Com. v. Meehan
| Decision Date | 19 March 1979 |
| Citation | 377 Mass. 552,387 N.E.2d 527 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Joseph MEEHAN. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Sandra Hamlin, Asst. Dist. Atty. (Paul A. Mishkin, Sp. Asst. Dist. Atty., with her), for the Commonwealth.
David A. Mills, Boston (Walter J. Hurley, Boston, with him), for the defendant.
Before HENNESSEY, C. J., and BRAUCHER, KAPLAN, LIACOS and ABRAMS, JJ.
A Suffolk County grand jury handed down an indictment on August 11, 1976, charging the defendant Joseph Meehan with the murder of Maryann Birks. The defendant moved before trial to suppress inculpatory statements made by him as well as articles of clothing belonging to him. Extensive evidence was received on the voir dire, including testimony from the defendant and medical testimony dealing with the extent to which the defendant's perceptive ability was impaired when he made the statements. The judge filed lengthy findings which grounded his order granting the motion in part and denying it in part. Thereupon the Commonwealth applied under G.L. c. 278, § 28E, for leave to take an interlocutory appeal from so much of the order as granted suppression, and the defendant made a similar application with respect to the denial. A single justice of this court granted both applications, and we are thus required to review the several parts of the order. The order will be affirmed except for one feature which in our view merits reversal. 1
Drawing on the findings and the underlying record, we state some of the facts at this point, reserving the rest for the later discussion of particular issues.
About 6 A.M., Friday, June 11, 1976, police officers found the victim's body on the front lawn of 40 Oak Street in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The face and head were covered with blood; a large rock found near the body was spotted with blood. Promptly the police attempted to interview individuals living near 40 Oak Street, or known to have been at the nearby Cleary Square (evidently a familiar gathering place) on the previous night.
Of the former group, Mary Crowley, interviewed at her home on 38 Oak Street, said that about 2 A.M. that morning she was awakened by a scream, dogs barking, and a tapping sound; she heard a woman scream, and then a wordless scream. Crowley's daughter, Claire Wilde, staying at the same address, gave a similar account and added that, looking out the window, she saw a white male walk by the house; he was about five feet ten inches, in his mid-twenties, had dark hair, and was slender; he was wearing faded jeans and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. Some minutes later the man returned and she heard what she described as the sound of a large boulder being thrown on the lawn. She did not see the man's face. The statements of these two witnesses were recorded on tape.
Also on the morning of June 11, four persons of the Cleary Square group were interviewed at District 5 police station on Hyde Park Avenue. Two gave material statements, also tape-recorded. Joseph Ventola, who knew the victim, said that around midnight he had driven past her; she was on the steps of Christ Church at 1220 River Street in the company of a white man, shirtless, in his late teens, "skinny," with dark hair. The second witness, John Carroll, said that between 11:30 P.M. and midnight he had driven by the victim and the defendant Joseph Meehan (both known to him); they were sitting on the steps of Christ Church; he described Meehan as eighteen or nineteen years old, five feet six, about 130 pounds, dark hair, wearing sneakers and a print shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
As Carroll was being interviewed about 10:30 A.M. in a first-floor room at the police station, he chanced, looking through the window near street level, to see the defendant trying to hitch a ride on Hyde Park Avenue and pointed him out to the police. Detective James Solari, one of the officers present, passed through the opened window to the street, while two other officers, William Cannon and Louis Russo, went by the front door. Russo walked up the street; Solari and Cannon proceeded in a police cruiser. The cruiser pulled up alongside the defendant. Cannon told him they were investigating an assault on a woman, were questioning those who had been seen in the area of the crime, and had been told that the defendant was there the previous evening. They asked the defendant to come with them to the station for an interview. The defendant said he was willing, but he was going to the unemployment office and did not want to be late. The officers answered they would drive him to the office if he should be delayed. The defendant opened the car door and took a rear seat, where he was joined by the officer who had approached on foot. The defendant was eighteen, five feet six inches, 135 pounds, dark hair, wearing cut-off dungarees and a blue print shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
Officer Solari interviewed the defendant at the station. Sitting at a short distance from the defendant, Solari noticed reddish stains on the defendant's sneakers. In response to a question, the defendant said they were probably mud. When Solari said they appeared to be blood, the defendant said, if so, the stains were from a fight he had had several days earlier with George Quish. Solari asked whether he could inspect the sneakers. The defendant answered by removing the left sneaker and handing it to Solari. Leaving the defendant in the room, Solari took the sneakers and showed them to Sergeant James Feeney. Feeney agreed there were blood stains. It happened that Quish was being interviewed at the station at the same time. When asked by Sergeant Feeney whether he had been involved in a fight recently, Quish said he had not been. Feeney then instructed Solari to arrest the defendant and give him Miranda warnings, which evidently was done (there was no proof as to the manner of administering the warnings). A chemical test, made promptly, confirmed the visual judgment of blood.
