Com. v. Cordle
| Decision Date | 26 April 1989 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Melissa Jo CORDLE. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Bruce Ferg, Brockton (Joseph M. Young, Boston, with him), for defendant.
Michael D. O'Keefe, Asst. Dist. Atty. (Julia K. Vermynck, Asst. Dist. Atty., with him), for Com.
Before WILKINS, LIACOS, ABRAMS, NOLAN and LYNCH, JJ.
The defendant, Melissa Jo Cordle, appeals from her convictions for the murders in the first degree of Ralph Anderson and Frances Schiappa, and from her conviction for burglary. The defendant argues that the judge should have allowed her motions for required findings of not guilty. She also argues that, even if the evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdicts, the judge erred in failing to instruct the jurors that mere presence at the scene was insufficient to establish guilt and that a new trial therefore is required. We conclude that the evidence is sufficient to support the jury's verdicts, but that the judge's jury instructions require us to reverse and remand for a new trial.
We consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. Commonwealth v. Salemme, 395 Mass. 594, 595, 481 N.E.2d 471 (1985). The jury could have found the following facts. Ralph Anderson and a woman named Frances Schiappa were murdered in Anderson's cottage at 74 Town Neck Road in Sandwich. The murders occurred sometime between midnight and 4:30 A.M. on the morning of June 15, 1985. Anderson died as a result of a gunshot wound to his neck; Schiappa died as a result of a gunshot wound to her head, smoke inhalation, and thermal injury. The cottage burned that morning, and fire fighters found the charred bodies of Anderson and Schiappa on the floor of Anderson's bedroom.
The defendant had been involved in a romantic relationship with Ralph Anderson for seven years or more. The relationship deteriorated, however, to the point where the defendant pleaded with Anderson just to meet with her. The defendant sent Anderson a series of letters asking over and over for an attempt at reconciliation. In one she wrote, In another letter, dated November 19-23, she wrote, In a note dated November 21, she wrote, During February, March, April, May, and June of 1985, the defendant called Anderson many times, at all hours of the day and night. Many of the telephone calls were for a minute or less.
On November 14, 1984, the defendant kept following Anderson. After speaking to the defendant in her automobile, Anderson went to the home of his friend, Barbara Manning. Once inside, Anderson, who seemed upset, called the police. When Anderson and Manning began to drive away in Anderson's automobile, the defendant started to follow them. Anderson therefore drove to the Sandwich police station. As a result of Anderson's visit to the police station, Officer Peter Howell searched for the defendant and located her in a nearby laundromat parking lot. The defendant looked sad. After the officer advised the defendant of her Miranda rights, the defendant admitted that she had been following Anderson and that she had threatened to kill him. She said that she only made the threat because she was angry. She stated that she loved Anderson, and would never kill him.
In December of 1984 or January of 1985, during a conversation about problems with local teenagers breaking into houses, the defendant told a Brockton neighbor that she had a gun. The neighbor assumed that the defendant meant a "BB gun" which the neighbor had once noticed in the defendant's house. The neighbor later told a police officer that she was concerned because the defendant seemed depressed and might be prone to kill herself.
On May 28, 1985, at approximately 11:30 P.M., the defendant stood outside in the street as Anderson went into the house of his neighbor, Paula Butler, and used her telephone. As a result of the telephone call, two police officers went to investigate the situation at Anderson's cottage. Officer James Foley noticed that a small metal telephone junction box at the back of the cottage was broken: the box was hanging down and was not securely fastened to the wall. A nearby window was broken. The porch door was damaged. The side door was damaged and had elongated splinters of wood still clinging to the lock, which was in a locked position. By the time the officer arrived, Anderson and the defendant were sitting in Anderson's kitchen. The defendant had a large gash on the bottom of her left foot, which she later admitted was caused by her kicking the telephone box. Anderson was upset to the point of tears, and had a conversation with the officer. The officer then arrested the defendant for breaking and entering in the nighttime and malicious destruction of personal property. The defendant was never prosecuted for these crimes.
