Com. v. Cutts
| Decision Date | 09 August 2005 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Christopher CUTTS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Leslie W. O'Brien, Boston, for the defendant.
Katherine E. McMahon, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Present: MARSHALL, C.J., GREANEY, COWIN, SOSMAN, & CORDY, JJ.
In 1998, a Hampden County jury convicted Christopher Cutts of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and felony-murder. Cutts was also convicted of armed robbery and arson. On appeal from his convictions and from the denial of his motion for a new trial, Cutts argues that he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel. Specifically, he contends that his trial counsel (1) failed to pursue a defense of lack of criminal responsibility, (2) failed to file a motion to suppress statements he made to the police, (3) failed to challenge the voluntariness of statements he made to two civilian witnesses, (4) failed to object to testimony concerning the length and nature of his prior incarceration, and (5) failed to object to the introduction of a photograph depicting hemorrhages in the victim's eyes. Finally, he asks us to exercise our power under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce his conviction to murder in the second degree. After considering Cutts's arguments, and after undertaking a complete review of the trial record pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 33E, we affirm the judgments of conviction and the order denying the motion for a new trial.
1. Background. We recite the facts the jury could have found based on the evidence presented at trial. On March 13, 1998, John C. Gallina was found dead in his Springfield home. His body lay face down on the kitchen floor. His skull was fractured, a gearshift from a Jaguar automobile protruded from his ear, and a white rope hung around his neck. Fires had been set in the house to cover up the crime, and Gallina's television and stereo were missing.
Cutts and Gallina were part of a circle of friends who routinely gathered at Gallina's house to play cards, watch pornographic movies, and smoke "crack" cocaine. On March 9, 1998, Peter DePergola went to Gallina's house. Cutts was already there. DePergola, Cutts, and Gallina smoked crack cocaine until Gallina went to bed. Sometime between 3 and 4 A.M., DePergola and Cutts left Gallina's house, locking the kitchen door behind them.
On March 13, Timothy McNally, a childhood friend of Gallina, found Gallina's body after he entered Gallina's house through the kitchen door, which was unlocked. Emergency medical personnel and the Springfield police were called and arrived at the scene shortly thereafter. The police observed that a pane of glass in the kitchen door had been broken and there were shards of glass on the floor. A vise and a roll of duct tape were also found on the floor. Duct tape covered two of the pieces of broken glass. Removal of the duct tape revealed fingerprints on the glass, which matched Cutts's fingerprints.1 Tire impressions detected in front of Gallina's house matched the tires of a motor vehicle registered to Sandra L. Scott, Cutts's mother.2
On the same day that Gallina's body was found, Cutts asked his former girl friend, Tina Swolenski (in whose home he was then staying), to telephone Gallina because he had not seen him in a few days and he was concerned about him. Cutts later telephoned Gallina's mother from a public telephone to inquire about her son, and was informed that Gallina was dead. Cutts then told Swolenski that "they would probably blame [Gallina's death] on him because he had done ten years previously and he was the last one to leave the house." The next day (March 14), Cutts admitted to Swolenski that he killed Gallina and that "he did it because he killed somebody before and [Gallina] was going to tell on him." He also told Swolenski that he tried to burn Gallina's house down, but that the fire suffocated because he did not open the windows.3 Swolenski drove Cutts to a branch of his bank so that he could put her name on his bank account, allowing Swolenski to send money to him. Cutts subsequently took Swolenski's motor vehicle and drove to New York City.4
In the early morning hours of March 18, three Springfield police officers took Cutts into custody at a police station on Staten Island in New York City.5 After being informed of his Miranda rights, Cutts telephoned Richard Williams, a friend and former Connecticut State trooper, seeking advice. Cutts then stated that he wanted to talk to the police officers, after which he signed a written statement confessing to the killing of Gallina.
