Com. v. Butler
| Decision Date | 14 August 1996 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. William BUTLER. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Jane Davidson Montori, Assistant District Attorney, for Commonwealth.
Kevin G. Murphy, Springfield, for defendant.
Before LIACOS, C.J., and WILKINS, ABRAMS, LYNCH, O'CONNOR, GREANEY and FRIED, JJ.
We consider whether the defendant's incriminating statements regarding the homicide with which he is charged should be suppressed. After his arrest for breaking and entering, the police delayed his presentment to a court until after questioning that led to his statements concerning the homicide.
The defendant is charged with murder in the first degree and breaking and entering in the nighttime. Prior to trial, the defendant moved to suppress statements he made to the West Springfield police after his arrest and prior to his presentment to a court for arraignment. Following a hearing, a Superior Court judge granted the defendant's motion to suppress the statements. The Commonwealth sought leave to obtain interlocutory review of this ruling from a single justice of this court pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 28E (1994 ed.), and Mass.R.Crim.P. 15(b)(2), 378 Mass. 882 (1979). The single justice allowed the Commonwealth's application and transmitted the case to the full court. We now vacate the allowance of the motion to suppress.
The judge made the following findings of fact. 1 On June 5, 1993, the victim's mother reported to the West Springfield police department that the victim had been missing since May 23, 1993. On June 9, 1993, the victim's brother and Robert Lunt, the owner of the multi-family residential unit where the victim resided, went to the police station to report that the defendant had broken into the victim's apartment on June 7, 1993. Lunt also reported that the defendant was the last person to see the victim before her disappearance. Lunt registered with the police a breaking and entering complaint against the defendant.
At approximately 11 P.M. on Thursday, June 10, 1993, the police received a call that alerted them to a vehicle parked outside the victim's residence. A check of the registration plate revealed that the plate was stolen. The police entered the building and discovered two individuals upstairs and Lunt in the basement. 2 A further search of the basement uncovered the victim's body hidden under a pile of carpeting. The police brought Lunt and the two others to police headquarters for questioning. By 12:20 A.M., the police located and arrested the defendant on charges of breaking and entering in the nighttime based on Lunt's earlier complaint.
Captain Murray, the lead investigating officer, remained at the apartment house until approximately 5 A.M. A preliminary examination of the body by Captain Murray and the medical examiner revealed a core body temperature of sixty-one degrees while the room temperature was seventy-two degrees. The body showed no visible signs of trauma and had not begun to decay or decompose.
Upon his return to the station, Captain Murray reviewed the statements made by Lunt and the other two persons found at the scene. At 5:40 A.M., Captain Murray and State Trooper John Murphy began interviewing Lunt. Lunt made two statements that indicated that the defendant knew the victim's whereabouts during the period that she was missing. After more than three and one-half hours of questioning Lunt, the officers were unable to draw any further conclusions regarding the cause of the victim's death. 3
At approximately 10:50 A.M. on Friday, June 11, 1993, Captain Murray and Trooper Murphy began to interview the defendant at the West Springfield police department, where he was in custody. 4 The officers again informed the defendant that he was under arrest for the June 7, 1993, breaking and entering of the victim's apartment. The officers advised the defendant of his Miranda rights, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and the defendant waived those rights both orally and in writing. The officers testified that they gave the defendant an opportunity to make a telephone call. The judge made no findings to this effect. When informed about the victim's death, the defendant said that he knew nothing about it and had last seen the victim approximately two weeks before.
At one point, the defendant denied telling Lunt about the victim's supposed whereabouts during the time when she was reported missing. Captain Murray brought Lunt into the room. The defendant and Lunt began accusing each other of lying. One of the officers told the defendant that the autopsy would probably indicate the cause of death. Lunt then yelled at the defendant to tell the officers what happened. The defendant screamed back, "I didn't mean to do it." The officers then removed Lunt from the room. It was approximately 1 P.M.
Earlier, at approximately 12:15 P.M., during the interview of the defendant, Captain Murray had called the Springfield District Court, which is located no more than a ten-minute drive from the police station. Captain Murray informed someone at the clerk's office that he had the defendant under arrest on a charge of breaking and entering and that he was interviewing him as a "possible suspect in a death from an unknown cause." The captain asked how late he could bring the defendant in for arraignment on the breaking and entering charge. The court employee responded that if he was not in the courthouse by 1 P.M., then he would not be arraigned that day. (Arraignments would next be held after the weekend, on Monday morning.) 5 Captain Murray knew that the defendant had a right to be arraigned, but he chose to continue the interrogation of the defendant rather than bring him to court for arraignment on the breaking and entering charge.
