Court Opinion

ID: 9712076
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:45:54.990553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:09.639909
License: Public Domain

*745Liacos, J.
(dissenting). I cannot agree with the court’s conclusion that the evidence in this case constituted evidence sufficient to withstand a motion for a required finding of not guilty. The court has recited the evidence at length, and I shall not repeat the facts except as necessary to make my position clear.
In reviewing the denial of the defendant’s motions for required findings of not guilty, we must consider whether “the evidence is insufficient as a matter of law to sustain a conviction on the charge.” Mass. R. Crim. P. 25 (a), 378 Mass. 896 (1979). “[The] question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt” (emphasis in original). Commonwealth v. Salemme, 395 Mass. 594, 595 (1985), quoting Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677 (1979). “Thus, to sustain the denial of a directed verdict, it is not enough for the appellate court to find that there was some record evidence, however slight, to support each essential element of the offense; it must find that there was enough evidence that could have satisfied a rational trier of fact of each such element beyond a reasonable doubt.” Commonwealth v. Latimore, supra at 677-678.
The most the jury could find from the evidence is this: Because of her jealousy, the defendant bore a great deal of ill will toward the victims, particularly Anderson. The defendant once threatened to kill Anderson explicitly and, on several other occasions, made veiled references to possible violence. The defendant had access to a gun, perhaps only a BB gun. In any event, no gun belonging to the defendant was shown to be connected to the murder. Over two weeks before the murder, the defendant broke into Anderson’s cottage. During the early morning of the murder, the defendant was seen in her automobile outside Anderson’s home. The defendant acted unexpectedly by being awake and dressed at 7 o’clock that morning. The evening after the murder, the defendant lied to the police about her presence in Sandwich, thus possibly showing consciousness of guilt. Further, she threw out a piece of evi*746dence linking her to Anderson after she had been told that detectives were looking for her but before she had been told that Anderson was dead.
The precedent set by Commonwealth v. Mazza, 399 Mass. 395 (1987), compels the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict. The evidence incriminating the defendant in Mazza was stronger. In Mazza, there was evidence that the defendant and the victim were rivals for the affection of a young woman. The day before the murder, the defendant told the woman that the victim was a “low life” who deserved to die. Later in the evening, he sexually assaulted the woman. The morning of the murder, he hit the woman, who was crying, and again called the victim a “low life” and told the woman, “look what he’s done to you.” Id. at 397. There was evidence that the defendant called the victim within two hours of the murder, asking the victim to meet him in the parking lot where the victim was found shot. After five minutes alone in the parking lot, the defendant returned to the automobile of the companion who drove him to the lot, saying, “There’s a problem.” Id. at 396. After the murder, the defendant exhibited a strong consciousness of guilt. He partially burned the clothes he wore the night of the murder, and the clothes were determined to have some type of blood on them. He shaved his moustache, dyed his hair, and fled to Vermont. Id. at 397.
We ruled in Mazza that “[n]o rational trier of fact could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed [the victim] .... The evidence failed to identify the defendant as the perpetrator.” Id. at 399. We emphasized that, although the defendant was present in the area of the murder at about the time the murder occurred and shortly before the body was found, there was no proof that the defendant was actually at the scene when the victim was murdered. Id. The question in Mazza was “whether the defendant’s presence at the scene of the crime together with the evidence of motive and consciousness of guilt [was] sufficient to withstand the defendant’s motion for required finding of not guilty. We conclude[d] that it [was] not.” Id. at 398.
*747Similarly, here, the Commonwealth has presented evidence that the defendant was in her automobile near the murder scene at the general time of the murders, along with evidence of motive and ill will, and consciousness of guilt. Indeed, no one saw the defendant outside her automobile on Town Neck Road the morning of the murder, much less inside the house. The Commonwealth presented no evidence of the murder weapon, no physical evidence such as fingerprints or gunpowder traces linking the defendant to the crime, and no evidence that the defendant set the fire. The evidence of consciousness of guilt is far less compelling here than in Mazza.