In his written statement, Cutts claimed that he had been incarcerated previously and that on his second day in prison, he had been raped at knife point. A rope had been wrapped around his neck, and three men had raped him for four continuous days. He stated that homosexual activity "makes [him] sick to this day." He also described the events surrounding Gallina's death as follows. On March 9, Cutts and his boss purchased and smoked three rocks of crack cocaine. At approximately 2 P.M. on that day, Cutts's boss dropped Cutts off at Gallina's house, where Cutts smoked crack cocaine with Gallina and other persons until 5 A.M. the following day. Cutts then borrowed his mother's motor vehicle and purchased three more rocks of crack cocaine, which he smoked by himself. Thereafter, he telephoned Gallina and asked him to contact a "weight man," a person who sells larger quantities of crack cocaine. Cutts drove to Gallina's house and together they proceeded to purchase an additional one-half ounce of cocaine. They returned to Gallina's house where they finished the cocaine. At around 10 P.M. (on March 10), Cutts asked Gallina to contact the weight man again. Before they "went on the second run," Gallina suggested that they engage in a sexual act. Cutts knew that Gallina was homosexual, but did not think that he "would cross that line." Cutts ignored Gallina's suggestion and got up to change the radio station. Gallina proceeded to make sexual advances toward Cutts, touching him on the buttocks and in the groin area. Gallina turned his back and Cutts picked up a white rope on the floor. Cutts was experiencing "a flashback about prison and about when [he] was raped." He wrapped the rope around Gallina's neck, brought him to the ground, and struck him in the head twice with a vise that was on the counter.6 Cutts then walked into the living room and retrieved a gearshift from a table. He pushed the gearshift into Gallina's ear.7 Cutts removed Gallina's television and stereo from the house, started fires in the living room and the bedroom with "the torch [they] smoked the coke with," and used a screwdriver to "make it look like a forced entry." Cutts subsequently sold the television and stereo equipment for sixty dollars in cash and several rocks of crack cocaine. Cutts told the police that he had been addicted to crack cocaine since February, 1995, and that the drug "destroyed [him] mentally, physically, and spiritually."
At trial, Cutts pursued a claim of "diminished capacity," contending that his actions were the result of "homosexual panic," a recognized psychological condition, exacerbated by a flawed character structure and the ingestion of cocaine. In combination, Cutts argued, these factors negated the elements of intent and premeditation necessary for a conviction of murder in the first degree. See Commonwealth v. LaCava, 438 Mass. 708, 716-718, 783 N.E.2d 812 (2003), and cases cited. He called four witnesses on his behalf. Josephine Veto, a former girl friend, testified that in February, 1998, Cutts told her that he had been raped in prison. Greg Brewer, who bought Gallina's stereo from Cutts the night of the murder, testified that Cutts was "real high" on crack cocaine that evening. Two experts also testified for the defense: Gerald Kochansky, a clinical psychologist, and Thomas Gutheil, a forensic psychiatrist.
Dr. Kochansky testified that at the request of Dr. Gutheil, he had administered two days of standardized psychological tests to Cutts. On the basis of those tests, he concluded that Cutts was suffering from borderline personality disorder, with psychopathic narcissistic and antisocial features. He further opined that Cutts killed Gallina in a "homosexual panic," "an intense state of anxiety and fear in the face of what is experienced as . . . the threat of a homosexual attack." He also testified that the use of cocaine "would intensify [Cutts's] vigilant and paranoid stance, and it would have a disinhibiting effect on his impulse control." On cross-examination, Dr. Kochansky admitted that Cutts's mental disorders did not adversely affect his ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions.
Dr. Gutheil arrived at a similar diagnosis: antisocial personality disorder with elements of grandiosity. He testified that "homosexual panic" is a condition of paranoia that would be intensified by crack cocaine. He opined that whether Gallina was in fact homosexual was irrelevant; rather, individuals such as Cutts "can get into a situation where they are frightened by anything that even resembles a push for intimacy by someone making an advance to them." In sum, his opinion was that Cutts's conduct was a frenzied and unanticipated response to a sexual advance or perceived sexual advance by Gallina. On cross-examination, Dr. Gutheil testified that he did not know whether cocaine ingestion alone, in the absence of a sexual advance, would have impaired Cutts's ability to distinguish right from wrong.
In rebuttal, the Commonwealth's expert psychiatrist, Martin Kelly, testified that Cutts had an antisocial personality disorder, but no mental disease or defect that affected his capacity to form the specific intent to kill or do...
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