After Lunt left the interrogation room, the defendant started to cry. The officers gave the defendant a soda. The officers resumed questioning the defendant concerning his interaction with the victim. Shortly thereafter, at approximately 1:15 P.M. on Friday, June 11, 1993, the defendant agreed to provide a written statement. In that statement, the defendant asserted that in the early morning hours of May 27, 1993, he and the victim were smoking crack cocaine at her apartment when she convulsed, vomited, and soon thereafter lost consciousness. The defendant claimed that he tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate her. He then cleaned her with paper towels and decided to move her body to the basement. He stated that in order to keep vomit from falling out of her mouth while he transported her to the basement, he stuffed paper towels in her mouth. He then reported that he preserved her body by packing "blue ice" around it. There was testimony that the statement was completed at 2:15 P.M., but the judge made no findings to that effect.
The officers doubted the defendant's version of events which conflicted with the statements of several other witnesses. Moreover, the condition of the body was not consistent with preservation merely by ice packs. A State trooper called the West Springfield police department to report that the medical examiner, while conducting the autopsy of the victim's body had discovered paper towels lodged deep in her throat. This statement indicated to the officers that suffocation was the cause of death.
At approximately 3 P.M., the officers presented this information to the defendant and told him that they did not believe his "blue ice" story. The defendant then acknowledged that he had preserved the victim's body by placing it in the freezer of an ice cream truck. Lunt owned the truck and the victim had sold ice cream from it prior to her death. After the victim's death and before the officers discovered her body, the defendant had driven the truck in the victim's place serving ice cream from it while the victim's body was in the truck's freezer. At approximately 3:15 P.M. on Friday, June 11, 1993, the defendant was charged with murder in the first degree.
On Saturday, June 12, 1993, some time after 11 A.M., Captain Murray interviewed the defendant again. The defendant made essentially the same inculpatory statements he had made at the three o'clock interview on Friday. At some point, the defendant became agitated and demanded to be returned to his cell. Captain Murray stopped the questioning and returned the defendant to his cell. At approximately 1 P.M., the defendant requested to speak with Trooper Murphy alone. Trooper Murphy met with the defendant alone. Trooper Murphy suggested that someone must have assisted the defendant when he moved the body out of the ice cream truck's freezer to the basement. The defendant responded that the trooper was correct, "but I'm not gonna to tell you who he is until I talk to my lawyer on Monday." Trooper Murphy immediately ended the interview.
There was testimony that on Sunday, June 13, 1993, the defendant asked to speak with Captain Murray. Captain Murray went back to the cell area. The defendant told Captain Murray, "I could help you find Steven Higgins." Captain Murray would not talk with the defendant. The judge made no findings concerning the defendant's interaction with the officers on Sunday. 6
The Superior Court judge found that, except for the last conversation with Trooper Murphy on Saturday, before each of the defendant's statements, Captain Murray advised the defendant of his Miranda rights both orally and in writing. On each of those occasions, the defendant acknowledged, both in writing and orally, that he understood his rights and waived them. The defendant was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at any time during the questioning. The defendant's responses to the questions were detailed and responsive. Finally, the judge found that, although the questioning was not genteel, it was civil and the officers did not engage in deception or trickery.
On...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Com. v. Fryar
...in Rosario to incidents of presentment delay occurring after our decision in that case was announced." Commonwealth v. Butler, 423 Mass. 517, 524, 668 N.E.2d 832 (1996).10 The witness testified about seeing a black male wearing a University of Connecticut shirt and swinging a stick and anot......
-
Com. v. Hunter
...will not be excluded for unreasonable delay, while statements made after that period must be excluded. See Commonwealth v. Butler, 423 Mass. 517, 524, 668 N.E.2d 832 (1996). Because Rosario was decided after the time of interrogation in the present case, however, it does not control our ana......
-
Commonwealth v. Fortunato
...a measure of uncertainty and the likelihood of uneven application in practice.” Id. at 54, 661 N.E.2d 71. See Commonwealth v. Butler, 423 Mass. 517, 523–524, 668 N.E.2d 832 (1996). In contrast to this somewhat amorphous standard, we saw the bright-line Rosario rule as being able to “(a) lar......
-
Commonwealth v. Santos
...motion to suppress, supplemented by undisputed facts in the record consistent with the judge's findings.2See Commonwealth v. Butler, 423 Mass. 517, 526 n. 10, 668 N.E.2d 832 (1996) (we use uncontroverted facts that do not contradict judge's findings). The victim lived in a second-floor apar......