Com. v. Burnett

• Decision Date: 11 December 1998
• Citation: 428 Mass. 469,702 N.E.2d 803
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Neil BURNETT.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 803

702 N.E.2d 803

428 Mass. 469

COMMONWEALTH v. Neil BURNETT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Essex.

Argued Sept. 10, 1998.

Decided Dec. 11, 1998.

John F. Palmer, Boston, for defendant.

Robert J. Bender, Assistant District Attorney, for Commonwealth.

Before WILKINS, C.J., and LYNCH, GREANEY, FRIED, MARSHALL and IRELAND, JJ.

LYNCH, Justice.

On December 11, 1973, a jury found the defendant guilty of armed robbery and murder in the first degree. In Commonwealth v. Burnett, 371 Mass. 13, 353 N.E.2d 665 (1976), this court affirmed the convictions after a plenary review of the law and the evidence pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 33E. Because the facts and arguments underlying this appeal are sufficiently recounted in this court's earlier opinion, we limit our factual summary to the procedural history.

On April 7, 1981, the defendant filed a pro se motion for a new trial alleging that the jury instruction on reasonable doubt was "far short of the minimum standards [required] by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." ¹

The judge who presided over the 1973 trial denied the defendant's motion, and on October 15, 1981, a single justice of this court denied the defendant's application for leave to appeal pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 33E.

On June 6, 1989, the defendant again filed a pro se motion for a new trial, this time alleging ineffective assistance of counsel. A Superior Court judge ruled that the motion raised no arguments that could not have been raised earlier and denied the motion. The defendant filed a third motion for a new trial on October 1, 1992, arguing, inter alia, that it was not until the decision in Commonwealth v. Rembiszewski, 391 Mass. 123, 461 N.E.2d 201 (1984), three years after his first motion for a new trial, that we definitively recognized that our decision in Commonwealth v. Ferreira, 373 Mass. 116, 364 N.E.2d 1264 (1977), should be given retroactive application. ²

The defendant supplemented his 1992 motion with a pro se memorandum in which he argued that the error in the reasonable doubt instruction at his trial was of a kind that can never be harmless. On February 23, 1993, the motion was denied, in part because error in the reasonable doubt instruction had been raised in the defendant's 1981 motion for a new trial.

On January 17, 1997, the defendant again petitioned a single justice, seeking leave to appeal from the denial of his 1992 motion. The single justice granted leave to appeal "on the issues of the retroactivity and waiver of the claim of error based on a Ferreira instruction." We now review the motion judge's denial of the defendant's 1992 motion for a new trial to determine whether the trial judge's reasonable doubt instruction may properly be attacked on collateral review.

In this appeal the defendant argues again that the jury instruction in his 1973 trial was constitutionally flawed under Commonwealth v. Ferreira, supra, and also that, under Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993), constitutional error of this kind can never be harmless. ³ Finally, the defendant argues that the holdings in these cases were insufficiently developed at the time of his various motions for a new trial such that he has not waived the right to argue these issues on collateral appeal. See Commonwealth v. Amirault, 424 Mass. 618, 639-641, 677 N.E.2d 652 (1997) (discussing waiver doctrine).

We now conclude that regardless of their merits, as an initial proposition, the defendant has waived these arguments and there is no constitutional bar to applying the waiver doctrine.

1. Waiver of Ferreira argument. In an appeal from the denial of postconviction relief where the conviction has already received plenary review under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, "the defendant is not entitled to our determination whether the instructions were erroneous if the issues presented could have been raised at trial or on direct appeal but were not." Commonwealth v. Rembiszewski, supra at 126, 461 N.E.2d 201. See Commonwealth v. Ambers, 397 Mass. 705, 707, 493 N.E.2d 837 (1986). "However ... [w]e have excused the failure to raise a constitutional issue at trial or on direct appeal when the constitutional theory on which the defendant has relied was not sufficiently developed at the time of trial or direct appeal to afford the defendant a genuine opportunity to raise his claim at those junctures...." Commonwealth v. Rembiszewski, supra.

In Commonwealth v. Ferreira, supra at 129, 364 N.E.2d 1264, this court reversed a conviction where the judge defined reasonable doubt using examples from the jurors' daily lives that "tended to trivialize the awesome duty of the jury to determine whether the defendant's guilt was proved beyond a reasonable doubt." The court supported its decision with a long list of cases going back to 1972 criticizing this type of charge. See id.

