Court Opinion

ID: 9722174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:18:59.693702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:31.165590
License: Public Domain

Quirico, J.
(dissenting). I am unable to agree with the conclusion of the court that because “the defendant, upon arrest, was not permitted to make a telephone call as provided by G. L. c. 276, § 33A,” 1 his conviction must be reversed. The defendant was tried by a judge, having waived his right to trial by jury, and was found guilty on the basis of the testimony of two ladies who were robbed while they'were in a theatre ticket office. Each of the ladies made an in-court identification of the defendant as one of the three robbers.
Before trial the judge heard and denied the defendant’s motion to suppress “all evidence identifying . . . *505[him] as the alleged perpetrator of the crimes charged.” Three weeks after finding the defendant guilty the judge filed his “Findings of Fact on Motion to Suppress.” He reported his subsidiary findings concerning the opportunity which each of the two witnesses had at the time of the robbery to observe “many of the facial and physical characteristics of the defendant, and part of his clothing.” He found as to each witness that “her in-court identification of the defendant was entirely independent of” her accidental view of him in the police station lobby following the robbery, and was “based on her independent recollection of the robber who confronted her in the lobby of the theatre on the night in question.” He then concluded with a finding that “the failure to permit the defendant to telephone did not prejudice the defendant or violate his constitutional rights.”
These findings of the judge who saw and heard the two witnesses both at the pre-trial hearing on the motion to suppress and at the trial of the case and filed by him after he had found the defendant guilty cannot be held to be plainly wrong. The judge is the person in the best position to decide whether the defendant was prejudiced in the trial before him by reason of the accidental police station viewing of the defendant by the two witnesses. It is clear from the judge’s findings that he was convinced that the two witnesses would have made the same in-court identification of the defendant if the accidental police station encounter had not occurred, and that he accepted their testimony as truthful. The opinion of the court properly recognizes that “the trial was before the judge himself, a lawyer highly experienced in evaluating testimony for its reliability, and not before a jury less aware of the hazards of eyewitness identification.” Therefore, we need not speculate whether the defendant might have been prejudiced in a trial before a jury. We can conclude from the judge’s own reported findings that the accidental police station encounter was not a factor in his ultimate finding that the defendant was guilty.
*506We have held in Commonwealth v. Bouchard, 347 Mass. 418, 420-421, and again in Commonwealth v. McGaffigan, 352 Mass. 332, 335-336, that proof of denial of a defendant’s right under G. L. c. 276, § 33A, as amended through St. 1963, c. 212, without proof of resulting prejudice to him, does not entitle him to a directed verdict of not guilty. In the Bouchard case there was a suggestion, but not a holding, that if the defendant “had made any admissions, confessed, or disclosed a lead to the discovery of unfavorable evidence” while his rights to use the telephone were denied him, “we might have held that evidence of none of them could be introduced against him,” but that a violation of § 33A “should not entitle the defendant to a directed verdict of acquittal.” The same suggestion was repeated in the McGaffigan case, at 336, but there we saw fit to add: “No penalty or other sanction is imposed for a violation of the statute. Under similar statutes in other jurisdictions, the officer who violates the statute commits a misdemeanor . . . [statutory citations from other States omitted]. We have found no statute which, having provisions similar to G. L. c. 276, § 33A, does not also provide for a penalty.” In Commonwealth v. Fancy, 349 Mass. 196, 206, we referred to “the intimation in Commonwealth v. Bouchard, 347 Mass. 418, 420-421,” that if a defendant in custody was denied his right to use a telephone, statements made by him during the period of such denial might be excluded from evidence. On the basis of this review I do not subscribe to the statements in the opinion of the court that by the Bouchard and McGaffigan decisions we “have expressed the view that, notwithstanding the absence of any express penalty for violation of G. L. c. 276, § 33A, in order to make the statute an effective piece of legislation, courts should suppress unfavorable evidence gained as a result of denying a defendant the right to use a telephone,” and that such is “our prophylactic policy announced in the Bouchard case.” Perhaps that should be, and perhaps that ultimately will be, our policy as applied to a case where the defendant in custody *507suffers prejudice from the intentional violation of his right to use a telephone, but I do not agree that we have already so decided. Neither do I believe that this is an appropriate case in which to make such a decision. It will be time enough to decide what our policy should be when a case involving intentional violation of such a right with resulting prejudice to the defendant reaches us. I would affirm the judgment of conviction in this case.

 The quoted language is taken from the judge’s findings of fact m connection with his denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence identifying him as one of the robbers. Although the opinion of this court states that “there is no dispute that the violation of the defendant’s right [to use the telephone] was intentional,” the judge did not make an express finding to that effect. For the limited purpose of this dissent it is not material whether the defendant was intentionally denied this right.