Court Opinion

ID: 9714761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:45:03.659853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:28.375709
License: Public Domain

*106O’Connor, J.
(dissenting). As the court notes, ante at 97, in Commonwealth v. Campbell, 378 Mass. 680, 688-689 (1979), the court characterized the case against Doherty’s codefendants as “somewhat thin,” and, by comparison, the case against Doherty as presenting “a somewhat closer question.” The case against Doherty was based on the theory that, at the time Keigney and Campbell were murdering Perrotta, Doherty was acting as a lookout, “purposefully aiding and abetting them in the commission of the crime, and that by reason thereof he was guilty as a principal.” Id. at 689. Therefore, as the court properly recognizes, “[t]he question whether the defendant [Doherty] shared the intent of Campbell and Keigney was a very live, important, and seemingly close question for the jury.” Ante at 104.
With respect to that very- live, important, and close question, the judge instructed the jury that “[w]e are presumed to intend to do what we do do. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have done it.” That instruction, the court acknowledges, “could be understood in context to say that a person is presumed to have intended to kill if that is the result of what he did do. The words have the potential of being understood to create a presumption, probably a rebuttable one, that runs afoul of Sandstrom principles.” Ante at 101-102. Nevertheless, in spite of its conclusion that the jury was given a constitutionally incorrect instruction with respect to the pivotal issue in the Commonwealth’s case against Doherty, the court characterizes the error as harmless, and affirms the order denying Doherty’s 1989 motion for a new trial. The court reasons that the presumption instruction was harmless because a reasonable juror would have understood that instruction to mean only that, “[w]hen [Doherty] prevented Carden from moving along the catwalk . . . and when [he] leaned over the rail in front of the victim’s cell,” Doherty intended to prevent Carden from moving along the catwalk and Doherty intended to lean over the rail. Ante at 104. Those are matters about which there could have been no reasonable dispute. According to the court, the faulty instruction would not have gone further. That is, the court says, the instruction would *107not have suggested to a reasonable juror that when Doherty, by acting as a lookout, helped Keigney and Campbell to murder Perrotta, he is presumed to have shared their murderous intent. I disagree.
If Doherty’s conduct created a presumption that he intended to do what he did, why would not Doherty’s aiding and abetting a murder, which the jury would have been entirely justified in finding he did, create a presumption that he intended to do so? In my view, a reasonable juror could well have understood the instruction that “[w]e are presumed to intend to do what we do do” to mean that, if Doherty’s conduct aided and abetted a murder, he is presumed to have intended that his conduct would aid and abet a murder. Furthermore, in the absence of such a presumption, the evidence was weak not only with respect to when Keigney and Campbell formed their murderous intention (perhaps it was after they reached Perrotta’s cell), but also with respect to what Doherty knew of their intention when he undertook to function as a lookout. The mere fact that Doherty knew that Keigney and Campbell wanted their meeting with Perrotta to be undetected by prison personnel says little, and perhaps not enough to have satisfied the jury, had they been properly instructed, about whether Doherty intended to help Keigney and Campbell do what they ultimately did, that is, murder Perrotta. The error was far from harmless. I would reverse the order denying Doherty a new trial.