Com. v. Taylor

• Decision Date: 03 December 1997
• Citation: 687 N.E.2d 631,426 Mass. 189
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Jonathan B. TAYLOR.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 631

687 N.E.2d 631

426 Mass. 189

COMMONWEALTH v. Jonathan B. TAYLOR.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Plymouth.

Argued Nov. 4, 1997.

Decided Dec. 3, 1997.

Donald A. Harwood, New York City, for defendant.

Paul C. Dawley, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Before WILKINS, C.J., and ABRAMS, LYNCH, GREANEY, MARSHALL and IRELAND, JJ.

GREANEY, Justice.

A jury convicted the defendant, Jonathan B. Taylor, of the first degree murder of his parents (on the basis of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty), and of burning a dwelling house. ¹ Represented by new counsel on appeal, the defendant claims error (1) in the denial of his motion for required findings of not guilty; (2) in the denial of his motions to suppress statements made to the police and evidence obtained pursuant to search warrants; (3) in the admission of evidence; (4) in his denial of his motion to dismiss the indictments; and (5) in the judge's failure to give an instruction in accordance with Commonwealth v. Bowden, 379 Mass. 472, 485-486, 399 N.E.2d 482 (1980), concerning the adequacy of one part of the investigation. We conclude that the case was properly submitted to the jury and find no other basis to order a new trial and no reason to exercise our authority pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the defendant's first degree murder convictions to a lesser degree of guilt. Accordingly, we affirm the defendant's convictions.

The jury would have been warranted in finding the following facts. Shortly before 5 A.M. on Friday, May 14, 1993, a fire was reported at 14 Channel Street in Mattapoisett. The house was owned by Richard W. Taylor, Sr., and Janice T. Taylor, who lived there with two of their children, Richard W. Taylor, Jr., and the defendant. After the fire was extinguished, the bodies of the defendant's parents were found on the second floor of the house. They had died of smoke inhalation and extensive thermal injuries.

The fire inspector arrived on the scene about 6:30 A.M., and he proceeded to investigate the fire. A determination that the fire had been intentionally set was based on the fire inspector's inquiries of the fire chief and the first police officer to arrive on the scene, a visual examination of the house, and chemical testing of debris recovered from the house. Specifically, the investigation showed that the heaviest fire damage was to the right side of the house, up the stairway to the second floor. There was minimal damage to the first floor. The pattern of uneven char on the stairs demonstrated a "pour pattern of some type of liquid accelerant." Evidence of "alligator charring" at the top of the staircase indicated a fast moving fire consistent with the use of a liquid accelerant. The stairs were burned from the top; materials underneath the stairs were intact following the fire. The investigation conducted by a State electrical inspector did not reveal any evidence that the fire was electrical in origin. Samples of debris collected the following day at six locations from the front door and along the staircase all tested positive for the presence of gasoline. From this evidence, the fire inspector concluded that the fire had been intentionally set and accelerated by gasoline.

Prior to the determination that the fire was intentionally set, the defendant had been located in a wooded area approximately one-quarter of a mile from the scene of the fire. State troopers had been looking for the defendant because it was known that the defendant had been at the house the night before the fire; the defendant's car was parked in front of the house; the defendant's body had not been located in the house after the fire was extinguished; and the defendant had not shown up for work as scheduled that morning. The defendant was not considered a suspect at this point.

When asked by one of the State troopers what he was doing in the woods, the defendant replied that he was waiting for a police officer. The defendant stated that he had been in the woods since before it was light and had been pacing up and down the paths because he did not know what to do. When asked what happened back at the house, the defendant replied, "You already know what happened." When asked why he "didn't run away," the defendant replied, "It's no fun hiding." The defendant led the troopers to a clearing where he had stored a duffel bag containing a stereo, cassette tapes, and various other items that he had brought with him into the woods. He then agreed to go to the police station to talk about the fire.

