Com. v. Reid

• Decision Date: 05 August 1981
• Citation: 424 N.E.2d 495,384 Mass. 247
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Lucille P. REID.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 495

424 N.E.2d 495

384 Mass. 247

COMMONWEALTH v. Lucille P. REID.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

Argued April 8, 1981.

Decided Aug. 5, 1981.

Joyce Wheeler Poulin, Cambridge, for defendant.

Robert L. Rossi, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

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

ABRAMS, Justice.

The defendant Lucille P. Reid was indicted for murder in the first degree in the stabbing death of Danny Harris. After a jury trial, Reid was convicted of murder in the second degree, and she appeals. We transferred the case to this court on our own motion. ¹ At trial, Reid admitted killing the victim but claimed that she had acted in self-defense. On appeal she claims error concerning (1) the application of Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881, 100 S.Ct. 170, 62 L.Ed.2d 110 (1979), to peremptory challenges made by criminal defendants; (2) the denial of her motion for a required finding of not guilty; (3) the supplemental instructions to the jury; and (4) numerous evidentiary rulings. We affirm, and after our review of the case on both the law and the evidence, we conclude that we should not exercise our power under § 33E in favor of the defendant.

We summarize the facts. At approximately 6:05 P.M. on March 14, 1979, Reid stabbed Danny Harris during an argument in Frances Lynn Tyree's apartment. The Tyree apartment was located across the hall from Harris's apartment, where he lived with Donna Nally and their three year old son, Danny, Jr. Reid lived nearby in the same apartment complex.

The argument was precipitated by an incident that occurred moments earlier involving Reid and Danny, Jr. Reid and her three year old son were visiting Tyree and her two children. Danny, Jr. had also gone over to the Tyree apartment. Sometime between 5:30 P.M. and 6 P.M., Danny, Jr. bit Reid's son on the cheek. Reid grabbed the Harris boy's hand and told her son to bite it. When he refused, Reid bit Danny, Jr.'s hand to teach him a lesson.

Thereafter, the boy returned to the Harris apartment. He was upset and crying, and told his father that the "big girl" had bitten him. After calming the boy, Harris accompanied him across the hall and knocked on the door of the Tyree apartment. Tyree's eleven year old son Michael let Harris and his son in. Donna Nally, who had followed them across the hall, also entered the apartment. Once inside the apartment, Harris asked what had happened. Reid, who was in the kitchen, responded that she had bitten the child; whereupon Harris entered the kitchen from the living room and the argument ensued.

Tyree, her son Michael, and Nally all testified at trial. Tyree saw Harris point his finger at Reid during the argument. No one saw Harris touch Reid except for Michael, who testified that Harris "poked" Reid in the shoulder. During this initial exchange, Harris also called Reid a "bitch." At some point during the argument in the kitchen Tyree intervened when she saw Reid's hand move toward the kitchen drawer near the sink. Tyree moved between them and said, in substance, that there would be no fighting in her house. After Tyree stepped away, Reid grabbed a knife from the sink and stabbed Harris in the chest area. No one saw Harris choke Reid, saw any other physical contact between the two, ² or heard Harris utter any threats against Reid.

Thereafter, Harris walked back to his apartment, supported by Tyree. When they entered, Nally was already inside and had called the police. Shortly thereafter, at approximately 6:20 P.M., police and medical technicians arrived at the Harris apartment. After he received emergency care, Harris was transported to a hospital where he died later that evening from a single stab wound to the heart.

After searching unsuccessfully for Reid at both her own apartment and Tyree's apartment, the police received information concerning Reid's whereabouts. At approximately 8:30 P.M. that evening, the police entered another apartment at the housing complex and found Reid in the bathroom, standing behind the shower curtains.

Both in a statement given to police after she was arrested ³ and at trial, Reid claimed that she stabbed Harris in self-defense. According to Reid, Harris entered the Tyree apartment yelling and called her a "bitch." He then entered the kitchen, approached Reid, and began pointing his finger at her. She told him not to touch her. Reid said that Harris threatened to kill her and he began choking her. Reid, who testified that she had an asthmatic condition, then punched Harris, kneed him in the groin, and pushed him away. Tyree tried to intervene, but Harris again grabbed Reid by the throat and began choking her. According to Reid, she could barely breathe, and at that event she grabbed the knife from the sink and stabbed Harris.

