Court Opinion

ID: 9729603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:43:57.221031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:59.928453
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(concurring, with whom Greaney, J., joins). I agree that the defendant’s motion for a new trial was correctly denied, and I agree with the court’s reasoning. The motion for a new trial did not raise substantial claims.
I write separately to raise the question whether, in the future, cases like this one, having previously received plenary review under G. L. c. 278, § 33E (1988 ed.), ought to be given still further appellate review in the absence of a prior determination by a single justice of this court that the new appeal raises a new and substantial question. The inquiry I raise bears significantly on the matter of efficiency in the administration of justice. The court’s conclusion in this case that the defendant’s motion for a hew trial had little or no merit suggests that, had a single justice conducted a “gatekeeper” hearing on the substantiality of the issues to be raised in the proposed appeal, the appeal would have been disallowed, and this court’s time and energy would have been put to better use. Such inefficiency should be discouraged and, in my view, that is precisely what the Legislature had in mind in enacting G. L. c. 278, § 33E.
General Laws c. 278, § 33E, provides: “In a capital case as hereinafter defined the entry in the supreme judicial court shall transfer to that court the whole case for its consideration of the law and the evidence. Upon such consideration the court may, if satisfied that the verdict was against the law or the weight of the evidence, or because of newly dis*9covered evidence, or for any other reason that justice may require (<z) 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. For the purpose of such review a capital case shall mean a case in which the defendant was tried on an indictment for murder in the first degree and was convicted of murder in the first degree. ... If any motion is filed in the superior court after rescript, no appeal shall lie from the decision of that court upon such motion unless the appeal is allowed by a single justice of the supreme judicial court on the ground that it presents a new and substantial question which ought to be determined by the full court.”
Section 33E expressly defines a capital case as one in which “the defendant was tried on an indictment for murder in the first degree and was convicted of murder in the first degree.” This is such a case. Nothing in § 33E expressly states or implies that if, after plenary review, the Supreme Judicial Court reduces the conviction to murder in the second degree, the case loses its character as a capital case for § 33E purposes.
In enacting G. L. c. 278, § 33E, the obvious legislative objective was to provide to a defendant who has been convicted of murder in the first degree the fullest possible appellate review in order that justice may be done. Once such plenary review has been conducted, however, as occurred in this case, see Commonwealth v. Lanoue, 392 Mass. 583 (1984), the statute makes clear that no further appellate review is available unless a single justice decides that there is a new question of sufficient substance to be worthy of further full court review.
In Commonwealth v. Lattimore, 400 Mass. 1001 (1987), this court held in a brief opinion that the gatekeeper provision of c. 278, § 33E, does not apply when a defendant’s conviction for murder in the first degree has been reduced to murder in the second degree under that section. The court relied on four cases. In each of those cases, the defendant had been convicted by a jury only of murder in the second *10degree. Thus, those cases were not capital cases as defined by § 33E, and therefore were not subject to its gatekeeper provision. Although I would not overrule Lattimore in this case since the parties have not addressed the question whether the appeal is properly before the court, and the appeal was accepted and then transferred conformably to Lattimore, I think that the interests of judicial economy and of implementing the legislative will in the future would be best served by this court’s reconsideration of the procedural question posed in Lattimore. Nothing in the statutory language or in logic suggests that a defendant, whose conviction has been reduced after plenary review, should have greater accessibility to still further review than would a defendant whose conviction of murder in the first degree has not been reduced after such review. On the contrary, one would reasonably expect that, if a distinction is to be made between defendants according to the severity of the crimes of which they stand convicted, those who remain convicted of the more serious crime, murder in the first degree, would have greater accessibility to further review than would a defendant whose conviction has been reduced.