Com. v. Goulet

• Decision Date: 16 February 1978
• Citation: 374 Mass. 404,372 N.E.2d 1288
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 1288

372 N.E.2d 1288

374 Mass. 404

COMMONWEALTH v. Roger Thomas GOULET.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

Argued Oct. 6, 1977.

Decided Feb. 16, 1978.

Harvey Brower, Revere, for defendant.

Michael T. Stella, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

Before HENNESSEY, C. J., and QUIRICO, KAPLAN, LIACOS and ABRAMS, JJ.

KAPLAN, Justice.

At trial in October, 1975, the defendant was convicted of murder in the second degree. He appeals pursuant to G.L. c. 278, §§ 33A-33G. There was solid proof that he shot and killed Marlene Saalfrank. Criminal irresponsibility at the time of commission of the act, however, was raised as a defense, and in that connection we hold that the judge committed errors which oblige us to reverse the judgment. We also discuss other matters that may arise on retrial.

1. The evidence. (a) Commission of the crime. The victim, a divorced woman who lived in Methuen with her three children, went to a garage attached to her house in the early morning of January 6, 1975. About six thirty the children and neighbors heard sounds as of gunfire. Rushing to the garage, the children found Marlene, covered with blood, lying on the floor. She died at a hospital later that morning. Death was caused by wounds from bullets fired from a .44 magnum revolver found at the scene. The weapon was owned by the defendant.

Several neighbors saw a figure running from the area of the Saalfrank house about the time of the gunfire noise. Among these witnesses was a newsboy who earlier that morning had seen a camper truck, which evidently was the defendant's, parked about 1,200 feet from the Saalfrank house. (The defendant's camper truck was missing from its usual overnight parking place about 6 A.M.) Shortly before 7 A.M. the defendant, seeming very upset and confused, appeared at the house of his friends Richard and Edna Plonowski and said, "I don't know if I am in trouble or I shot someone." Asked who it was, he said "Marlene." He said she was not dead but was screaming when he left her; that he had shot her with a .44 magnum but didn't know where his gun was. From the Plonowski house the defendant telephoned his brother Solomon and an attorney. Solomon picked up the defendant and drove him to the Methuen police station; on the way the defendant said he thought he had shot Marlene.

While being given his Miranda rights at the police station, the defendant interrupted to say, "Can I just say one thing? I did it, I didn't mean to, I am sorry," or, in the version of another police officer, "I did it, I didn't mean it." According to Solomon: "If I did it I am sorry, I didn't mean it." (There will be further references below to the happenings at the police station.)

(b) Background as to criminal responsibility. The following was in the background of the fatal occurrence and bore on the question of criminal accountability. The defendant, aged thirty-nine in 1975, twice married and divorced, had started dating Marlene about 1970 or 1971, a year after her divorce. From the testimony we cannot glean precisely the degree of their intimacy over the four-year period, but the defendant told a number of people that they planned to marry. He became in many respects a member of Marlene's household, made repairs around the house, and in 1973 took Marlene and the children on a vacation trip to Canada. According to disputed testimony, he lived in the house for a time. Despite his limited means, he gave Marlene many gifts and seems to have helped her with groceries and payments for the house and car, often borrowing from a brother to do so.

The defense invited the inference that the defendant's attachment to Marlene became obsessional toward the end, and that her rather contemptuous rejection of him drove him to the homicidal act. Around March, 1974, there was a quarrel during which the defendant punched Marlene hard enough to give her a black eye. Then, or somewhat later, Marlene broke with him and began seeing a William Winkler. During fall, 1974, the defendant became increasingly dejected. In October and later he wrote to Marlene's parents apologizing for hurting Marlene and telling repeatedly of his great love for her. He spoke to a mutual friend, Katherine Saab, and to Edna Plonowski in a similar vein of frustration.

The defendant was hospitalized in November complaining of severe stomach pains for which no serious physical source could be found (a small hiatal hernia was recorded). While in the hospital, the defendant asked to see a psychiatrist and told his brother he had nothing to live for because Marlene would not have him. Discharged from the hospital, the defendant became visibly depressed and withdrawn. He lost weight and had trouble sleeping. He wanted to commit himself to Danvers State Hospital, but his mother dissuaded him. Meanwhile he kept telephoning Marlene at her place of work until her supervisor in December warned him off; Marlene did not wish to speak with him.

