Court Opinion

ID: 9533544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:32:32.373282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:05.142624
License: Public Domain

Quirico, J.
(with whom Abrams, J., joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur with the opinion of the court through the end of part 2. However, I dissent from the conclusion in part 3 and from the resulting order that the verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree be reduced to guilty of murder in the second degree. The evidence discloses that the defendant, whatever his motivation, physically abused and beat the helpless, frail, twenty-five pound, four year old victim to the point where the child was bruised over a considerable extent of his body. This course of conduct culminated in the defendant’s lethal beating of the victim on January 26, 1975.
The instructions which the judge gave to the jury permitted them to find the defendant had committed the crime of murder in the first degree by reason of “extreme atrocity or cruelty.” G. L. c. 265, § 1. “Our cases have usually looked to the consciousness and degree of suffering of the victim, the disproportion between the means actually *320needed to inflict death and those employed, the instrumentalities employed and the extent of physical injury. The final determination of whether extreme atrocity or cruelty exists, however, must be decided by the jury, who, as the repository of the community’s conscience, can best determine when the mode of inflicting death is so shocking as to amount to extreme atrocity or cruelty.” Commonwealth v. Connolly, 356 Mass. 617, 628 (1970). The jury were correctly instructed on the law and the evidence was sufficient to support their verdict that the defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree.
General Laws c. 278, § 33E, provides that in a case where a defendant has been indicted for murder in the first degree and convicted of murder either in the first or second degree, this court “may, if satisfied that the verdict was against the law or the weight of the evidence, or because of newly discovered evidence, or for any other reason that justice may require (a) order a new trial or (b) direct the entry of a verdict of a lesser degree of guilt, and remand the case to the superior court for the imposition of sentence.” In the circumstances of this case, I would not exercise our power under the statute to grant the defendant any relief from his conviction of murder in the first degree.