1. The misuse of peremptory challenges by Reid. At the jury empanelment, fifty-three prospective jurors ⁴ were found to be indifferent and were available to serve on the fourteen-member jury panel. Thereafter, fourteen persons were randomly selected and seated as jurors, subject to the exercise of peremptory challenges by the parties. ⁵ The Commonwealth exercised its first five peremptory challenges to strike five females from the panel. ⁶ Five more jurors were then selected. After the Commonwealth declared itself content with the reconstituted panel, Reid used peremptory challenges to strike all six males on the panel. At a bench conference, the prosecutor requested the judge to require the defendant to justify her challenges on the ground that they had been used to exclude all the males from the jury. ⁷ In accordance with Commonwealth v. Soares, supra at 491, 387 N.E.2d 499, and on the basis of the evidence before him, the judge found "that the peremptory challenges have been exercised so as to exclude individuals on account of their group affiliations," and asked defense counsel to explain the challenges. No explanation was given, and the judge disallowed the challenges. ⁸ The remaining venire was dismissed, without objection, after the defendant expressed no further use for the venire. ⁹

Reid claims that her right to use peremptory challenges is not subject to judicial control; ¹⁰ and, in the alternative, that the judge acted prematurely on the evidence before him in determining that she was exercising her peremptory challenges systematically to exclude males from the jury. In addition, Reid claims that if the judge acted properly, the exclusive remedy is to dismiss the jurors who had been seated and quash the remaining venire. ¹¹ See Soares, supra at 491, 387 N.E.2d 499. There is no error.

We do not disagree with Reid's claim that peremptory challenges play an important role in the administration of justice. "The right to exercise peremptory challenges ... has been called 'one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused,' Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 219 (85 S.Ct. 824, 835, 13 L.Ed.2d 759) (1965), quoting Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408 (14 S.Ct. 410, 414, 38 L.Ed. 208) (1894)." Commonwealth v. Allen, --- Mass. ---, ---, ^a 400 N.E.2d 229 (1980). However, in Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499 (1979), we prohibited litigants from using peremptory challenges to eliminate potential jurors "solely because of their membership in discrete groups." Commonwealth v. Allen, supra. ¹²

In Soares, we determined that the Commonwealth is entitled to a representative jury, and that the Commonwealth as well as the defense could challenge the improper exercise of peremptory challenges. Soares, supra at 489-490 n.35, 387 N.E.2d 499. Reid claims that this limitation on her use of peremptory challenges contravenes her right to be tried by a fair and impartial jury in violation of both the Federal and State Constitutions. She asks this court to find both a Federal and State constitutional right to the unfettered use of peremptory challenges by a defendant. However, "(t)here is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which requires the Congress to grant peremptory challenges ...." Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S. 583, 586, 40 S.Ct. 28, 30, 63 L.Ed. 1154 (1919). Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 219, 85 S.Ct. 824, 835, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965). United States v. Vargas, 606 F.2d 341, 346 (1st Cir. 1979). The same principle applies to the State constitutional claim. Cf. Commonwealth v. Soares, supra 377 Mass. at 488, 387 N.E.2d 499. "The right is in the nature of a statutory privilege, variable in the number of challenges allowed, which may be withheld altogether without impairing the constitutional guarantees of 'an impartial jury' and a fair trial." Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497, 505 n.11, 69 S.Ct. 201, 206, 93 L.Ed. 187 (1948), quoting from Stilson v. United States, supra.

In Soares, we also said that there is a "presumption of proper use of peremptory challenges. That presumption is rebuttable, however, by either party on a showing that (1) a pattern of conduct has developed whereby several prospective jurors who have been challenged peremptorily are members of a discrete group, and (2) there is a likelihood they are being excluded from the jury solely by reason of their group membership." Soares, supra at 489-490, 387 N.E.2d 499.

The critical inquiry is whether the evidence before the judge was sufficient to overcome the presumption of proper use of peremptory challenges. As we read the record, the evidence before the judge supports his conclusion that Reid was improperly exercising her peremptory challenges to exclude men from the petit jury. The defendant attempted to strike all the males, and no females, from the panel. ¹³ Faced with this pattern of conduct, the judge, at the suggestion of the Commonwealth, called on the defendant to give reasons for the challenges. When the defendant refused to give any explanation, the judge ruled that the challenges had...