Com. v. Hughes

• Decision Date: 07 May 1980
• Citation: 404 N.E.2d 1246,380 Mass. 596
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. George P. HUGHES.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 1246

404 N.E.2d 1246

380 Mass. 596

COMMONWEALTH v. George P. HUGHES.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Argued Jan. 8, 1980.

Decided May 7, 1980.

Hugh W. Samson, Boston, for defendant.

Lynn Morrill Turcotte, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

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

BRAUCHER, Justice.

The defendant appeals from his conviction of breaking and entering a dwelling house in the nighttime with intent to commit larceny. He took no exceptions to the judge's charge to the jury, but he argues to us that the instructions on reasonable doubt and on presumptions require reversal to prevent a miscarriage of justice. We affirm the conviction.

The defendant was indicted in June, 1976, for a burglary on April 1, 1976, and was tried before a jury with two codefendants, Edward and George Mallett, in September, 1976. He was sentenced to a prison term of four to six years, to be served from and after a sentence he was then serving. The defendant's petition for leave to file a late bill of exceptions was allowed by a single justice of this court in September, 1978, and the trial judge later allowed his motion to make the trial subject to G.L. c. 278, §§ 33A-33H. After the defendant's appeal was entered in the Appeals Court, we allowed his application for direct appellate review.

We summarize the evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth. About 10 P.M. on April 1, 1976, a Worcester police officer observed the defendant and Edward Mallett loading furniture in a van in front of a six-family building. George Mallett stayed by the van. Police officers followed the defendant and Edward Mallett to a third-floor apartment. The front door of the apartment had been forced open, the outside lock was hanging on the door, part of the lock was on the floor, and the door had been broken. The bedroom had been ransacked. The police arrested the three men. Karle Lamson, the manager of the building and resident of the apartment, testified that he was on Cape Cod at the time. A few days before an intruder had broken the door of the apartment, and the defendant put on a new door and transferred the lock. The defendant was "working as kind of an assistant manager with me in the building." According to Lamson's testimony, he asked Mark Rossiter to check his apartment daily while he was away "to see if anything was wrong," but he did not give anyone permission to enter his apartment or to remove any furniture during his absence.

Rossiter testified for the defense that he had been asked by Lamson to drop by and check the apartment, that he was aware of a similar understanding between Lamson and the defendant, who lived on the floor below Lamson, and that he had discovered a second forcible entry into the Lamson apartment, had made a list of missing items, and had fixed the door jamb so the door would close but not lock. Rossiter said he talked to the defendant about the second break and they agreed "to sort of stay out of it" until Lamson came back. The defendant testified to the two breaks and to the conversation with Rossiter, adding that Lamson's girl friend had said Lamson wanted the defendant to watch the apartment while Lamson was away. After he had talked to Rossiter, according to the defendant, he discussed the situation with Edward Mallett. They decided to enlist the help of Edward's brother George and his van and to move Lamson's remaining furniture to Mallett's mother's house for safekeeping. To impeach the defendant's credibility, evidence was admitted of his conviction in 1969 of five crimes, including armed robbery and burglary.

Edward Mallett did not testify. George Mallett testified that his brother Edward telephoned him about 8:30 P.M. on the evening in question, said he had bought some used furniture for their mother, and asked for a ride to pick it up. George later picked up his brother, drove him to the apartment house, and stayed by the van while Edward and the defendant carried out furniture.

The jury found the defendant and Edward Mallett guilty as charged, but acquitted George Mallett. The defendant made no objections and took no exception to any portion of the judge's charge, but argues to us that the cumulative errors in the judge's charge on proof beyond a reasonable doubt and on proof of specific intent to commit larceny resulted in a miscarriage of justice, citing Commonwealth v. Freeman, 352 Mass. 556, 563-564, 227 N.E.2d 3 (1967).

1. Reasonable doubt. The defendant claims error in the judge's instruction to the jury on reasonable doubt in three respects: (1) the use of a decision whether to undergo heart surgery as an illustration; (2) the charge that a reasonable doubt was a doubt for which a juror could give a "good reason"; (3) warning of the consequences of holding the Commonwealth to too strict a standard, without counterbalancing warnings about the danger of convicting an innocent person.