About 11:20 A.M., the defendant was passed on to Sergeant Joseph Kelley (with Officers Feeney, Mark Madden, and Russo also present). Kelley gave the defendant Miranda warnings, and then followed an interrogation, interlarded with cajolings and assurances, which continued for perhaps an hour (almost all recorded on tape). Starting with his denial that he had been in the company of the victim on the night of the assault, the defendant was gradually brought around to admitting that he had kicked her, thrown a rock at her, and left her unconscious (as he thought) at the place where she was found. The circumstances of this confession were dealt with by the judge in particular detail, and must be closely examined later in this opinion.
Mentioning the confession (and with some reference also to the statements of Claire Wilde and John Carroll previously given to the police), Officer Solari applied early that afternoon to the assistant clerk of the Municipal Court of the West Roxbury District for a warrant to search the defendant's house at 1559 River Street and recover the dungarees he was wearing (as mentioned during the confession) at the time of the alleged assault. The dungarees were in fact recovered under the warrant, as was a pair of undershorts found during the search.
The defendant's mother and brother, with Sergeant Feeney present, visited him at his cell at the District 5 station around 3:45 P.M. According to Feeney's testimony (which differed from that of the relatives), the defendant then uttered an incriminatory remark.
The judge after voir dire held (1) there was not an arrest on Hyde Park Avenue; (2) the sneakers should not be suppressed; (3) the confession should be suppressed, (4) with like consequence for the dungarees and undershorts; and (5) the statement to the mother and brother should not be suppressed. The cross-applications for interlocutory appeal followed.
In reviewing the judge's order we apply the standard recently stated, "that there is a presumption against waiver of constitutional rights, and, with regard to the attitude owed by the reviewing court to the trial judge who rules on a motion to suppress, that it is for that judge to resolve questions of credibility; that his subsidiary findings are to be respected if supported by the evidence; that his findings of ultimate fact deriving from the subsidiary findings are open to reexamination by this court, as are his conclusions of law, but, even so, that his conclusion as to waiver is entitled to substantial deference." Commonwealth v. Doyle, --- Mass. ---, n.6 A, 385 N.E.2d 499, 503 n.6 (1979). Adhering to that standard, we see no sufficient basis for interfering with the findings or conclusions of the judge below, except as to the statement to the mother and brother which, as matter of law, must be suppressed as the product of the original confession. We reverse that part of the order and affirm the rest.
1. The arrest. The defendant argues initially that he was arrested at 10:30 A.M. on Hyde Park Avenue, and that there was not probable cause for an arrest at that time. If the arrest was thus illegal, he maintains, it would infect the sequelae. The Commonwealth contends, and the judge found, that there was no arrest on Hyde Park Avenue, that an arrest did not take place until about 11:15 A.M., after the sneakers appeared on inspection to be bloodied and Quish had denied the fighting. The defendant does not challenge the judge's finding that there was sufficient cause for an arrest at that time.
The judge's conclusion that the defendant accompanied the officers voluntarily, and not under constraint, is well supported. It was put to the defendant that the police were engaged in a general inquiry and were seeking cooperation: the officers asked, did not demand, that the defendant come with them; the defendant opened the car door himself and entered the vehicle without compulsion; 2...
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