Com. v. Keita

• Decision Date: 29 June 1999
• Citation: 429 Mass. 843,712 N.E.2d 65
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. James KEITA.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 65

712 N.E.2d 65

429 Mass. 843

COMMONWEALTH v. James KEITA.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Norfolk.

Argued March 5, 1999.

Decided June 29, 1999.

William T. Harrington, Assistant District Attorney (Burke Kappler with him) for the Commonwealth.

June E. Jensen, Wayland, for the defendant.

The following submitted briefs for amici curiae:

Michael J. Sullivan, District Attorney & Mary E. Mullaney, Assistant District Attorney for District Attorney for the Plymouth District.

Thomas F. Reilly, Attorney General & William J. Meade, Assistant Attorney General, for the Attorney General & others.

Brownlow M. Speer, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for Committee for Public Counsel Services.

Ralph C. Martin, II, District Attorney & John P. Zanini, Assistant District Attorney, for District Attorney for the Suffolk District.

Present: WILKINS, C.J., ABRAMS, LYNCH, GREANEY, FRIED, MARSHALL, & IRELAND, JJ.

WILKINS, C.J.

This appeal, here on further appellate review, requires us to consider whether the evidence warranted a finding that the Commonwealth had met its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible. We conclude that the evidence warranted a finding that the defendant was criminally responsible and that the Appeals Court should not have ordered a directed verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Commonwealth v. Keita, 45 Mass.App.Ct. 550, 699 N.E.2d 1243 (1998).

Additionally, the court has chosen this case as a vehicle to consider whether we should abandon our common-law rule that the Commonwealth must prove sanity (i.e., criminal responsibility) beyond a reasonable doubt in favor of a rule that a criminal defendant, asserting insanity as a defense, must prove his lack of criminal responsibility by a preponderance of the evidence.

A judge, at the end of a brief jury-waived trial in the Quincy District Court, found the defendant guilty of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of fourteen years. G.L. c. 265, § 13H. The defendant had raised insanity as a defense, pursuant to Mass. R.Crim. P. 14(b)(2), 378 Mass. 874 (1979). The sole issue on appeal is whether the evidence was sufficient to warrant a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane. Although the defendant did not move for a required finding of not guilty by reason of insanity, we agree with the Appeals Court that, if the evidence did not permit a finding of criminal responsibility, his conviction would create a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice. Id. at 551, 699 N.E.2d 1243.

The victim testified that on November 21, 1996, she was a passenger on a moderately crowded Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway train headed toward Quincy. The defendant boarded the train and sat across from her. The Appeals Court's summary of the testimony continues as follows:

"[F]or about twenty minutes, [the defendant] stared at her while making obscene gestures and touching his clothes in the genital area, and saying, 'Oh baby, you're nice.' She did not react to his conduct or acknowledge his presence and, instead, feigned being engrossed in her book. When the victim arrived at her destination and attempted to disembark from the train, the defendant lunged for her, pushed her against the car doors of the train, groped her, and uttered obscenities, 'I want you. I want to fuck you.' As the car doors opened and the victim broke to run, the defendant told her, 'I'm gonna get you.' As she ran from the train to summon police assistance, a man grabbed and held the defendant on the station platform. From what the victim could see as she ran, the man appeared as if he were going to punch the defendant. When she quickly returned with three uniformed MBTA officials, the defendant offered them no resistance.

"MBTA officer Miguel Rosario testified that he, another MBTA officer, and an MBTA inspector, all three in uniform, arrested the defendant. He was cooperative and his arrest uneventful. Rosario also recounted that the defendant, during the booking process immediately following his arrest, was docile and responsive to questions concerning his personal history."

Id. at 552, 699 N.E.2d 1243.

The Commonwealth then rested, and the defense called a well-qualified forensic psychologist who gave his opinion of the defendant's mental condition. Based in part on the defendant's medical history, which included ten admissions to Bridgewater State Hospital since 1982, and the opinion of a court psychologist that, on the day after his arrest, the defendant was suffering from a mental illness, the psychologist testified that the defendant was mentally ill. He testified that in his opinion the defendant was acutely mentally ill on the day of the attack and that the defendant would have had "substantial difficulties conforming his behavior to the requirements of the law." On cross-examination, the witness provided information concerning the defendant's perception of the events on the subway train, some of which we discuss when we consider the adequacy of the evidence to support a finding of sanity.

