Court Opinion

ID: 9721071
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:47:52.326349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:23.281937
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting, with whom Nolan and Lynch, JJ., join). Much of the court’s opinion consists of “observations intended to aid trial judges ... in the future,” ante at 264, and of commentary concerning anticipated issues on retrial. Ante at 267. I direct my attention solely to that part of the court’s opinion that sets forth the court’s rationale for reversing the convictions.
The court is correct when it says that the admission in evidence of DeVincenzi’s plea agreement did not constitute impermissible “vouching,” and that, “if appropriately handled,” “testimony pursuant to a plea agreement, founded on a promise of truthful cooperation, and the plea agreement itself are admissible.” Ante at 260, 261. The court concludes, however, that the judge committed reversible error in the manner in which she handled the plea agreement. Ante at 262-264. I do not agree with that conclusion.
The court identifies four perceived errors in the judge’s handling of the plea agreement. Ante at 262. The first perceived error is that the judge failed to redact from the plea agreement the statement that the agreement was “contingent upon the truthfulness of [DeVincenzi’s] representation to the Commonwealth that he, personally, did not shoot [the victim].” “That statement,” according to the court, “can be read as asserting the Commonwealth’s reasoned conclusion that DeVincenzi’s representation was correct.” Neither defendant argues the point on appeal. The defendants’ failure to argue the point is understandable. The provision that the agreement is contingent on the truthfulness of DeVincenzi’s representation that he did not shoot the victim cannot fairly be construed as the Commonwealth’s asserted conclusion, *274reasoned or otherwise, that the representation was truthful. The statement says no more than that, if DeVincenzi’s representation indeed should turn out to have been false, the Commonwealth will have no obligation with respect to a sentencing recommendation. Redaction was neither required nor appropriate.
The second “error” identified by the court as a reason to reverse the convictions is that “[t]he judge should also have deleted references in the agreement that DeVincenzi would be placed in a program to protect his life and safety.” Ante at 262. Neither defendant requested the judge to redact those references nor objected to them nor argues that issue on appeal. Nevertheless, I agree that redaction of that language would have been appropriate. I discuss below the effect of the judge’s failure to do so.
Next, the court states that “[rjepeated references to the witness’s obligation to tell the truth should have been deleted” from the plea agreement. Ante at 262. I submit there was no error, and certainly no prejudicial error, in this regard. The court' concedes that the agreement providing DeVincenzi’s obligation to tell the truth was properly in evidence. Nothing in United States v. Mealy, 851 F.2d 890, 898-899 (7th Cir. 1988), relied on by the court, supports the court’s assertion that it was reversible error for the judge not to redact repeated references to the witness’s obligation to tell the truth. In Mealy, five witnesses testified pursuant to plea agreements. The agreements were five pages in length, and each contained four or five references to that witness’s promise to testify truthfully. The Mealy court said that, “[i]n drafting plea agreements, the government should avoid unnecessarily repetitive references to truthfulness if it wishes to introduce the agreements into evidence. Nevertheless, we do not believe that the plea agreements in this case disproportionately emphasized or repeated the promise of truthful testimony.” Id. at 899-900. The repetitions in the present case do hot come close to the twenty to twenty-five repetitions that the court found acceptable (and certainly not reversible error) in Mealy.
*275The last asserted error on which the reversal of these convictions turns is that the judge “permitted the Commonwealth to obtain testimony from DeVincenzi that his attorney had signed a statement representing that DeVincenzi understood the agreement and that his attorney believed that DeVincenzi’s decision to make the agreement was an informed and voluntary one.” Ante at 262. This evidence was hearsay and was inadmissible. The proper consequence of that error is discussed below.
The court reasons that the prejudice from the judge’s erroneous failure to redact the aforementioned provisions, and her erroneous admission in evidence of DeVincenzi’s attorney’s out-of-court statement, was not alleviated by the judge’s jury instructions, and that the errors therefore require reversal. Ante at 263. In my view, the court has correctly identified only two errors. One is the judge’s failure to redact from the plea agreement the witness protection references, and the other is the admission of the attorney’s out-of-court statement.
At trial, the defendants did not preserve the witness protection issue for appellate review. Furthermore, they have not argued the point on appeal. Even so, of course, we are required by G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to consider whether the failure to redact the witness protection references, viewed in the context of the entire case, poses a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice with respect to the convictions of murder in the first degree. Also, with respect to the other convictions, pursuant to our decision in Commonwealth v. Freeman, 352 Mass. 556, 563-564 (1967), we conduct a similar test; one, as we have previously said, that may be harder than the test under c. 278, § 33E, for the defendant to satisfy. Commonwealth v. Lennon, 399 Mass. 443, 448-449 n.6 (1987). Commonwealth v. Richmond, 379 Mass. 557, 562-563 n.4 (1980).