In Commonwealth v. Ambers, supra, we affirmed a 1973 conviction on jury instructions suffering from much the same infirmities as those in Ferreira and those complained of here. The defendant in Ambers was tried and his conviction was affirmed prior to this court's decision in Ferreira. Nonetheless, we concluded that defense counsel was sufficiently on notice of the Ferreira argument in light of earlier cases foreshadowing Ferreira 's holding. See Commonwealth v. Ambers, supra at 709 n. 4, 493 N.E.2d 837 ("Even assuming that our disapproval of specific analogies to the personal decisions of jurors achieved constitutional status in 1980 ... this result was foreshadowed in 1972"); Commonwealth v. Ferguson, 365 Mass. 1, 12, 309 N.E.2d 182 (1974); Commonwealth v. Bumpus, 362 Mass. 672, 290 N.E.2d 167 (1972), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 411 U.S. 945, 93 S.Ct. 1941, 36 L.Ed.2d 407 (1973), aff'd. on rehearing, 365 Mass. 66, 309 N.E.2d 491 (1974).

The instant case comes to us in a procedural posture that is, in every significant way, identical to Ambers. In both cases the defendants failed to raise Ferreira claims on direct review. As in Ambers, we affirmed the present defendant's conviction after Commonwealth v. Bumpus, supra, but before Ferreira. As in Ambers, this case is before us pursuant to leave to appeal under G.L. c. 278, § 33E.

We refuse to depart from controlling precedent and today reaffirm our holding that Bumpus foreshadowed Ferreira sufficiently to alert subsequent defendants to the issue. See Commonwealth v. Ambers, supra at 708-710, 493 N.E.2d 837. See also Commonwealth v. Limone, 410 Mass. 364, 365 n. 2, 573 N.E.2d 1 (1991) ("no foreshadowing of the rule expressed in Ferreira until our decision in Commonwealth v. Bumpus "); Commonwealth v. Kelleher, 395 Mass. 821, 825-826, 482 N.E.2d 804 (1985) ( "the defendant's challenge of the jury charge is founded on principles first enunciated ... in Commonwealth v. Bumpus "); Commonwealth v. Grace, 381 Mass. 753, 760, 412 N.E.2d 354 (1980) (court relied on defense counsel's failure to object to Ferreira-type reasonable doubt instruction in wake of Bumpus ). Therefore, because the defendant did not raise the Ferreira argument on direct (post-Bumpus ) appeal, G.L. c. 278, § 33E, precludes further review as the issue could have been raised at trial and on direct appeal but was not. ⁴

2. Waiver and retroactivity of the Sullivan principles. In Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 280-281, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993), the United States Supreme Court held that a deficient jury instruction describing the burden of proof inherent in the term "beyond a reasonable doubt" creates a structural defect that was not susceptible of harmless error analysis. The Court reasoned that an instruction that understates the reasonable doubt standard violates the defendant's right under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to be convicted only on a jury's finding of guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The defendant in the instant case argues that the holding in Sullivan v. Louisiana, supra, is retroactively applicable to his case. See Commonwealth v. Bray, 407 Mass. 296, 299-300, 553 N.E.2d 538 (1990) (acknowledging Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 [1989] ). As with his Ferreira claim, however, the defendant did not timely raise this issue and thus this argument is waived. Because of this conclusion, we need not address the retroactivity issue.

The instruction in the present case is less obviously deficient than the one at issue in Sullivan. As part of his charge, the judge in Sullivan instructed the jury that reasonable doubt "must be such doubt as would give rise to grave uncertainty, raised in your mind by reasons of the unsatisfactory character of the evidence or lack thereof.... It is an actual substantial doubt." See Cage v. Louisiana, 498 U.S. 39, 40, 111 S.Ct. 328, 112 L.Ed.2d 339 (1990) (per curiam) (quoting jury charge Court later stated was "essentially identical" to Sullivan charge (508 U.S. 275, 277, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 [1993] ).

Here the instructional flaw was a poor choice of demonstrative examples within the context of a charge. This charge also contained language emphasizing the presumption of innocence and the duty to convict based only on an independent and careful evaluation of the evidence. Although the judge strayed in using examples from the jurors' lives, he coupled them with a curative preamble: "What [reasonable doubt] really means is that after you discuss the evidence among yourselves, determining, as I said before, what part--all, part, or none--of any witness's story you believe, and what inferences you are going to draw, that you must be sure that the defendant is guilty. Otherwise you have to acquit him ..." (emphasis added).

The distinctions between the charges in Cage and Sullivan and the one at issue here leave us uncertain whether the charge in this case falls within the Supreme Court's concept of structural...