Com. v. Chapin

• Decision Date: 01 March 1956
• Citation: 132 N.E.2d 404,333 Mass. 610
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Kenneth R. CHAPIN (two cases).
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 404

132 N.E.2d 404

333 Mass. 610

COMMONWEALTH v. Kenneth R. CHAPIN (two cases).

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Hampden.

Argued Dec. 5, 6, 1955.

Decided March 1, 1956.

Stephen A. Moynahan, Dist. Atty., Springfield, for the Commonwealth.

Jean R. LaCroix, Springfield, Maurice H. Baitler, West Springfield, for defendant.

Before QUA, C. J., and WILKINS, SPALDING, WILLIAMS and WHITTEMORE, JJ.

WILKINS, Justice.

On these two indictments, one for the murder of Lynn Ann Smith, and one for the murder of Steven Ross Goldberg, the defendant has been found guilty in the first degree. In each case sentence of death was imposed, and execution of the sentence was stayed as required by G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 279, § 4, as appearing in St.1935, c. 437, § 3. The cases, which were tried together, are here upon his appeals with a consolidated summary of the record, a transcript of the evidence, and assignments of error. G.L.(Ter.Ed.) c. 278, §§ 33A-33G, as amended by St.1939, c. 341, and St.1954, c. 187, § 1.

The main issue at the trial was the criminal responsibility of the defendant, a high school student eighteen years of age. Lynn Ann Smith was a fourteen year old girl living at 53 Daviston Street, Springfield, two houses from the defendant, who lived at 63 Daviston Street. On the evening of September 25, 1954, she was 'baby sitting' near by at 860 Sumner Avenue in the home of a family named Goldberg. She was a friend of the defendant's sister. Asleep in the Goldberg house were Steven, aged four, and a brother Robert, aged six. When their parents returned about 11:30 P.M. Lynn Ann and Steven had been stabbed to death. Robert was unharmed. There were thirty-eight wounds on the upper body and head of Lynn Ann, whose neck was fractured. There were twenty-three stab wounds on the upper body and head of Steven, whose skull was fractured.

A confession given to the police by the defendant was received in evidence without objection. We state the substance of that confession. On the evening of September 25 the defendant left his home to go to a store. He departed by a driveway back of his garage and walked along railroad tracks. When near some stores in the neighborhood he changed his mind and went on to Sumner Avenue. Passing the Goldberg house, he saw a light, got up on the steps, but could not see anybody within. He went to the side of the house, and, looking in a window, saw Lynn Ann in a chair reading a book and watching television. He went home, got a knife, and returned by way of the railroad tracks. He went on the porch and knocked on the window. He motioned for Lynn to come to the door. 'She opened the door and I had the knife in my hand, she saw it and she screamed and I had a hold of her coat. Then she got away from my grip. She tripped over the rug and fell towards the victrola. * * * [She] was on the floor in the front hall there, and then she tried to kick me away and I hit her a couple of times with the knife handle and she rolled over on her face. She got up on her knees and I hit her. I didn't hit her until she fell against the victrola and tried to kick me. I hit her with the handle. * * * She went down and then she kept hollering and screaming and I got hold of her and then she stopped, when I stabbed her. * * * It was in her back, she was crouched on the floor.' Her head was toward the defendant, who 'kept stabbing her in the back' several times. 'Then I heard a noise like a child starting to cry.' It was a little boy who was trying to get out of bed in a room off the hallway. The defendant hit and stabbed him several times in the back toward the upper part of his body. 'Then I heard something and Lynn Ann was trying to get up so I stabbed her again several times and then she just slid over right flat on her face.' She was lying face down halfway in the living room and halfway in the hall. 'Then I hit her on the head with my bayonet and stabbed her and she went over to one side.' The defendant headed toward his home. He saw a light, got scared, crossed between two houses, and went through a garden to the back door of his house. He again got scared and went around to the front, where he concealed himself under a couch cover on his porch. When it got hot in there, he went in the house. There was blood on his shirt. The defendant knew no reason for doing what he did. 'She just screamed and I stabbed her. * * * It was intended to be a joke but it back-fired.'