The court, unaided by argument by the defendants, does not discuss the significance of the plea agreement’s references to the witness protection program except to say that the references “implied that the Commonwealth agreed that *276DeVincenzi reasonably believed his life and safety would be in jeopardy, if he testified against the defendants.” Ante at 262. Even if DeVincenzi’s belief about the defendants’ dangerousness were more than marginally significant in the total context of these cases, a very doubtful proposition, the inclusion in the agreement of the witness protection references does not demonstrate, despite the court’s contrary suggestion, that DeVincenzi considered those references to be necessary or even advisable. For all that appears in the record those references were routinely included in such agreements, DeVincenzi did not insist on them, and indeed was indifferent about their inclusion here. Surely, the jury’s exposure to that kind of evidence did not create a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.
I turn to the erroneous admission of DeVincenzi’s testimony that his attorney had signed a statement to the effect that DeVincenzi’s decision to enter into the plea agreement was an informed and voluntary one. “The attorney’s hearsay statement,” the court says, “in effect indicated that he believed DeVincenzi was telling him the truth, thus justifying his advice to DeVincenzi to plead guilty and to testify against the defendants.” Ante at 262-263. The court indulges in a non sequitur. Yes, the attorney’s statement was inadmissible hearsay, but it was absolutely harmless. The attorney’s statement implies nothing whatsoever about whether the attorney believed DeVincenzi’s account of the robbery and murder.
In reversing the defendants’ convictions, the court relies on four perceived errors. Two of these, in my view, were not errors, and the other two, considered individually or cumulatively, were not reversible. Therefore, I cannot join the court’s opinion or subscribe to its result.
Further discussion is appropriate. Despite the court’s expressed limitation of its holding to the four asserted evidentiary errors and the judge’s failure in her instructions to cure the perceived prejudice therefrom, the court’s opinion seems also to suggest that, although the issues may not have been properly preserved for the purpose of review, there were *277other defects in the instructions which may have inclined the court toward reversing the convictions. The court states as follows: “The charge failed adequately to direct the jury’s attention to the potential influences of the plea agreement on DeVincenzi’s credibility and failed as well to dispel any implication inherent in the plea agreement, and in the presentation of DeVincenzi as a government witness, that the government knew or was warranting that DeVincenzi was telling the truth. . . . [The] language [of the charge] insufficiently conveys a need for caution as to DeVincenzi’s testimony. The charge did not tell the jury to weigh DeVincenzi’s testimony with care and not to consider DeVincenzi’s guilty plea as evidence against the defendants. It did not adequately focus the jury’s attention on the incentives that could have influenced DeVincenzi’s testimony. It did not warn the jury that, in entering into the agreement and presenting him as a witness, the government did not know whether DeVincenzi was telling the truth and did not emphasize that DeVincenzi’s truthfulness was solely a question for the jury to decide. Only by a cautionary instruction covering these points could the jury have been in a position to evaluate the impact of the plea agreement and testimony presented pursuant to it.” Ante at 263-264.
I do not agree that the jury instructions bearing on the plea agreement were defective. Furthermore, even if they were somehow defective in that regard, such defects, if not properly preserved for appellate review, would not be cause for reversal in the absence of a demonstration, not attempted by the court, that the defects created a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice. In my view, there clearly was no error creating such a risk.
