provocation or sudden combat or in the exercise of self-defense, however excessive you find the use of force to have been in the circumstances. 19 The court told the jury not to draw an inference of malice unless you are persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant's specific intent did not arise in his mind when he was in a state of hot blood upon a reasonable provocation or sudden combat or in the exercise of self-defense. 20 After explaining first— and second-degree murder, and stating multiple times that to prove murder the Commonwealth had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt malice and other elements, the court explained that if the Commonwealth had not proved murder, the jury must then consider whether the Commonwealth has proved the lesser included offense of manslaughter. The court defined manslaughter as the unlawful killing of a person by another without malice aforethought. The court explained that certain mitigating circumstances negate malice, and if they are present, even though the defendant has committed an unlawful killing the crime is manslaughter and not murder. The court said that one type of manslaughter is voluntary manslaughter, which it defined as 21 an unlawful intentional killing resulting from a sudden transport of the passions of fear, anger, fright, nervous excitement or heat of blood, when there is no time to deliberate and when such passion or heat of blood is produced by adequate or reasonable provocation and without malice, or upon sudden combat. 22 Next, the court gave the instructions about which Lynch complains: In order to prove the defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter the Commonwealth must prove three elements beyond a reasonable doubt: first, that the defendant inflicted an injury upon Andrea Geremia from which she died; second, that the defendant injured Andrea Geremia as a result of a sudden combat or in the heat of passion or using excessive force in self-defense; and third, that the homicide was committed unlawfully, without legal excuse or justification, and was not an accident. (emphases added) We highlight the portion of the court's language — what Lynch calls an inversion — that puts the burden on the Commonwealth to prove the mitigating factors that negate malice. 23 Right after this, the court confusingly stated that the burden was on the Commonwealth to disprove these mitigating factors: Where there is evidence of provocation the Commonwealth has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in the heat of passion. The court added that [t]he Commonwealth has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in the heat of passion or on sudden provocation. You may not return a verdict of guilty of murder unless the Commonwealth meets this burden. This was followed by another inversion, described in the footnote below. 3 Indeed, Lynch claims that in all, there were seven inversions. 24 The jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. The jury found that Lynch had committed first-degree murder both with deliberately premeditated malice aforethought and with extreme atrocity or cruelty. The court sentenced Lynch to life imprisonment. His post-trial motions for a new trial and other requests were denied. 25 C. The SJC Ruling on Lynch's Direct Appeal and Appeal From Denial of Post-Trial Motions 26 Lynch appealed his conviction and from the denial of various post-trial motions, including a motion for a new trial. The appeals were consolidated before the SJC. See Lynch, 789 N.E.2d at 1054. One of the claims Lynch raised before the SJC was that the trial judge's instruction regarding voluntary manslaughter impermissibly shifted the burden of proof on provocation, thereby creating a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice. 4 Id. The SJC agreed that there had been error, 5 but observed that there had been no objection to it, and so the error was subject only to limited review. See id. at 1060. Noting the trial judge's other, correct, statements of the law and analogizing to Commonwealth v. Fickling, 746 N.E.2d 475 (Mass.2001), the SJC held that the `center of gravity' of the charge plainly rested on the side of the correct instruction, and that there was thus not a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice. Lynch, 789 N.E.2d at 1061. The SJC also rejected Lynch's other claims, including a separate claim for ineffective assistance of counsel as to matters unrelated to the jury instructions, and affirmed the trial court in all respects. See id. at 1054, 1062. 27 D. Federal Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus 28 Lynch then filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, 6 asserting four claims, 7 of which only the first is of concern. The first was that the state court violated federal due process by allowing the murder conviction even though several renditions of irreconcilable instructions regarding factors negating malice effectively relieved the Commonwealth of the burden of proving malice beyond a reasonable doubt. The substance of Lynch's argument is repeated in substantially the same form on appeal. 29 The district court denied the habeas petition. The court, citing Ortiz v. Dubois, 19 F.3d 708 (1st Cir.1994), correctly held that Lynch's failure to raise his objection to the jury instructions at trial constituted an independent and adequate state ground that was sufficient to foreclose federal habeas review of the alleged error, absent a showing of cause and prejudice. See id. at 714 (citing Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 84, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977)). The court correctly noted that Lynch could only avoid the effect of the procedural default by showing cause for and prejudice from his failure to object. See id. (citing Wainwright, 433 U.S. at 84, 97 S.Ct. 2497). The court determined that because Lynch had only offered speculation that the jury relied on the incorrect instructions, he had not met the required prejudice showing that the error put him at an actual and substantial disadvantage and infected his entire trial with error of constitutional dimensions. See id. The court denied ground one of Lynch's petition. It also denied the claims of ineffective assistance of counsel as to other decisions on trial counsel's part. 30 Lynch sought a COA as to the first ground of his petition, the due process/jury instruction issue. The district court stated that there was room for disagreement on whether Lynch had shown cause for and prejudice from his failure to object to the instruction, and it allowed the COA as to the due process ground. E. Lynch's Due Process Claim 31 The SJC determined that at least a portion of the jury charge did contain error, and respondents do not challenge that determination here. The ultimate dispute on the merits is about the consequences of the error. The SJC held that the `center of gravity' of the charge plainly rested on the side of the correct instruction, and that there was thus not a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice. Lynch, 789 N.E.2d at 1061. Lynch, however, says that the instructions created the significant possibility that [he] was erroneously convicted of murder in the first degree instead of manslaughter. Commonwealth v. Boucher, 403 Mass. 659, 532 N.E.2d 37, 40 (1989). 32 Lynch's federal constitutional argument is that the jury instructions violated due process by effectively relieving the Commonwealth of the burden of proving malice, an essential element of the crime of murder. Lynch invokes the rule of In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged. Id. at 364; see also Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 704, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975) ([T]he Due Process Clause requires the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of the heat of passion on sudden provocation when the issue is properly presented in a homicide case.).