The Commonwealth claims that the present case is distinguishable from Mazza because of three pieces of evidence. First, the Commonwealth presented evidence of the defendant’s obsession with the victims and threats against them. “[Evidence of previous assaults and the threat . . . tended to show a settled ill will and hatred on the part of the defendant toward the [victim], and was evidence of a motive on [her] part to commit the crime.” Commonwealth v. Ramey, 243 Mass. 394, 396 (1923). Evidence of threats, without more, however, is not sufficient to uphold a murder conviction. See Commonwealth v. Abbott, 130 Mass. 472, 475 (1881). In Commonwealth v. Mazza, supra, the defendant, in a violent state on the day before the murder, said that the victim deserved to die. That evidence was insufficient to sustain the Commonwealth’s burden in Mazza. Similarly, the evidence of threats and prior abusiveness is insufficient to support the verdict here.
Next, the Commonwealth argues that the fact that the defendant broke Anderson’s telephone box and his side door on May 28 serves as sufficient proof to identify the defendant as the person who cut the telephone wires and broke through the side door on the morning of the murder. In order to function as an identifying feature, a prior bad act must be “so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature.” McCormick, Evidence § 190, at 559 (3d ed. 1984). See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Lacy, 371 Mass. 363, 366 (1976); Commonwealth v. Madyun, 17 Mass. App. Ct. 965, 966 (1983). In the case at bar, the supposed identifying factor was the defendant’s destruction of *748telephone communication to Anderson’s cottage and her breaking the door on one previous occasion. These factors are commonly found in break-ins and are not necessarily distinctive or unusual. See United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036, 1046 (5th Cir. 1977). Cf. Commonwealth v. Bettencourt, 20 Mass. App. Ct. 923, 925 (1985) (defendant’s prior conduct in making it appear falsely that someone tried to break through a window could serve as identifying factor). Further, the circumstances of the two break-ins differ in several important respects. On May 28, the defendant damaged many parts of the house, including a window, a door’s window, and the side door; she broke the telephone junction box so that it hung down off the wall; there is no evidence that any wires were cut. At the time of the murder, only the side door was damaged; the junction box was still affixed to the wall, but the wire was cleanly cut; and the television wire at the front of the house also was cut. A marked difference in circumstances prevents the original episode from functioning as an identifying factor. See Commonwealth v. Key, 21 Mass. App. Ct. 293, 297 (1985).
Finally, the Commonwealth argues that, because the defendant threw away Anderson’s registration after she was told that detectives wanted to see her, but before she was told that Anderson was dead, the jury could infer that she already knew about the murder. Both the court and I consider this unpersuasive. The defendant was arrested for an incident at Anderson’s home two weeks before the murder. It was natural on her part to assume that, if detectives wished to talk with her, it had to do with Anderson. There is thus no basis for the jury to conclude from the fact that the defendant threw away Anderson’s registration that she knew about the murder because she had murdered him. When evidence tends equally to support the conclusion that the defendant was innocent, such evidence cannot be said to have established the defendant’s guilt by legitimate proof. See Commonwealth v. Fancy, 349 Mass. 196, 200 (1965).1
*749While we recognize that, “[i]n order to convict on circumstantial evidence, it is not necessary to show that it was not in the power of any other person than the defendant to commit the crime,” Commonwealth v. Salemme, 395 Mass. 594, 601 (1985), quoting Commonwealth v. Fancy, supra, “the evidence in this case, taken as a whole, is not sufficient to sustain the verdict,” Commonwealth v. Mazza, 399 Mass. 395, 400 (1987). “The Commonwealth’s theory of [the] case requires piling inference upon inference.” Commonwealth v. Ferguson, 384 Mass. 13, 18 (1981). This we are not permitted to do. See Mazza, supra at 399. I dissent.

The Commonwealth relies on Commonwealth v. Anderson, 396 Mass. 306 (1985), for the proposition that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict. While the facts of Anderson bear some similarity to both *749the facts of this case and those of Commonwealth v. Mazza, supra, they contain a crucial difference. In Anderson, there was evidence that the defendant was present with the victim at the murder scene during the time the murder could have been committed, with no one else around, and that the murder weapon was in the building and the defendant knew the location of the murder weapon.