Early in its opinion, ante at 260, the court expresses its disagreement with the defendants’ “claim that admission of the agreement in evidence was in effect a representation by the prosecutor that DeVincenzi’s testimony was credible, a form of vouching by the prosecutor who was not subject to cross-examination.” The court was right. Vouching occurs when “the prosecution portrays itself ‘as a guarantor of *278truthfulness’ by making personal assurances that the witness is telling the truth or by . . . indicating that information not heard as evidence supports the testimony.” United States v. Munson, 819 F.2d 337, 344-345 (1st Cir. 1987), quoting United States v. Martin, 815 F.2d 818, 821 (1st Cir.), cert, denied, 484 U.S. 825 (1987). United States v. Leslie, 759 F.2d 366, 378 (5th Cir. 1985), rev’d on other grounds, 783 F.2d 541, 542 n.l (1986) (en banc), vacated on other grounds, 479 U.S. 1074 (1987). United States v. Sims, 719 F.2d 375, 377 (11th Cir. 1983), cert, denied, 465 U.S. 1034 (1984). There was no vouching in this case. The plea agreement’s requirement that DeVincenzi testify truthfully as a condition precedent to the Commonwealth’s obligation to make a favorable sentencing recommendation neither implies the prosecutor’s assurance of DeVincenzi’s credibility nor suggests that the Commonwealth has information not known to the jury that supports DeVincenzi’s testimony. See United States v. Mealy, supra at 899-900. United States v. Munson, supra at 344-345; United States v. Martin, supra at 821-822; United States v. Townsend, 796 F.2d 158, 162-163 (6th Cir. 1986); United States v. Leslie, supra at 378; United States v. Sims, supra at 377-378. Furthermore, despite the contrary view expressed in United States v. Wallace, 848 F.2d 1464, 1474 (9th Cir. 1988), such a plea agreement simply does not imply that the Commonwealth knows or can discover whether the witness is telling the truth. That is especially the case where, as here, the plea agreement provides that the truthfulness of the witness’s testimony is for the sentencing judge, not the prosecutor, to decide. Therefore, there was no need for the judge in this case to give an instruction designed to neutralize such a nonexistent implication. Rather, an instruction in that regard would have been inappropriate.
Did the jury instructions fail adequately to direct the jury’s attention to the potential influences of the plea agreement on DeVincenzi’s credibility, as the court charges? I think not. The court states that “[t]he charge did not tell the jury to weigh DeVincenzi’s testimony with care and not to *279consider DeVincenzi’s guilty plea as evidence against the defendants.” Ante at 263. In this Commonwealth, as in other States, but unlike in the Federal courts, judges instructing juries in civil or criminal cases ordinarily are not permitted to comment on the evidence. See Commonwealth v. Kane, 19 Mass. App. Ct. 129, 138, 138 n.9 (1984). See also 9 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2551 (Chadbourn ed. 1981). Thus, Federal cases are of doubtful assistance to a determination whether the judge in these cases should have commented to the jury that DeVincenzi’s testimony should be weighed “with care.” Furthermore, I am aware of no case that requires the judge in the circumstances of these cases to instruct the jury that a witness’s guilty plea is not to be considered as evidence against the defendants.
Even if this court were to adopt a rule requiring trial judges to make sure that the jury are aware of the special circumstances that may impair the credibility of an accomplice testifying pursuant to a written plea agreement, no rule should be adopted that would require a more focused or stronger instruction than the one given in this case. The judge instructed the jury in part as follows: “An accomplice is one, and I am referring now to William DeVincenzi, one who knowingly, voluntarily, and with common intent, unites with a principal offender in the commission of a crime. A person who is an accomplice to a crime is a criminal himself and that in itself raises a question of credibility. . . . The testimony of an accomplice . . . need not be corroborated, although you may consider whether such is the case in weighing an accomplice’s credibility. Whether you should believe the testimony of an accomplice rests in your good judgment based upon all the evidence before you. You should not convict a defendant unless you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the accomplice is telling the truth.
“Now, in this case there is also evidence that William DeVincenzi, who has admitted his participation in the Tello’s murder, made a plea agreement with the Government . . . under which certain promises were made to him in return for his truthful cooperation and testimony. You may consider *280this agreement .and any hopes the witness may have as to future advantages in judging his credibility, as well as the credibility of any witness who came before you to whom promises had been made.” The judge should not be required to place his or her thumb on the scale to benefit a defendant. If, indeed, there should be any requirement that the judge remind the jury that the testimony of an accomplice pursuant to a plea agreement may be suspect, that requirement was met in this case.
The instructions were adequate, but, even if they were not, it cannot reasonably be said that the jury may have been unaware that DeVincenzi’s situation presented to the jury a unique and critical issue of his credibility. From the openings and the evidence the jury were informed that DeVincenzi was an accomplice, that he was a criminal, that his testimony had in a sense been “bought” by the Commonwealth, and that his motivation was highly suspect. Surely in the course of this seven-week trial, even if there had been no comment by the judge, the jury would have been acutely aware of the necessity that they weigh DeVincenzi’s testimony with care. Thus, in my view, if the judge did fail to state the obvious with as much vigor as the court would require, there is no risk and certainly not a substantial one that, had the instructions met the court’s requirements, the result would have been different.
I am aware that the defendants have argued numerous issues not relied on by the court in reversing these convictions and barely mentioned by the court or not mentioned at all. I, too, will refrain from what would be an unproductive discussion of those issues since the court has remanded the cases for retrial.