Opinion ID: 743581
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the course of trial

Text: 5 To understand the petitioner's claim, we must rehearse his trial in the Barnstable Superior Court. We offer only a synopsis, confident that the reader who thirsts for additional detail can find it elsewhere. See Martin, 653 N.E.2d at 604-06. 6 The Commonwealth alleged that Martin and Niles Hinckley, his half-brother, broke into the office of the Yarmouth town dump and stole a safe. After removing the safe from the building, they told a friend, Thomas Violette, that they needed help to transport something big. Violette obliged. As the three men left the dump in Hinckley's car, with the safe aboard, they came across Linda Rose, whose automobile had failed her. She joined them. The group proceeded to Rose's home. Once there, the men dragged the safe into the house and tried to open it. Unsettled by this endeavor, Rose departed with her children. Violette also grew anxious about his involvement; he left the premises a few minutes after Martin and Hinckley began working on the safe, pondered his predicament, and then made a beeline for the police. The culprits were apprehended and charged in short order. 7 Martin and Hinckley were tried together. The Commonwealth called Rose as a witness in its case in chief. She stated repeatedly that she did not see (or, at least, could not recall) much of what had transpired on the evening in question. The prosecutor told the judge at sidebar that Rose was nervous and scared and suggested that her professed lapses of memory were disingenuous. The trial adjourned in the midst of Rose's cross-examination. 8 On the next trial day, the prosecutor voiced concern about possible witness intimidation and the judge conducted a voir dire outside the presence of the jury. During that proceeding, Rose admitted that portions of her previous testimony had been less than truthful. She also stated that she had been frightened by James Martin (the petitioner's brother, who, she said, had pointed at her from the back of the courtroom), by the petitioner's girlfriend, and by an unidentified woman (who, she said, had given her dirty looks, scaring [her] from testifying). Rose went on to recount that the petitioner's girlfriend had signalled her to come over and talk outside the courtroom; that the petitioner himself had accosted her shortly after his arrest and instructed her to testify (falsely) that Hinckley had acted alone in expropriating the safe; and that, on another occasion, the Martin brothers ordered her to deny the petitioner's role in the burglary. 9 Based on Rose's statements, the court determined that it was in the interest of justice that the Commonwealth be permitted to reopen and redirect on Miss Rose. In so ruling, the judge noted that James Martin already had pleaded guilty to intimidating witnesses (including Rose) and that the petitioner had been found guilty of intimidating Rose. The judge then ordered the courtroom closed during the remainder of Rose's testimony and refused to make an exception for the petitioner's mother. 1 During her reopened testimony, Rose described the petitioner's attempts to intimidate her, but her recollection of the evening in question did not differ materially from her original testimony.