Court Opinion

ID: 9742432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:13:48.944354+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:32.691854
License: Public Domain

Hennessey, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent because under the relevant statutes (G. L. c. 268, § 16A, and G. L. *549c. 127, § 119) the defendants committed no crime. As in Commonwealth v. Hughes, ante, 426, I believe that the majority have failed to construe the statutes in appropriately strict fashion.
First of all, I attach no significance here to the variance between the proof and the indictments, which charged, pursuant to G. L. c. 268, § 16A, that each defendant “being a prisoner, in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham . . . did break therefrom and escape.” The stipulated facts make it clear that the defendants were convicted of violating that part of § 16A which prohibits an escape “from the custody of any officer thereof” rather than from the institution itself. The defendants do not rely upon the formal defect, which in any event could readily have been cured by amendment.
Nor is there any difficulty here, as there was in the Hughes case, of identifying any conduct of the defendants as an “escape,” within the ordinarily accepted meaning of that term. It is clear that the defendants deliberately removed themselves from their detention in Westboro State Hospital to which they had been properly ordered to be taken for thirty days observation under the provisions of G. L. c. 123, §18.
The only question is whether their escape was in violation of c. 268, § 16A. I believe it was not.
The majority rely upon the provision in G. L. c. 127, § 119, that prisoners placed in a hospital or medical facility are to be considered as in the custody of the officer , having charge of the prison, jail or house of correction. The clear and only purpose of this statute is to ensure that time spent in the hospital will be counted toward the completion of a defendant’s sentence.1 To hold that its enactment suffices to *550make conduct criminal, which would not otherwise be so, unreasonably expands the meaning of an escape statute which on its face appears to specifically delineate the circumstances in which it will render an escape criminal. Furthermore, it violates the principle that criminal laws are to be strictly construed and are not to be extended by mere implication. Commonwealth v. Paccia, 338 Mass. 4, 6 (1958). See Commonwealth v. Hughes, ante, 426 (Hennessey, J., dissenting).

The history of c. 127, § 119, gives no support to the theory that it was intended to make any conduct criminal. The provision originated in St. 1882, c. 207, designated “An Act to provide for the surgical treatment of certain prisoners.” Section 2 of that act contained language on custody and term of sentence similar to the current provision. The language of this provision was changed slightly, and the substance not at all, by St. 1906, c. 302, § 3, titled, “An Act to authorize the removal to hospitals of prisoners requiring medical treatment,” and again by St. 1967, c. 258, *550§ 2, titled, “An Act providing that a sheriff may, upon recommendation of the physician of a jail or house of correction, temporarily place a prisoner in a hospital or medical facility for treatment.”