Com. v. Porter

• Decision Date: 08 December 1981
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Dennis PORTER.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 14

429 N.E.2d 14

384 Mass. 647

COMMONWEALTH v. Dennis PORTER.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued Sept. 16, 1981.

Decided Dec. 8, 1981.

Kimberly Homan, Boston, for defendant.

Peter Grabler, Legal Asst. to the Dist. Atty., Needham (Michael Traft, Asst. Dist. Atty., with him), for the Commonwealth.

Before HENNESSEY, C. J., and WILKINS, LIACOS, ABRAMS and LYNCH, JJ.

LIACOS, Justice.

The defendant was tried in 1980 on two indictments for murder in the first degree of Christine Ricketts and Andrea Foye. A Suffolk County jury convicted Porter of murder in the first degree on both indictments. The defendant claims error and appeals. Specifically, the defendant appeals the denial of his motion for a required finding of not guilty, made at the close of the Commonwealth's case. In addition he challenges portions of the trial judge's instructions to the jury and two evidentiary rulings. We affirm the convictions. We conclude further that there is no reason to exercise our power under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, to order a new trial or to direct the entry of a verdict of a lesser degree of guilt.

We summarize the evidence. Late in the morning of Monday, January 29, 1979, Boston police detectives, responding to a radio call, discovered the bodies of Christine Ricketts, age fifteen, and Andrea Foye, age seventeen, lying together on a sidewalk on East Lenox Street near the corner of Harrison Avenue, Boston. Ricketts's body was inside a large blue duffel bag, and Foye's body was found in a green plastic trash bag covered by a multi-colored bedspread or furniture throw. ¹ The medical examiner determined that the two girls had been strangled and set the time of death in the morning or afternoon of the previous day, Sunday, January 28. He also noted that Foye had sustained injuries to her mouth, consistent with having been hit with a fist.

Both girls had known the defendant for approximately six months prior to their deaths. The defendant was Ricketts's boyfriend and had lived with her, first at the Milner Hotel (where Foye also rented a room) and later at an apartment at No. 1 Cortes Street. The defendant had been with Ricketts intermittently throughout the evening of Saturday, January 27, and more constantly in the early morning hours of Sunday, January 28. They had left the Cortes Street apartment together at 3:30 A.M. and went to a disco in the "combat zone." There they met Foye and Robert Harvel, who was a "very good" friend of Porter. Two key witnesses, Joseph Kevin Divens and Patricia Sligh, testified that they observed Porter and Foye arguing in the disco, and that Foye was upset. The four stayed at the disco until 6:30 A.M. and separated upon leaving. Harvel went to the subway. The two girls crossed the street, saying they were going to have breakfast, and Porter initially headed in the opposite direction. At some point shortly thereafter Porter rejoined the two girls, and the three took a cab to the Cortes Street apartment. ² At trial Porter testified that Ricketts changed her boots at the apartment and the two girls went to get breakfast, while he fell asleep. ³ No other witness testified to seeing either of the two girls alive after this time Sunday morning.

Porter testified that he awoke at 11 A.M. Sunday and began a search for Ricketts which involved his friend Harvel at times and lasted until the late afternoon of the following day. His search had intensified Monday, to the point where he and Harvel had communicated with the Boston Municipal Court and the police by the end of the morning to ascertain if either had knowledge of her whereabouts.

Some time Monday afternoon Porter and Harvel met Sandra Spencer in the "combat zone" and induced her to join them and to lend her car for the search. The three set out for Boston City Hospital. Spencer testified that Porter told her he was looking for "(t)wo dead girls," and that during the ride to the hospital he stated unequivocally that "his girls" were dead. After being informed that the girls had not been brought to the emergency ward of the hospital, the trio went to the Southern Mortuary, located nearby. ⁴ Harvel testified they went to the morgue because someone at the hospital told them two unidentified bodies had been brought to the morgue.

Frank Graca, the mortuary supervisor, was on duty when they arrived. He testified that Porter asked to see "the remains of the two females ... found in the sack on Harrison Avenue." Graca refused. Graca told them only that two unidentified black girls had been brought in. The defendant and Harvel testified that Graca had provided them with a description of the two girls and told them one had been identified as "Terry Porter." ⁵ Porter was visibly upset and left with Harvel and Spencer a short while later.

