Com. v. Simon
| Decision Date | 15 January 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 00-P-1609.,00-P-1609. |
| Citation | 781 N.E.2d 839,57 Mass. App. Ct. 80 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. John D. SIMON. |
| Court | Appeals Court of Massachusetts |
Esther J. Horwich, Boston, for the defendant.
Jeremy C. Bucci, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Present: GELINAS, CYPHER, & KANTROWITZ, JJ.
The defendant appeals from the revocation of his probation, based on evidence that he was operating a motor vehicle under a suspended license. Probation had been imposed on November 16, 1999, in Brighton District Court, after the defendant admitted to sufficient facts to warrant a finding of guilty on a charge of operating a motor vehicle under a suspended license. The judge continued the case without a finding and placed the defendant under the supervision of a probation officer on terms that, among others, required that he "obey all court orders and local, [S]tate and [F]ederal laws" until May 19, 2000.
On January 2, 2000, the defendant was stopped by the Mashpee police on his way home from a football game. The stop resulted in new charges being lodged against the defendant in Falmouth District Court for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and operating a motor vehicle under a suspended license. The new offense triggered the issuance of a written notice of a probation violation from the Brighton District Court, stating the defendant was not in compliance with the terms of his probation because of the new complaint.
After a hearing on March 3, 2000, the judge found that the defendant had violated the terms of his probation on the basis of his admission to the Mashpee police during his arrest that he had driven his car earlier in the day. The judge entered a guilty finding,1 and modified the terms of probation by extending the probationary period to one year from the date of the hearing and imposing a suspended, ten-day house of correction sentence.2
On appeal, the defendant argues that the entry of a guilty finding and the order modifying the terms of his probation should be reversed because (1) the grounds stated as the reason for revoking his probation were different from those for which he had received written notification; (2) the defendant's admission was unreliable, because the police officer who testified was unsure of the exact statement, and because it was contradicted by other information contained in the police reports; (3) the admission was insufficient, as a matter of law, to support a finding that he had violated the law, because it was uncorroborated; and (4) his admission was not the product of voluntary actions, because at the time of the admission he was intoxicated, and prior to his admission he had not been given his Miranda warnings. We affirm the revocation decision.
We summarize the relevant facts as presented at the revocation hearing. On January 2, 2000, Officer Jon Read of the Mashpee police department was traveling northbound on Route 130. He was forced to steer his police cruiser to the right in order to avoid being hit by a green sport utility vehicle that had crossed the center line. Read testified at the hearing that he was unable to see who was driving or how many people were in the vehicle. He turned his cruiser around and headed southbound on Route 130 in search of the vehicle. Read found it parked at the side of the road. Read observed the defendant standing toward the back of the vehicle, on the driver's side.
Read stopped, exited, and walked toward the defendant. As Read approached, the defendant walked to the passenger side of the vehicle, sat in the passenger seat, and began to look through the glove box. Read asked the defendant where the driver was; the defendant did not respond.3 At about that time, another individual, Kevin Crosby, the defendant's son-in-law, emerged from the woods by the side of the road, where he apparently had been urinating. Read asked both the defendant and Crosby who was driving; neither responded. Read observed food and a cooler with numerous beers in it in the rear of the vehicle. Read determined that the defendant was the owner of the vehicle.
Read determined that both the defendant and Crosby were under the influence of alcohol, and placed both in protective custody. Officer Paul Coronella was called and arrived at the scene. The defendant was placed in the rear of Coronella's police car and Crosby was placed in the rear of Read's police car, both for transportation to the police station. En route to the station, Crosby had a conversation with Read in which Crosby stated that the defendant was the driver. When Read arrived at the station with Crosby, he informed Coronella that Crosby had implicated the defendant as the driver. Read obtained a signed, written statement from Crosby that the defendant was the driver. After conducting sobriety tests, which he said the defendant failed, Coronella placed the defendant under arrest for operating the motor vehicle on Route 130 while under the influence of intoxicating liquor. A breathalyzer test revealed the defendant to have a blood alcohol reading of .16. Officer Sean Sullivan, who had been called to inventory the contents of the defendant's vehicle at the scene, stated in his report that, at the station, he noticed that both the defendant and Crosby "exhibited extreme symptoms of intoxication."
Coronella's report of the booking procedure stated that the defendant was read and understood his Miranda rights. Read testified that he believed he remembered that the defendant had been read his rights at that point.
According to both Coronella's and Read's reports, after the booking procedure, the defendant was again asked how he had arrived at the football game that day. Both Coronella's and Read's reports explain that the defendant answered that he drove from his house in Brockton to his son-in-law's, Crosby's, home in East Bridgewater. Crosby then drove the defendant's vehicle to the game. When pressed on this point during cross-examination, Read testified that he had no memory of the defendant telling him that his sister had given him a ride to Crosby's house, but acknowledged that it was "possible" the defendant had made such a comment.
The judge did not credit Crosby's statement, as related by Officer Read, that the defendant had been driving the vehicle at the time it was stopped. Rather, the judge credited the defendant's admission, as reported by Coronella and Read, that he had driven from his house to Crosby's house, the first leg of the trip to the football game.4
On these facts, the defendant raises several issues implicating due process; we find no merit to his contentions and we affirm.
Written Notification. The defendant first argues that the written notice of surrender referenced only the two charges for which he was arrested by the Mashpee police, and contained no reference to the uncharged misconduct that occurred earlier in the day, when he drove from his home to Crosby's home under a suspended license. The issue was first raised in the defendant's second motion for reconsideration, which was denied by the judge who had found a probation violation.
We agree with the defendant that the written notice was limited on its face to the two charges filed in connection with the incident that occurred on Route 130, and that the notice of violation of probation did not include mention of his operating the motor vehicle on a public way earlier in the day.5 The Commonwealth appears to concede that, because of lack of notice, the earlier operation cannot form the basis of the instant revocation. We disagree.6
While there can be no doubt that written notice of the claimed violations are included among the "minimum requirements of due process," Commonwealth v. Durling, 407 Mass. 108, 112-113, 551 N.E.2d 1193 (1990),7 due process is not an inflexible concept. Ibid. Flexibility is important both to insure the offender the opportunity inherent in the grant of conditional liberty that probation affords, and to insure the Commonwealth the ability to deal expeditiously with a violation of that opportunity. See id. at 113-116, 551 N.E.2d 1193. See also Commonwealth v. Sheridan, 51 Mass.App.Ct. 74, 76-77, 743 N.E.2d 856 (2001). A probation revocation is not a criminal prosecution. Commonwealth v. Durling, 407 Mass. at 112, 551 N.E.2d 1193.
In this case, the written notice did not specifically state the basis upon which the judge based the revocation. The defendant's admission, however, of having driven the vehicle earlier in the day was included in the police reports that were generated in relation to the charges listed on the notice of probation violation. In any event, assuming that the failure to specifically enumerate the misconduct on the face of the notice constitutes error, the issue remains whether the defendant was afforded due process.
We conclude that the actions of defense counsel in introducing the issue at the inception of the hearing, and in vigorously cross-examining the officer on the issue, amply support the conclusion that any error here was harmless. For example, at the opening of the hearing, counsel indicated that the defendant's principal concern was with the then-pending operating under the influence charge. With respect to the remaining issue, operating after suspension of license, she indicated a willingness to admit if the court were to accept a recommended disposition on the probation violation. After discussion about a possible disposition, counsel told the judge the following:
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