The Commonwealth offered no rebuttal evidence. The judge found the defendant guilty. On appeal, the Appeals Court set aside the guilty finding and ordered the entry of a judgment of acquittal by reason of the defendant's lack of criminal responsibility. Id. at 558, 699 N.E.2d 1243. We then granted the Commonwealth's application for further appellate review.

1. The defendant was not entitled to a directed verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. We have never taken away from a trier of fact the determination whether a defendant was criminally responsible when the evidence raised the issue. Moreover, the evidence warranted the finding that the defendant was criminally responsible.

The Commonwealth had the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible at the time of the crime. See Commonwealth v. Kappler, 416 Mass. 574, 578, 625 N.E.2d 513 (1993); Commonwealth v. Kostka, 370 Mass. 516, 526, 350 N.E.2d 444 (1976). The Commonwealth, however, may prove sanity without presenting expert testimony. Commonwealth v. Brennan, 399 Mass. 358, 364, 504 N.E.2d 612 (1987). A trier of fact may reject the testimony of experts that a defendant lacked criminal responsibility and may infer sanity from the defendant's conduct and the facts of the crime. See Commonwealth v. Kappler, supra at 579, 625 N.E.2d 513; Commonwealth v. Lunde, 390 Mass. 42, 47, 453 N.E.2d 446 (1983). We have also permitted the trier of fact to consider as evidence the so-called presumption of sanity. Commonwealth v. Kappler, supra at 583, 625 N.E.2d 513, citing Commonwealth v. Kostka, supra at 536, 350 N.E.2d 444. This inference or presumption is based on the trier of fact's "common knowledge that a great majority of people are sane, and the probability that any particular person is sane." Commonwealth v. Brennan, supra. A jury instruction concerning the presumption of sanity should be given in every case in which the question of the defendant's criminal responsibility is raised.

We recognize the inconsistency between placing the burden of proof of sanity on the Commonwealth and, at the same time, allowing a presumption of sanity to satisfy, or even to support, that burden. See Commonwealth v. Kappler, supra at 590, 625 N.E.2d 513 (O'Connor, J., dissenting). That inconsistency, however, has been the law of the Commonwealth for decades. The tension created by that inconsistency becomes greater as the facts of the crime and the defendant's conduct provide less and less of a basis for finding mental competence.

The Appeals Court found "nothing in the victim's account of the defendant's grotesque and bizarre conduct which bespeaks sanity." Commonwealth v. Keita, supra at 555, 699 N.E.2d 1243. Nor did that court see significant support for a finding of sanity in the defendant's conduct after the crime was committed. Id. at 556, 699 N.E.2d 1243. That court concluded that "[s]tanding alone, the presumption is an insufficient basis upon which to conclude that a defendant is sane beyond a reasonable doubt." Id. at 557, 699 N.E.2d 1243. There is no doubt that this court has taken comfort in the fact that, in most cases, there was "other evidence which [the] jury [were] permitted to weigh in reaching their conclusion on the sanity issue." Commonwealth v. Walker, 370 Mass. 548, 581, 350 N.E.2d 678, cert. denied, 429 U.S. 943, 97 S.Ct. 363, 50 L.Ed.2d 314 (1976), and cases cited. See Commonwealth v. Lunde, 390 Mass. 42, 48-49, 453 N.E.2d 446 (1983); Commonwealth v. O'Brien, 377 Mass. 772, 781, 388 N.E.2d 658 (1979). The fact that there was evidence beyond the presumption in support of a finding of criminal responsibility tells us nothing, however, about the right answer when there is no such evidence. ¹ This court has never held that the presumption of sanity is alone insufficient to meet the Commonwealth's burden. To the contrary, the court intimated in Commonwealth v. Clark, 292 Mass. 409, 198 N.E. 641 (1935), that "the fact that a great majority of men are sane, and the probability that any particular man is sane, may be deemed by a jury to outweigh, in evidential value, testimony that he is insane." Id. at 415, 198 N.E. 641. We were explicit in Commonwealth v. Smith, 357 Mass. 168, 258 N.E.2d 13 (1970), that the jury have the right to "infer that the defendant is sane from their common knowledge of the fact that a great majority of men are sane, and of the probability that any particular man is sane. It is for the jury to decide in each case whether they draw that inference." Id. at 180, 258 N.E.2d 13. The judge "cannot direct the jury how they shall decide." Id. ² See Commonwealth v. Gould, 380 Mass. 672, 679, 405 N.E.2d 927 (1980). In his dissent in Commonwealth v. Kappler, supra, Justice O'Connor correctly noted that "a jury may rely on the so-called 'presumption...