Com. v. Bowman
| Decision Date | 01 December 1977 |
| Citation | 370 N.E.2d 435,373 Mass. 760 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Thomas Hoffman, Boston, for defendant.
Robert J. McKenna, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.
Before HENNESSEY, C. J., and QUIRICO, BRAUCHER, KAPLAN and WILKINS, JJ.
On indictments for murder in the first degree of his companion Yvonne and their two-year old son Marcus, the defendant Compton Bowman was convicted of murder in the second degree of Yvonne and acquitted of the murder of Marcus. The defendant argues on his appeal from the conviction that on all the evidence this court ought to use its dispensing power under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, to order entry of a manslaughter verdict (or possibly order a new trial). Section 33E is also invoked in respect to the omission of the trial judge to instruct on manslaughter, and an alleged error by him in his instructions on self-defense. We conclude that this is not a proper occasion for granting any extraordinary § 33E relief from the jury's verdict, which is amply supported.
About 6:15 A.M., Friday, May 23, 1975, the defendant appeared at Faulkner Hospital, Jamaica Plain, exhibiting a bullet wound at his left wrist and forearm, but otherwise unbruised. During the short period of his admission and treatment (the wound was minor), the defendant made statements to a medical technician, a nurse, and three police officers, which taken together told the following story in substance. 1
Earlier that morning he had quarrelled with his girl friend because she had informed against him to the immigration authorities and tried to get him deported. He had shot her and their son. In speaking to the medical technician (to whom he evidently was more forthcoming than to the others), the defendant said he shot the child because he didn't want to abandon him to the care of strangers; to an officer he said he thought the child got in the way of the shooting. He said he was shot; he did not know how he came to be struck during the episode. He had bought the gun at some earlier date from a man at Massachusetts Avenue and Tremont Street, Boston.
He said further at the hospital that he had gone to New York in connection with his immigration problem; making no progress there, he returned to Boston on the afternoon of Thursday, May 22. That evening he visited an immigration lawyer in Boston whom he had chosen from the yellow pages of the telephone book. He came home about 9 P.M. and slept there. In the early morning, as he was about to enter his car, he realized he had left his keys in the house. The trouble started when he reentered the house. After the shooting he drove off seeking a police station. He found a post office, and after speaking to a woman there, proceeded to Faulkner Hospital.
In consequence of the defendant's statements, and while he was still being treated at the hospital, a police car was dispatched to the defendant's house at 364 Blue Ledge Drive, Roslindale. On the floor of the second-floor bathroom were found the bodies of Yvonne and Marcus, both dead. The place was disordered, with Yvonne's hair curlers and slippers strewn about, which might suggest a struggle. A .22 caliber revolver with a six-chambered cylinder rested open on the toilet seat. It can be taken that all chambers had been discharged in the encounter in the bathroom and that the several wounds inflicted on the victims were traceable to bullets fired from that gun. Yvonne had been wounded frontally in the chest, the bullet penetrating her heart; a second wound was caused by a bullet entering the back of her head; and a third resulted from a bullet entering the right side of her neck just above her collar bone. The first and second wounds were grievous enough to cause death. Marcus was killed by a bullet in the head. It could not be determined at what distance from the bodies the gun was fired. The spent bullet extracted from the defendant's forearm came from the same gun. When arrested at the hospital, the defendant had in his pocket seven live .25 caliber bullets and one live .22 caliber bullet; another live .22 caliber bullet was discovered at the autopsy loose in Yvonne's clothes.
What has been recounted sketches the prosecution's case in chief on the murder indictments, and on this and the rest of the evidence (developed below) the Commonwealth contended that the defendant intentionally killed Yvonne with a connected killing of the child, 2 suffering an injury as Yvonne fought back. The defense postulated that Yvonne had been the aggressor (using a revolver not known to the defendant), and that all the shots were fired by Yvonne, the defendant having acted throughout in self-defense without excessive force to ward off her attack, thereby incurring his injury.
Taking the stand in his own behalf, the defendant denied that he had made various statements attributed to him by the police officers who had seen him at the hospital; he had told them merely, so he testified, that Yvonne and Marcus had been shot and that he also had been shot.
Next, as to motive. The defendant had received an official letter on Saturday, May 17, requiring him to appear at a Boston immigration office to answer to his status. A native of British Guiana, the defendant had long overstayed his time as a "visitor," and had been ordered by the immigration authorities in New York on July 16, 1969, to leave the country by August 15, 1969. About this time the defendant fled to Boston and took up residence there. 3 A deportation warrant had been issued against him on May 13, 1970. 4 The defendant said, however, that he had not been seriously concerned about deportation; though he did make the trip to New York, it was for "relaxation"; and the Boston lawyer, at the meeting which in fact occurred on Thursday evening, May 22, had held out hope at least of postponing the event. 5 According to the lawyer, the defendant said at that meeting that he suspected Yvonne had informed against him.