On Friday, June 14, 1985, the day before the murder, the defendant borrowed an automobile from Exoticar Incorporated because her own automobile was being repaired. The automobile she borrowed was a 1976 Chevrolet Nova, with the Massachusetts registration number 660-NIJ. The defendant spent the day with her friend, Doris Stohl. Toward the end of the day, they went to a local bar, where the defendant called Anderson's home at approximately 5 P.M. The defendant spoke to both Schiappa and Anderson. Afterward, the defendant decided to spend the evening at Stohl's house in Weymouth. The defendant planned to play golf the next morning, and the golf course was fifteen to twenty miles from the defendant's home, but only three miles from Stohl's home. Stohl's home was approximately 44.7 miles from Anderson's cottage in Sandwich. Stohl last saw the defendant when Stohl went to sleep at 11:30 P.M. Although Stohl woke up during the night, she did not notice if the defendant was still there.
In Sandwich, on the same evening, Martin Raftery, a friend of Anderson's, saw Anderson and Schiappa at a local restaurant called The Good Times. Rafferty saw Anderson and Schiappa drink, but did not see them eat. Anderson and Schiappa left The Good Times between 12 and 12:30 A.M.
At approximately 1 A.M. on Saturday, June 15, 1985, a young man named Shawn Morrissey went to visit his girl friend, Robin Spoffard, who lived at 44 Town Neck Road, three houses away from Anderson's cottage. Morrissey went to speak to Spoffard at her bedroom window which faced Town Neck Road. Ten minutes after they started to talk, they noticed an automobile which time after time went slowly on Town Neck Road, coming past them from both directions. Spoffard suggested that they follow the suspicious automobile. She climbed out of her window and entered Morrissey's automobile. The couple followed the automobile through the streets of Sandwich to Coast Guard Road. Morrissey wrote down the automobile's registration number with eyeliner on the back of an envelope: the number was 660-NIJ. The couple followed the automobile to a parking lot which faced Cape Cod Canal. In the parking lot, Morrissey shined his automobile's headlights directly at the automobile's driver. At separate photographic lineups, both Morrissey and Spoffard identified the automobile's driver as the defendant. After five minutes, the defendant drove out of the lot, and the couple followed her back to Town Neck Road. The defendant drove off down the street, and neither Morrissey nor Spoffard saw her again that evening. Morrissey returned Spoffard to her home at about 2:30 A.M.
At about 3:30 A.M., another young man named Dennis Parker, returning with his girl friend from Boston, noticed a house with smoke coming out of it, but thought the smoke came from a fireplace. The couple went to the beach to watch the sunrise. When they passed the house again at about 4 A.M., they noticed flames toward the back of the door. Parker went to the house. He could not get in the front door because it was locked. The side door opened with no resistance. Parker went in and yelled. Hearing no response, he left because of the smoke and the heat of the flames.
The door through which Parker entered had been broken. A rectangular block of the door frame had been ripped away from its usual place and was attached to the lock. The telephone wire, which led to the junction box damaged by the defendant on May 28, was cleanly cut, although the junction box itself was securely attached to the wall. The television antenna wire at the front of the house also had been cut. Firefighters found the badly burned body of Anderson approximately three feet inside his bedroom door. They found Schiappa's body across the bedroom on the other side of the bed. They removed the bodies to the kitchen. Anderson's wallet and Schiappa's purse were found in the cottage, without any money in them. A duplicate copy of Anderson's motor vehicle registration was found in Anderson's bureau. Anderson had applied for this duplicate in March, 1985, explaining in his application that he had lost the original.
Later that morning, between 6:45 and 7 A.M., in the Stohls' house in Weymouth, the defendant was dressed and seated in the kitchen. Donald Stohl, Doris Stohl's husband, was surprised to see the defendant because he did not know that she stayed overnight, and because this was the only time, of all the times she had stayed over, that she was awake, dressed, and sitting in the kitchen when he woke up. The defendant woke Doris Stohl at 7 A.M. The defendant had never gone into Doris Stohl's room and awakened her at 7 A.M. in all the times she had stayed over.
The afternoon following the murder, between 3:30 and 4 P.M., Carol Tofanelli, a neighbor of the defendant in Brockton, informed the defendant that...
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