The three went to the home of Porter's sister, Cheryl Bourne, and Porter and Harvel later claimed to have heard a news report there stating that the girls had been strangled, perhaps mutilated, and stuffed in bags.

Porter and Harvel left Spencer at Bourne's house and went to the apartment of Denise Glenn, who was the mother of two of Porter's children. Glenn testified that Porter told her that Ricketts was dead and that he knew because of the description given him by the morgue attendant (a statement apparently false). Porter and Harvel next went to the apartment of Joseph Kevin Divens and Patricia Sligh. Two or three days prior to her death, Divens had slapped Ricketts during an argument. Porter confronted him at the apartment and demanded to know where Ricketts was and why Divens had hit her. A brief altercation ensued which ended with Porter fleeing the apartment on foot with Divens in pursuit.

Divens testified that when the two finally stopped and made peace, Porter told him that "(m)y bitches are dead." According to Divens, Porter described to him the injuries to Foye's mouth. Porter accounted for this knowledge by the fact that he had just come from viewing the bodies at the morgue. ⁶

Police investigation of Porter and his various residences led them to the Milner Hotel, where they interviewed Ruby Murray, a chambermaid. She linked the defendant with the blue duffel bag. ⁷ Porter denied any knowledge of the bedspread or duffel bag. In February, 1980, while he was incarcerated in the Charles Street jail awaiting trial, Porter met Divens, who was also being held there. As a result of this meeting, Divens wrote a statement repudiating testimony, damaging to Porter, that he had given before a grand jury. At trial Divens claimed he had done so in response to threats by Porter. According to Divens, Porter had told him that a fire at his apartment a year earlier was intended as a warning to him and Sligh not to testify. ⁸

1. Motion for required finding of not guilty at the close of the Commonwealth's case. For the purposes of this motion we consider only the evidence introduced by the close of the Commonwealth's case. Commonwealth v. Wilborne, Mass.Adv.Sh. (1981) 59, 62, 415 N.E.2d 192. Commonwealth v. Borans, Mass.Adv.Sh. (1979) 2349, 2369, 393 N.E.2d 911. Commonwealth v. Kelley, 370 Mass. 147, 150, 346 N.E.2d 368 (1976). For the defendant to prevail, we must be convinced that, viewing the evidence "in the light most favorable to the prosecution, (no) rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Commonwealth v. Latimore, Mass.Adv.Sh. (1979) 2043, 2051-2052, 393 N.E.2d 370, quoting from Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).

With the evidence thus filtered, we think there was no error in submitting this case to the jury, which could have found the following: The defendant was the last person seen with the victims in the morning of Sunday, January 28, after he had taken a cab with them from the disco to the apartment on Cortes Street. The body of one of the two girls was found in a blue duffel bag belonging to the defendant, and the other was covered by a bedspread owned by him. In the afternoon of the day the bodies were found, but before the news of the discovery was broadcast, the defendant, accompanied by his friend Robert Harvel and by Sandra Spencer, rode in Spencer's car to Boston City Hospital to look for "(t)wo dead girls." Shortly thereafter the defendant, Harvel, and Spencer went to the morgue, where the defendant asked permission to view the remains of "the two females ... found in the sack on Harrison Avenue." ⁹ Later Porter informed Denise Glenn that, based on a description given to him by the mortuary supervisor, he knew that Ricketts was dead. He told Divens that he had seen the bodies and went so far as to describe injuries to Andrea Foye's mouth. Such information was in his possession at times when it had not yet been made known to the public. The jury could have believed that this was knowledge which only the killer would have. See Elwell v. Athol, 325 Mass. 41, 44, 88 N.E.2d 635 (1949) (request for report of accident indicating knowledge of its occurrence). See also 2 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 266, at 97-98 & n.2 (Chadbourn rev. 1979), citing contemporary court papers and other materials relating to Commonwealth vs. John W. Webster (Mass.1850), as compiled in Bemis Rep. 178 (the defendant had asked whether the whole of the victim's body had been found, indicating knowledge that it had been dismembered).

Moreover, the evidence was susceptible of a finding that Porter embarked on a series of actions consciously designed to deflect attention from himself by feigning a search for the two girls. Added to this is the evidence of the various falsehoods told to police concerning, among other things, his addresses, his relationship to Foye, and his whereabouts at the time of death. In each instance the story told initially was less incriminating than the truth. Such intentionally false and misleading statements by the defendant could have been found to indicate a...