The defendant in his testimony pictured the events of the Friday morning thus. On returning to the house from the car and going to the bathroom to wash, Marcus trailing along, he was met by Yvonne who said he had taken something from her room. The defendant admitted he had removed two picture albums and told her what he had been contriving over a period of time but had concealed from her that he was leaving her and moving elsewhere and would clear the house of his furniture. She asked about immigration this, he testified, was his first sign that she knew he had any immigration problem at all. He answered that he now had a lawyer who was taking care of the matter. She left the bathroom and returned in a moment with a revolver, saying in effect, if they don't send you one way, I'm going to send you another.
The defendant somewhat muted his reasons for leaving Yvonne which were, according to his testimony, that there had been an estrangement over several weeks and that she had been answering business telephone calls at the house by saying that the defendant could not be reached there (when accused, she had denied this). The record leaves Yvonne as a shadowy figure (she is described by others as a "quiet" person). Rather than laying strong emphasis on an hypothesis that she could be stirred to rage and thus to murderous action by the prospect of his desertion, 6 the defendant appeared to urge a mercenary motive on her part for eliminating him, namely, that she wanted possession of the furniture in the house free and clear. 7
Finally, as to the physical encounter. The defendant admitted to buying a gun at Massachusetts Avenue and Tremont Street, but he said it was a .25 caliber, and he had understood that Yvonne sold it in April when he had gone on a three-day trip to Washington, leaving her without money. However, she had not disposed of some .25 caliber bullets, and he had placed them in a plastic cup in the bathroom. When she came at him with a gun, he thought it must still be the .25, as he knew of no other gun. Seeing his son dead when the shooting was over, he tried to reload the gun with bullets from the plastic cup and do away with himself; only then did he find that the bullets did not fit.
In the struggle proper, which the defendant acted out in his version at some length during his cross-examination, he claimed never to have had the gun in his hand until all shots were fired and Yvonne slumped from her mortal wounds and released the weapon.
1. Under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, 8 it is appropriate for this court to consider whether the verdict of conviction of murder in the second degree was against the weight of the evidence considered in a large or nontechnical sense whether, as the defendant argues, the evidence, so considered, justifies a verdict of no more than manslaughter. See Commonwealth v. McInerney --- Mass. ---, --- a, 365 N.E.2d 815 (1977); Commonwealth v. Jones, 366 Mass. 805, 808, 323 N.E.2d 726 (1975); Commonwealth v. Baker, 346 Mass. 107, 109, 190 N.E.2d 555 (1963). We think the verdict rendered was well founded. It suffices for the present purpose to point to the grave difficulties a jury might feel in crediting the defendant's responses to the case made against him of murder with malice aforethought.
If the defendant vouchsafed at the hospital no more than he admitted at trial, a jury would be left with a doubt how witnesses acquired information indubitably true, such as that an immigration problem existed, or what might explain the witnesses' adding to the defendant's actual statements to them. It may be noted that not even in the defendant's trial account of what he said at the hospital was there any definite accusation that he was set upon by Yvonne.
The defendant sought to make light of the immigration trouble that faced him, thus weakening the inference that his anger at Yvonne could take lethal form. But a jury would be...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Com. v. Tavares
...in the (first) degree was against the weight of the evidence considered in a large or nontechnical sense ...," Commonwealth v. Bowman, 373 Mass. 760, 765, 370 N.E.2d 435 (1977), and we order a reduction of the verdict to murder in the second We summarize the facts. On the evening of May 24,......
-
Com. v. Fitzgerald
...require the entry of a verdict of a lesser degree of guilt on the convictions of murder in the second degree. See Commonwealth v. Bowman, 373 Mass. 760, 370 N.E.2d 435 (1977). Judgments 1 Although the defendant claimed an appeal from the judge's action on the charge of unlawfully carrying a......
-
Commonwealth v. Garabedian
...must consider whether the verdict is "against the weight of the evidence considered in a large or nontechnical sense." Commonwealth v. Bowman, 373 Mass. 760, 765 (1977), citing Commonwealth v. McInerney, 373 Mass. 136, 140 (1977), and Commonwealth v. Baker, 346 Mass. 107, 109 (1963). See Co......
-
Com. v. Toney
...large or nontechnical sense." Commonwealth v. Cadwell, 374 Mass. 308, 316, 372 N.E.2d 246 (1978), quoting from Commonwealth v. Bowman, 373 Mass. 760, 765, 370 N.E.2d 435 (1977). On appeal the defendant pursues the same tactic as at trial. Nowhere does she provide the evidence necessary to e......
-
Is 'substituted judgment' a valid legal concept?
...289 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1962). (40)In the Matter of Spring, 380 Mass. 629, 636, 405 N.E.2d 115, 120 (1980). (41)Saikewicz, 373 Mass. at 759, 370 N.E.2d at 435. (42)Guardianship of Roe, 383 Mass. 415, 421 N.E.2d 40, 52 (1981). (43)In the Matter of Moe, 385 Mass. 555, 565, 432 N.E.2d 712, 720 (198......
-
The judicial role in life-sustaining medical treatment decisions.
...government was created. Achieving this ideal is our responsibility ... and is not to be entrusted to any other group ...." Id. at 759, 370 N.E.2d at 435.); In re Estate of Longeway, 133 Ill. 2d 33, 549 N.E.2d 292 (1989). The Illinois Supreme Court's decision allowing a guardian to withdraw ......