On December 12 the defendant as a private patient saw Dr. Jorge DeNapoli, a psychiatrist. Dr. DeNapoli testified that he found the defendant fearful and depressed and in the first stage of a suicidal process. His diagnosis was depressive neurosis and he prescribed a tranquilizer and an anti-depressant.

After an interval at Christmas when Marlene went to a party with the defendant and the Plonowskis, the defendant lapsed back into depression. New Year's Eve the defendant spent alone, refusing a brother's invitation to a family party.

During the week or so before the shooting the defendant conversed with Marlene's ex-husband, Joseph Saalfrank, Sr., and with Richard Plonowski. He told Saalfrank he had purchased tickets in the summer for a New Year's Eve party but Marlene refused to join him unless he would lend her money. He begged for advice how to satisfy Marlene and said, "If I can't have that woman I will leave her so no other man will ever want her." To Plonowski the defendant related that Marlene was being unfaithful to him. He had gone to her house and seen her on the couch with a man. The defendant also said he had had a visit at his room from a man who told him to keep away from Marlene as he was her new boy friend.

Elements both of seeming instability and rationality mingled in the defendant's behavior immediately after the killing. He appeared quite unhinged at the Plonowskis' but, as noted, had the wit to call Solomon and a lawyer. One police officer testified that the defendant was dazed and crying at the station; another, that he seemed in a "state of shock," as if he was about to "flip out." But after interrupting the Miranda reading, the defendant asked that it be repeated, said he had better not talk, conversed with his brother in French, and when the lawyer arrived was sufficiently in possession of himself to give a police officer at least some of the information needed to complete the booking slip.

(c) Expert opinions. Dr. Nicholas D. Rizzo, a psychiatrist employed at the District Court of Lawrence, was called by the defense. He examined the defendant on the morning of January 6 on court order, and again in June, 1975. He described the defendant's condition that morning as hysterical amnesia ("fugue"): he was confused, slow to make associations, and had blocked out part of the event. He was suffering from a "progressive depressive reaction" which brought on the amnesic state. In this fugue condition he would perform normally certain mechanical acts and make intelligent decisions on some matters, but would depart otherwise from his normal patterns and do things he could not later recall. Dr. Rizzo concluded that the defendant at the time of the shooting was not criminally responsible. ¹ Cross-examination of Dr. Rizzo focused on the fact that his knowledge of the circumstances of the killing and his conclusion of criminal irresponsibility had derived from the statements made to him by the defendant, who might be an untrustworthy source.

Also appearing as a defense witness was Dr. Dubravko Kuftinec, a psychiatrist with training in forensic psychiatry (once employed by the Commonwealth as a director of psychiatry). He examined the defendant twice in early spring, 1975. The defendant told him, as he had told others, of his love for Marlene, his physical decline in fall, 1974, his discovery that Marlene was cheating, and the visit of the new lover. He said he had had a telephone call from Marlene's daughter which related that Marlene was cheating. He told Dr. Kuftinec (as he had indicated to Dr. Rizzo) that discovery of Marlene's unfaithfulness had led him to decide to commit suicide, and it was with this intention that he had gone to her house on the morning. Dr. Kuftinec's diagnosis was depression, with the conclusion that the defendant had been irresponsible. ² This conclusion, according to the witness, was not confounded by the defendant's rational actions such as telephoning a lawyer and conversing in French. Again cross-examination challenged the opinion by questioning the validity of the account given by the defendant. ³

On the part of the prosecution, one expert was offered, Dr. David D. Swenson, employed by the Commonwealth as a regional director of legal medicine. He had examined the defendant twice in September, a month before trial. Like the other three psychiatrists, Dr. Swenson held that the defendant was suffering from mental disease a psychoneurotic condition. But Dr. Swenson distinguished this from a condition of psychosis. For Dr. Swenson, it would be a rare case in which a person not suffering from psychosis would be criminally irresponsible. Here, indeed, the depression was "mild," as indicated by Dr. DeNapoli's prescription. The witness noted the lack of a documented history of past illness (although indications of psychological problems and possible mental illness could be found in the defendant's military records). In finding insufficient evidence of irresponsibility, Dr....