Court Opinion

ID: 9522223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:20:04.148286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:24.549842
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting).
Unless fairness to the Commonwealth demands such a result, this court should not hold that a defendant has waived a right as important as the right to assert constitutional error injury instructions affecting the heart of the fact-finding process. In my view, there is no basis for such a holding in this case.
The court recognizes that we have given retroactive application to the Sandstrom principle. Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 *291U.S. 510, 524 (1979). In arriving at its conclusion that the defendant waived his right to challenge the judge’s charge, the court correctly does not rely on the defendant’s failure to object or except at trial. The Sandstrom principle was not developed until after the defendant’s trial and direct appeal. DeJoinville v. Commonwealth, 381 Mass. 246, 248 (1980). Commonwealth v. Stokes, 374 Mass. 583, 588-590 (1978). Nevertheless, the court finds it unnecessary to decide the constitutional issue because it is persuaded that the defendant at trial waived his right to raise the issue by conceding in closing argument that “there is no question but that Mr. Deane was the victim of a murder.” The court says that the Sandstrom issue, if not raised at trial, may be considered waived by the defendant “in a case which was tried and argued on the theory that a murder was committed.” Supra at 286. Apart from citing Commonwealth v. Pisa, 384 Mass. 362 (1981), and Commonwealth v. Lee, 383 Mass. 507 (1981), for that proposition, the court does not explain why the defendant’s concession that a murder took place, without also conceding his participation in it, constitutes a waiver of his right to insist on a constitutionally correct charge on malice. I believe that neither reason nor the cited cases demonstrate that a waiver occurred in this case.
Indeed, since the uncontroverted evidence showed that the victim was shot three times and died, there was “no question but that Mr. Deane was the victim of a murder.” Counsel conceded no more than the obvious by admitting that whoever shot the victim did so with malice, thus committing murder. However, counsel did not concede that it was the defendant who shot the victim nor did he concede that, if Pisa shot the victim, the defendant shared Pisa’s murderous intent and was therefore a joint venturer with him. The defendant relied on the presumption of innocence and left the Commonwealth to prove that he had participated in the killing with malice aforethought. The jury’s request, during deliberations, that the judge “define the distinction between a non-interfering witness to a crime and the partner in concert for a first-degree murder, second-degree murder,” demonstrates that whether the defendant was a partner in a joint venture in which Pisa shot the victim *292was a live issue at trial. Resolution of that issue would require the jury to determine whether the defendant shared with Pisa the mental state required for murder. As the motion judge wrote in his memorandum of decision, “malice [was] a pivotal element in the jury’s deliberation.” Unlike the defendant in Commonwealth v. Lee, supra, the defendant took no action whatsoever that had the effect of withdrawing from the jury the issue of his malice. Unlike the defendant in Lee, the defendant here does not argue a position that is inconsistent with the one he took at trial. The defendant in the present case raised the issue of malice at trial, and he raises it here as well.
Commonwealth v. Lee, supra, was unique and critically different from this case. In Lee, the defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree. The Commonwealth’s evidence had been that the defendant, acting alone and as a hired killer, killed the victim by a shotgun blast through a window of the victim’s home. The defendant had presented an alibi defense, offering his own and corroborating testimony that when the shooting took place he was at a bar some distance away. On appeal, Lee argued that the constitutional principle articulated in Sandstrom had been violated by the judge’s charge to the jury. Because the trial had taken place before Sandstrom, we considered the defendant’s claim, Commonwealth v. Lee, supra at 510-511, but we then rejected it because “[t]he issue contested by the defendant was solely that of the identity of the [lone] murderer. In such circumstances, [we said], the failure to object to the charge as to malice cannot be attributed to inadvertence or lack of knowledge of evolving constitutional doctrine. Rather, the failure to object reflects a conscious choice of trial strategy by defense counsel” (emphasis added). Id. at 512.
By relying on an alibi defense, the defendant in Lee withdrew from serious consideration by the jury any issue except whether he or someone else fired from a shotgun into the victim’s home. He could not reasonably have made an issue of the judge ’ s charge on the burden of proving malice without impairing, indeed destroying, the credibility of his alibi. If he was not at the scene, whether the assailant had the state of mind re*293quired for murder was irrelevant. This court was satisfied, therefore, that even if defense counsel at the trial had possessed foreknowledge of the Sandstrom decision, as a matter of strategy he would not have raised the proof of malice issue. Having been satisfied of that, we disposed of the defendant’s claim of error by saying that “[w]e look askance when counsel who has tried a case, without success, before a judge and jury on one theory of law, then attempts to obtain appellate review on an entirely different theory which was never advanced or suggested at the trial and which is not based on any objection or exception.” Commonwealth v. Lee, supra at 512, quoting from Commonwealth v. Johnson, 374 Mass. 453, 465 (1978). Quoting Johnson further, we said in Lee that appellate review is not intended to afford an opportunity “to attempt to convert the consequences of unsuccessful trial tactics and strategy into alleged errors by the judge.” Id. To allow a defendant to refrain from calling asserted error to the attention of the trial judge, as a matter of strategy, and then assert that same error on appeal, would be grossly unfair to the Commonwealth.
