Court Opinion

ID: 9517755
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:31:06.128372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:21.226190
License: Public Domain

Wilkins, J.
(concurring, with whom Abrams, J., joins). I, too, would affirm the convictions. In so doing, however, I need not decide whether the defendants had a constitutional right to use marihuana for religious purposes. If they had such a right, it was a limited one; the defendants’ conduct far exceeded the protective scope of any such right; and there was no reversible error in the denial of the defendants’ motions to dismiss the indictments or in the failure to instruct the jury concerning any right to use marihuana for religious purposes *584(assuming such a right to exist). Our general practice is not to reach constitutional questions unless it is necessary to do so in order to dispose of a case properly. See Lockhart v. Attorney Gen., 390 Mass. 780, 784 (1984); Commonwealth v. Loretta, 386 Mass. 794, 797 (1982); Commonwealth v. Bartlett, 374 Mass. 744, 749 (1978).
The defendants’ trial strategy was to establish that (a) the marihuana was for their own use (thus rebutting the charges of possession with intent to distribute), and (b) their use of marihuana was solely for religious purposes and thus (they contended) protected from criminalization by art. 2 of the Declaration of Rights. The possession of marihuana (a) for household use, such as for cooking, preparing tea and tonics, and feeding chickens, and (b) for distribution to minor children, to nonchurch members, and to church members outside of religious services is not protected by art. 2. That behavior either involves no religious conduct at all,1 or it involves religious conduct that disturbs the peace.
I would leave to another case the question whether art. 2 provides protection for the good faith possession of marihuana for (a) use for religious purposes by adults in a household, or (b) in a religious service by church members. Article 2 protection does not apply in any circumstance to the use of marihuana by minors, to the use of marihuana by nonchurch members, or to the use of marihuana by church members outside of activity commonly regarded as religious. That is all I need determine to permit me to answer the defendants’ challenges to their convictions.
1. The motion judge properly denied the defendants’ pretrial motions to dismiss the indictments. Even if the defendants were entitled to some constitutional protection for their religious use of marihuana, their motions to dismiss were doomed to fail, as the motion judge noted in his rulings. Any constitu*585tional protection would only extend to one who believed in good faith in a religious doctrine that involved the use of marihuana for religious purposes. The question of the existence of such a belief would be a jury question. This would be followed by another jury question, namely, whether the uses that the defendants made of controlled substances fell within whatever constitutionally protected area of good faith conduct might exist. The motion judge could not, therefore, have properly dismissed the indictments. For the same reasons, the trial judge also properly denied the motions when they were renewed during the trial.
There was, moreover, no basis on which the defendants were entitled to a required finding of not guilty on any of the charges. If the defendants were entitled to constitutional protection of some sort, evidence raising that subject was presented in adequate form only during the defendants’ cases, and that evidence, at most, presented a jury issue and not grounds for a required finding of not guilty.
2. There was no reversible error in the judge’s refusal to instruct the jury that the defendants had a constitutional right to use marihuana as a sacrament in religious services or for other religious purposes. The trial judge gave the defendants substantial freedom to demonstrate that they used marihuana in large amounts for religious and nonreligious purposes. He properly concluded that evidence of that sort was relevant to the question whether the defendants possessed the marihuana with the intent to distribute it. He instructed the jury that they could consider personal use “on the issue of whether the Commonwealth has proved to your satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendants possessed marihuana with an intent to distribute it as opposed to an intent to use it for their personal needs.” The jury decided the distribution issue in favor of the Commonwealth.
Even if the defendants had a State constitutional right to use marihuana personally for religious purposes, the failure of the judge so to instruct the jury did not prejudice the defendants. The judge told the jury that a defendant could not be convicted of possession of marihuana with intent to distribute it if he or *586she possessed it for his or her own use. That charge covered religious and nonreligious personal use. It included the defendants’ use of marihuana, as the evidence indicated, for cooking stews and soups, for tea, for a tonic, for a tincture, for feeding chickens, for growing more marihuana, and for personal religious purposes. Unfortunately for the defendants, the jury believed evidence of the distribution of marihuana to others and concluded that marihuana seized in the defendants’ home was for distribution and not for personal use. Whatever constitutional right to possess marihuana for certain personal uses there may be, as I have said, it does not extend to possession for the purpose of distribution to minor children, distribution to nonchurch members, or distribution to church members outside a religious service or ceremony.2
3. If there was error in the judge’s charge concerning the cultivation of marihuana (by reason of his failure to identify a constitutionally protected religious use for which marihuana would lawfully be cultivated), that error was not prejudicial to David Nissenbaum. If there were a constitutionally protected right to use marihuana for personal religious purposes, it could reasonably follow that there would be a constitutionally protected right to cultivate marihuana for those purposes. On this assumption, at a trial on a charge of unlawful cultivation of marihuana where the issue is raised by the evidence, the Commonwealth would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the cultivation was not solely for constitutionally protected religious uses.
The evidence did not warrant a reasonable doubt, however, about whether Nissenbaum’s cultivation of marihuana was not solely for personal religious uses. David Nissenbaum’s admissions in his testimony showed that he was growing marihuana for uses outside the scope of any religious uses we might *587identify as protected under the Constitution of the Commonwealth. I reject as implausible the thought that the jury would believe Nissenbaum’s testimony concerning the use of marihuana for arguably protected religious purposes, reject entirely his testimony as to all the Nissenbaums’ other uses of marihuana, and thus be in a position to find Nissenbaum not guilty of unlawful cultivation on the theory that the Nissenbaums’ only use of marihuana was constitutionally protected. Thus, the issue of cultivation for a constitutionally protected use (in the form in which I might accept that constitutional right) never became a live issue at the trial. Moreover, because the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that the Nissenbaums did not possess their marihuana solely for personal uses, it follows incontestably that, if asked to do so, the jury would also have found beyond a reasonable doubt that David Nissenbaum did not grow marihuana solely for personal use, religious or otherwise. A retrial on the unlawful cultivation charge is not required.
4. There is no basis for overturning the conviction of David Nissenbaum for possession of hashish. The police found 9.9 ounces of hashish in a tin can in the office area of the Nissenbaum home. On the evidence, the jury would not have been warranted in having a reasonable doubt whether David Nissenbaum kept hashish for religious uses. Neither Nissenbaum nor anyone else made reference at trial to the use of hashish (as opposed to marihuana) for religious purposes. Nissenbaum could have done so. Therefore, any asserted constitutionally protected right of religious use had no application to his conviction for unlawful possession of hashish.

 Although “[s]ome or many persons may regard all conduct as involving obedience or disobedience to the will of the Creator” (Opinion of the Justices, 309 Mass. 555, 558 [1941]) and thus entitled to the protection of art. 2, conduct protected by art. 2 must be conduct commonly regarded as religious conduct.

 If the jury had found a defendant guilty of possession of marihuana but not of possession with the intent to distribute, I could not properly characterize as free of prejudicial error the judge’s failure to instruct the jury on the asserted constitutional right to possess marihuana for religious purposes unless I were to pass on the entire constitutional question and decide it against the defendants.