Each of these claims has a foundation in our decisions. (1) In Commonwealth v. Bumpus, 362 Mass. 672, 682, 290 N.E.2d 167 (1972), judgment vacated 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), reviewed on petition for habeas corpus, sub nom., Bumpus v. Gunter, 452 F.Supp. 1060 (D.Mass. 1978), we identified the "inherent difficulty" in using examples such as a decision to undergo major heart surgery: "while they may assist in explaining the seriousness of the decision before the jury, they may not be illustrative of the degree of certainty required." See Commonwealth v. Ferguson, 365 Mass. 1, 12, 309 N.E.2d 182 (1974); Commonwealth v. Coleman, 366 Mass. 705, 712, 322 N.E.2d 407 (1975). In Commonwealth v. Ferreira, 373 Mass. 116, 128-130, 364 N.E.2d 1264, 1272 (1977), where "the evidence of the defendant's guilt was not overwhelming," we reversed a conviction of murder in the first degree pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 33E, in part because the judge's instructions with respect to "important" personal decisions, "far from emphasizing the seriousness of the decision before them, detracted both from the seriousness of the decision and the Commonwealth's burden of proof." We said further that "we think the better course is that all references to examples taken from the jurors' lives should be avoided." Finally, in Commonwealth v. Garcia, --- Mass. ---, --- - --- ^a, 399 N.E.2d 460, 472 (1980), considering a charge "very similar" to that in the Ferreira case, we held that the error was of constitutional dimension, and that the Ferreira decision should be applied retroactively, although "we will scrutinize more carefully jury instructions given after the date of Ferreira."

(2) In Commonwealth v. Bjorkman, 364 Mass. 297, 307-309, 303 N.E.2d 715, 723 (1973), we upheld a charge that a reasonable doubt is a "doubt based upon a reason," but only after reviewing cases in which appellate courts had expressed disapproval of such definitions. Considering the charge in that case "in its entirety," we thought that the phrase objected to, "even if of doubtful propriety standing alone, could not have caused any prejudicial shifting of the Commonwealth's burden of proof in the minds of the jurors." See Commonwealth v. Coleman, 366 Mass. 705, 712, 322 N.E.2d 407 (1975). Contrast Dunn v. Perrin, 570 F.2d 21, 23-24 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 910, 98 S.Ct. 3102, 57 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1978) ("good and sufficient reason" improper; reversible when followed by statement that reasonable doubt means "strong and abiding conviction"); Bumpus v. Gunter, 452 F.Supp. 1060, 1061-1062 (D.Mass. 1978).

(3) In Commonwealth v. Williams, --- Mass. ---, --- - --- ^b, 391 N.E.2d 1202, 1213 as in the present case, the judge quoted from Commonwealth v. Madeiros, 255 Mass. 304, 307, 151 N.E. 297 (1926), and we were persuaded "that if warnings about the consequences of misapplication of the law flow all in one direction, they might cause the jury to overcompensate and misapply the law in the other direction." See Bumpus v. Gunter, 452 F.Supp. 1060, 1063-1064 (D.Mass. 1978). Considering the charge in the Williams case as a whole, however, we held that there was no error.

Each of the defendant's three claims has force in the present case. The judge began his discussion of reasonable doubt with a statement that the presumption of innocence "goes with these defendants right into the jury room as you deliberate, until such time as you collectively are convinced that the Commonwealth has met" its burden of proving the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. He then defined reasonable doubt as "a doubt for which you can give a good reason," and added that, "as a practical matter, that means that if you are in the jury room deliberating and you are able to stand up and face your fellow jurors and say, 'I have a doubt and this is the good reason for it,' then you have a reasonable doubt." He then distinguished between "absolute proof beyond all imaginary doubt" and "a deep and abiding conviction of the defendant's guilt amounting to a moral certainty," and read the passages from the Madeiros case that are criticized as one-sided. Moral certitude, he said, is "the kind of certitude that the reasonable man would have about those matters of highest and most important events of his life." After describing a heart surgery situation, he said that "clearly such an individual would look carefully into the alternatives. Would obtain all the information before he came to a decision as to what he should do. And members of the jury, you are in a similar situation. You are called upon to make a very important decision. And clearly you are called upon to examine carefully all the evidence that you have heard and come to a decision of which you have a moral certitude."

We have approved the use of "moral certainty" and the use of "doubt based upon a reason" in this context, and it seems doubtful that the addition of "good"...