Com. v. Anderson

• Decision Date: 18 December 1986
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Bruce W. ANDERSON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 515

501 N.E.2d 515

398 Mass. 838

COMMONWEALTH v. Bruce W. ANDERSON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Worcester.

Argued Nov. 3, 1986.

Decided Dec. 18, 1986.

Stephen Hrones, Boston, for defendant.

Claudia R. Sullivan, Asst. Dist. Atty., for Com.

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and WILKINS, NOLAN, LYNCH and O'CONNOR, JJ.

WILKINS, Justice.

The defendant, convicted of murder in the first degree of his wife, contends that, because he was denied his constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel, he is entitled to a new trial. Through new counsel on appeal, he argues that his trial counsel failed to present helpful expert testimony concerning his state of mind at the time he stabbed his wife to death. We consider this claim and, acknowledging our duties under G.L. c. 278, § 33E (1984 ed.), affirm the judgment. ¹

About 4 A.M. on July 27, 1983, in Worcester the defendant forced his way into the second floor apartment of his estranged wife, who had given birth to their child about six weeks earlier. He discovered a partially clothed man in the bedroom, chased him from the apartment building, but did not catch him. The defendant returned upstairs, with a knife he had taken from the pantry, and pursued his wife to a third floor apartment where she had sought refuge and had telephoned the police. He forced his way in, slashed one occupant of the third floor apartment, and assaulted another. He repeatedly stabbed his wife, while the occupants of the third floor apartment helplessly watched. The police recorded part of the conversation between the defendant and the victim. The defendant left the apartment, but approximately thirty seconds later he returned, stabbed her several more times, and fled. He turned himself into the police later that morning.

We have said that, if the State standard for measuring the effectiveness of counsel in a constitutional sense is met, the Sixth Amendment test expressed in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), is also necessarily met. Commonwealth v. Fuller, 394 Mass. 251, 256 n. 3, 475 N.E.2d 381 (1985). A defendant claiming ineffective assistance of counsel must show both (a) a serious incompetency, inefficiency, or inattention of counsel and (b) that counsel's conduct deprived the defendant of something substantial that was likely to have made a difference in the result. See Commonwealth v. Satterfield, 373 Mass. 109, 115 n. 10, 364 N.E.2d 1260 (1977); Commonwealth v. Saferian, 366 Mass. 89, 96, 315 N.E.2d 878 (1974). Where, as here, trial tactics are challenged, a defendant must show that the choice made by counsel was "manifestly unreasonable." Commonwealth v. Adams, 374 Mass. 722, 728, 375 N.E.2d 681 (1978). See Commonwealth v. Doucette, 391 Mass. 443, 458, 462 N.E.2d 1084 (1984); Commonwealth v. Levia, 385 Mass. 345, 353, 431 N.E.2d 928 (1982); Commonwealth v. Boutwell, 21 Mass.App.Ct. 201, 209-210, 486 N.E.2d 77 (1985).

In his opening statement to the jury, made after the Commonwealth had rested, defense counsel told the jury that he would present testimony from both a psychiatrist and a psychologist to show that "[w]ithout feeling, without any appreciation for the enormity of what was happening, [the defendant] on that night was like a robot programmed on destruction." Defense counsel then presented several witnesses who testified to circumstances arguably sympathetic to the defendant. Many of these matters, at least in general terms, were also noted in the reports the defendant's announced experts had furnished to defense counsel. There were only a few background facts in the reports possibly helpful to the defendant which did not come out at trial. ²

There was a history of stormy relations between the victim and the defendant, even while they were living together before they were married. There was evidence tending to show the following facts. The victim started many of their arguments, which concerned the defendant's lack of employment and his use of drugs. The defendant, a high-strung person, felt that his wife never left him alone, and he became nervous, depressed, and upset by their arguments. His wife would not let him use her car to go to school, and he had to drop out. His mother and an aunt had recently been hospitalized for injuries received in a motor vehicle accident. He owned a three-family house that faced foreclosure; rent receipts were insufficient to cover his mortgage obligations. The unwanted baby added stress to the marriage because the victim, a registered nurse, had been supporting them before the child was born.

There was negative information about the defendant in each expert's report, information which was not otherwise before the jury and would most likely have been, if the author of each report had testified. For example, the clinical psychologist's report, based in large measure on the defendant's statements to him, showed that the defendant started drinking at age thirteen and shortly began to experiment with various other drugs. His friends during his teenage years were chiefly motorcycle club members, with whom he was occasionally in trouble with the law. His first wife, whom the psychologist interviewed, reported that they lived together for two years after their divorce and that "on one occasion following their divorce, he found her in bed with another man and he became angered to the point of beating her and the man." After the end of that relationship, the defendant moved to California where he fathered a child by a woman with whom he had a serious relationship. After his return from California and his marriage to the victim, she obtained a restraining order against him. His drug use increased. The psychiatrist's report recounted an arrest record, including convictions for possession of drugs and for disorderly conduct. It also stated that once back in Massachusetts, he continued to inject cocaine "and used to support this habit by dealing in the drug himself."

The defendant rested without calling either of the experts his counsel had told the jury would testify. Both the prosecutor and the judge expressed surprise. Defense counsel disclaimed interest in a jury instruction based on Commonwealth v. Gould, 380 Mass. 672, 405 N.E.2d 927 (1980). ³ He explained to the jury, early in his final argument, his reason for not calling the two experts. He told the jury in effect that the experts' testimony was not needed. ⁴

What the jury did not hear was the psychiatrist's opinion that, when the defendant saw his wife apparently physically involved with another man who escaped the defendant's pursuit, the defendant was overwhelmed with rage and "in an impulsive fashion without any conscious deliberation" stabbed his wife to death. If that evidence, whose admissibility is not questioned, had been presented, it would have been relevant as to the effect of the defendant's mental state on (a) whether he committed murder with extreme atrocity or cruelty and (b) his capacity to act (and whether he did act) with deliberate premeditation, a question of the defendant's subjective state of mind. The psychiatrist's opinion might have raised a reasonable doubt sufficient to persuade the jury to return a verdict of murder in the second degree rather than in the first degree. Viewed solely in terms of the prospects of a verdict of murder in the second degree rather than a verdict of murder in the first degree, the decision not to present expert testimony appears unreasonable. ⁵

The defendant's tactical considerations were not, however, that narrowly limited. He hoped for, and defense counsel urged the jury to return, a manslaughter verdict and, on the evidence, the question of voluntary manslaughter, an intentional killing in the absence of malice, was for the jury. If on the evidence there is a reasonable doubt whether a killing, although intentional, occurred in a circumstance likely to produce in an ordinary person a state of passion or anger that would eclipse his capacity for reflection or restraint and if that is what in fact happened, there would be no malice and only a voluntary manslaughter verdict, not a murder verdict, would be permissible. See Commonwealth v. McLeod, 394 Mass. 727, 738, 477 N.E.2d 972, cert. denied sub nom. Aiello v. Massachusetts, 474 U.S. 919, 106 S.Ct. 248, 88 L.Ed.2d 256 (1985); Commonwealth v. Walden, 380 Mass. 724, 727-728, 405 N.E.2d 939 (1980). But it is well established that a defendant's passion or anger in...