There was oral evidence that the defendant told the police that, when he went to the Goldberg home, he wore his father's soft hat and jacket and a pair of dungarees; that he had a piece of cloth tied around the knife handle so as to leave no fingerprints; that 'he went after the boy with the knife,' because he was afraid that the boy would recognize him; that when he left the Goldberg house he ran out the front door, down the sidewalk on Sumner Avenue, and across the lawn of the house on the corner of Daviston Street; that between the houses at 15 and 21 Daviston Street there was a street light which he did not wish to run under for fear of being seen; that he ran into a driveway, jumped a fence, and proceeded along a path to his back door; and that later, after he entered the house by the front door, he washed the blood off his shirt, hid the knife and holder in two bags in back of a chair in his bedroom, listened to the radio, and went to bed. Other evidence was that the defendant had been a neighbor of Lynn Ann for about seven years, and was one of the pallbearers at her funeral.

The defendant filed twenty assignments of error identical in each case. Of these the tenth and eleventh are expressly waived.

1. The first assignment has to do with motions for continuance filed on January 31, 1955, and after hearing denied on February 14, 1955. The motions read: 'Now comes the defendant in the above entitled case and moves that the trial of the above entitled case be continued from the assignment date of March 7, 1955, to such further time as the court may deem necessary and further cites as grounds for said request the following: 1. That additional counsel has been obtained in said case and that additional time is necessary for the preparation of an adequate defense. 2. That psychiatric and medical examinations have not been completed by the defence and that further time will be required for an adequate preparation. 3. That one of the psychiatrists employed by the defence has moved his residence and practice to the State of Florida and will not be available to testify until a later date.'

We understand that the first ground is not now relied upon, but in any event there was no error in this respect. The indictments were returned on October 25, 1954, and on the following day Maurice H. Baitler, Esquire, entered his appearances for the defendant. Jean R. LaCroix, Esquire, entered his appearances for the defendant on the date the motions were filed. The defendant had the advantage of consecutive representation by the same counsel throughout all the proceedings down to the present time. ¹ There was a reasonable opportunity to prepare an adequate defence. Lindsey v. Commonwealth, 331 Mass. 1, 2, 116 N.E.2d 691; Jones v. Commonwealth, 331 Mass. 169, 171, 117 N.E.2d 850; Powell v. State of Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 68-69, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158.

The record does not disclose what was said to the trial judge in support of the second ground of the motions. In their brief counsel for the defendant urge that the denial of the motions was a deprivation of due process of law. Their contention is based upon their statement that at the time of the argument of their motions they were unaware that the defendant was being given phenobarbital, a barbiturate which they contend, and the Commonwealth denies, tended to negate the results of electroencophalographic examinations of the defendant. There was no abuse of discretion in the refusal to allow additional time for medical examinations for an alleged ground unknown to the defendant's counsel and necessarily not brought to the attention of the trial judge. See Commonwealth v. Soaris, 275 Mass. 291, 297, 175 N.E. 491.

The defendant's counsel nevertheless rely upon the testimony of one of their medical experts at the trial as well as upon an affidavit of the same expert made in connection with their motions for a new trial. The Commonwealth's medical evidence at the trial was directly to the contrary, as were counter affidavits of its medical experts used in connection with the motions for a new trial, which tended to show that phenobarbital was administered at the request of the defendant himself and in small doses, one quarter of a grain three times daily, and could have had no effect on the examinations. Even if the substance of this evidence and the affidavits could have been presented at the hearing of the motions to continue, the judge would not have been obliged to accept the defendant's disputed medical theory.

The third ground seems of no present importance. The reference is to Dr. Corwin, who had moved his residence from Springfield to Florida. Notwithstanding the suggestion of his unavailability made in the motions, he actually attended and testified at the trial on behalf of the defendant.

2. The second and third assignments of error relate to two substantially similar motions in each case argued and denied on March 7, 1955, the first day of the trial. One pair of motions was: 'Now comes the defendant in the above entitled action and moves that the Commonwealth be ordered to produce and furnish to the defendant before trial, copies of any written statements, admissions or confessions alleged to have been signed by him which are in the possession of the Commonwealth or any of the Commonwealth's witnesses.' The defendant's only authority suggested to the trial judge or to us is art. 12 of the Declaration of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution, which reads in part: 'No subject shall be...