Court Opinion

ID: 9526931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:26:05.412826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:18.846894
License: Public Domain

Liacos, C.J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). The defendants were entitled to have the jury, as the conscience of the community, consider their defense of justification by necessity. The defendants presented sufficient evidence to raise such a defense. Neither the judge below nor this court should substitute its judgment for the sound deliberations of the jury.
Contrary to the court’s conclusion, there was sufficient evidence presented as to the element of “imminent danger.” Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, a former consultant for the Rand Corporation, the Defense Department, the State Department, and the White House, testified that, by July 14, 1983, the danger *353of nuclear war had become imminent. He specifically noted that the chance of an accidental launch of Pershing II nuclear weapons (manufactured by AVCO) “is a continuous risk from minute to minute.” In addition, Rear Admiral Gene LaRoq, Ret., Director of the Center for Defense Information, testified that the introduction of the Pershing II missile greatly increased the likelihood of nuclear war.1
The judge below should have permitted the jury to consider the evidence on necessity in reaching their verdict. This conclusion “is required by a proper respect for the role of the jury in the criminal justice system. The essential purposes of the jury trial are twofold. First, the jury temper the application of strict rules of law by bringing the common sense judgment of a group of laymen to the case. Second, the jury stand as a check on arbitrary enforcement of the law. ‘Fear of unchecked power, so typical of our State and Federal Governments in other respects, found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence.’ Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 156 (1968). The legitimacy of a jury verdict depends on the ability of the jury to perform these two functions.” (Footnotes omitted.) Commonwealth v. Hood, 389 Mass. 581, 597 (1983) (Liacos, J., concurring).
The jury in this case requested an explanation as to why they could not consider the defense of justification. They themselves recognized the judge’s incursion on their ability to temper the application of strict rules with a consideration of higher values, if they determined that justice so required. This court has characterized the jury as “the repository of the community’s conscience.” Commonwealth v. Freiberg, 405 Mass. 282, 289 (1989), quoting Commonwealth v. Connolly, 356 Mass. 617, 628, cert, denied, 400 U.S. 843 (1970). The court today ensures that the conscience of the community may not have the opportunity to express itself meaningfully.
*354I dissent from the court’s conclusions as to the necessity defense. Because I agree with the court’s resolution as to wanton destruction or injury of property, I concur in that portion of the opinion.

There was also evidence presented as to the other elements of the necessity defense.