The present case is critically different from Lee precisely because it cannot fairly be said that the defendant here would have refrained from objecting to the judge’s charge, as a matter of strategy, if he had had foreknowledge of Sandstrom. That cannot fairly be said because here the defendant relied on no defense that would have been undermined by such an objection. On the contrary, he put the Commonwealth to its burden of proving, as to him, all the essential elements of murder. Since malice was a live issue, unlike the situation in Lee, sound strategy would have demanded, not precluded, an objection to the judge’s charge shifting to the defendant the burden of proving malice. The distinction we acknowledged in Lee, supra at 513, between that case and cases like the present one “in which malice is a pivotal element in the jury’s deliberations,” is crucial. The court appears to have lost sight of it in arriving at its holding today.
In concluding that the defendant waived his right to raise the Sandstrom issue, the court relies not only on Commonwealth v. Lee, supra, but also on Commonwealth v. Pisa, 384 Mass. *294362 (1981). In so far as the Sandstrom issue is concerned, there is no distinction between Pisa and the present case. Both cases are appeals from actions taken on a motion for a new trial subsequent to a decision of this court on direct appeal. The two cases involve the same incident, and the defendant in each case challenges the judge’s charge on the burden of proof on the issue of malice without having raised the issue at an earlier stage of the proceedings. In both cases the defendants did not rely on an alibi defense but, instead, left the Commonwealth to prove the indictments. This court affirmed the denial of the motion for a new trial in Pisa, supra at 363, “[f]or essentially the same reasons as advanced in Commonwealth v. Lee, 383 Mass. 507, 512 (1981).” In my view, the reasons advanced in Lee provide no more support for the decision in Pisa than they do for the court’s decision here. I would not follow Pisa.
The court’s opinion does not reach the question whether the jury instructions on proof of malice were erroneous. However, because I believe there was no waiver, I reach that question. I agree with the motion judge that the instruction that “a person must be presumed to intend to do that which he voluntarily and wilfully does, and that he must intend all the natural, probable and usual consequences of his acts” unconstitutionally shifted the burden of proof on the element of intent. Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510 (1979). DeJoinville v. Commonwealth, 381 Mass. 246, 253 (1980). Commonwealth v. Callahan, 380 Mass. 821, 823 (1980). The impact of that instruction was exacerbated by the “natural and probable consequences” language used by the trial judge in response to the jury’s request during deliberations that he “define the distinction between a non-interfering witness to a crime and the partner in concert for a first degree murder, a second degree murder.” Although the instructions contained statements about reasonable inferences and the Commonwealth’s burden to prove the elements of the indictments, the instructions viewed as a whole, see Commonwealth v. Zezima, 387 Mass. 748, 751 (1982), did not make clear that the burden was on the Commonwealth to prove the defendant’s malice without the aid of conclusive or *295burden-shifting presumptions. Contrast Commonwealth v. Repoza, 382 Mass. 119, 134 (1980).
Since the defendant’s motion for a new trial was based on violation of a constitutional principle to which this court gives retroactive application, and since that principle was not sufficiently developed at the time of trial or direct appeal to have afforded the defendant a genuine opportunity to raise that claim on those occasions, and since the defendant did not adopt a strategy at trial which would have precluded him from raising that claim at that time, the defendant is entitled to a new trial unless the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Rembiszewski, 391 Mass. 123, 126 (1984). De-Joinville v. Commonwealth, 381 Mass. 246, 250-251 (1980). Commonwealth v. Harrington, 379 Mass. 446, 455 (1980). The error clearly was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Whether the judge’s charge with respect to felony-murder was correct is of no consequence. We cannot say that the jury found the defendant guilty of murder on a felony-murder theory rather than on a theory requiring traditional malice. See Commonwealth v. White, 363 Mass. 682, 684 (1973).1 Since the conviction may have resulted from the jury ’ s misunderstanding and misapplication of the Commonwealth’s burden to prove malice, the motion judge correctly granted the defendant’s motion for a new trial. See Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U.S. 73 (1983); Commonwealth v. Rego, 360 Mass. 385, 395-396 (1971). An appellate court should not be deterred from affirming a motion judge’s grant of a new trial because of a belief it may have concerning the defendant’s guilt. If a defendant’s guilt has not been determined by a jury after proper instructions, a new trial, as was ordered in this case, is required.

 It is unlikely that they found the defendant guilty on a felony-murder theory because they acquitted him of armed robbery, which was the only underlying felony that could have been found on the evidence, and they found him guilty of murder in the second, not the first, degree.