The defendant was given Miranda warnings after arriving at the police station and was assisted in retaining an attorney. Three search warrants were obtained and executed to seize the defendant's clothing and sneakers, and to search the defendant's car and the burned house. Chemical testing later confirmed the presence of gasoline on each of the sneakers that the defendant had been wearing when he was found on the morning of the fire.

There was evidence that the defendant had purchased gasoline the day before the fire. An attendant at a local gasoline station identified the defendant as having purchased approximately two and one-half gallons of gasoline in a red plastic container on May 13, 1993. A melted red plastic container, found inside the front door of the burned house, was one of the items that later tested positive for the presence of gasoline.

The jury were also warranted in finding that the defendant possessed animosity toward his parents that could have provided a motive for the killings. The defendant's feelings resulted from his strongly held belief that he had been adopted and his parents' refusal to acknowledge this supposed fact. Evidence of this belief was found in a notebook and a tape recording of a conversation between the defendant and his mother that were seized from the defendant's car. The notebook contained excerpts from a story that the defendant had written concerning a boy who had been hypnotized to erase his memories of having been adopted. Although the defendant called the story "science fiction," the preamble states, "I am the ideal person for writing this work, because I actually experienced it. In reality, this story is ninety percent non fiction [sic ]...." The tape recording contained a lengthy conversation between the defendant and his mother in which he refused to accept her statement that he had not been adopted. Other testimony supported findings that the defendant harbored the belief for more than three years that he had been adopted, that the defendant had expressed a dislike of his parents because they would not accept his belief, and that six months before the fire the defendant was still talking about having been adopted.

1. The defendant claimed at trial that the fire was accidental. He now argues that the judge should have allowed his motion for required findings of not guilty, "because the Commonwealth did not carry its burden of ruling out accidental causes for the fire, especially since the Commonwealth's electrician was never found qualified or competent to rule out an accident caused by a tangled mesh of wires near the stairway in the [victims'] home where the Commonwealth maintained that the fire started."

As the factual summary stated above reveals, the jury were warranted in finding that, after reflection and planning, the defendant deliberately set the fire with the specific intent to murder his parents. Moreover, despite the defendant's present conclusory suggestion that testimony by the Commonwealth's electrician witness was inadequate, ² the judge, after careful monitoring of the witness's testimony, properly admitted his opinion that "electricity from [certain identified] sources could be eliminated as ... the cause of the fire." ³ The defendant's motion for required findings of not guilty was correctly denied.

2. As has been mentioned, the defendant was located and questioned by the police in a wooded area about one-quarter of a mile away from his parents' home. Based on statements made by the defendant during this questioning, and other facts disclosed by the investigation, the police obtained and executed three search warrants. The defendant filed motions to suppress his statements during the questioning in the wooded area and the items seized pursuant to the search warrants. The judge conducted an evidentiary hearing on the motions to suppress, and he thereafter filed written decisions denying the motions. The defendant argues that his statements to the police should have been suppressed because they were elicited without a voluntary waiver of his Miranda rights. He also argues that the evidence obtained pursuant to the search warrants should have been suppressed because probable cause was lacking to support the issuance of the warrants and because he was illegally detained at the police station while the police obtained the warrants. We reject these arguments.

(a) With respect to the defendant's motion to suppress his statements, the judge found (with adequate support in the evidence that he found credible) the following facts. When the questioning occurred, the State troopers who had located the defendant in the wooded area did not consider him to be a suspect, or a target of the investigation, and did not know that the fire was of suspicious origin. These officers inquired of the defendant to obtain information about the fire. The defendant willingly talked to the police. "During the entire conversation the defendant was rational, soft spoken, clearly understandable, not emotional, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and [he] appeared of average intelligence." While the defendant was not told by the police of their intention not to allow him to leave until the questioning was completed, he never indicated that he wanted to stop their inquiry or to leave. During the conversation, the defendant indicated that he wanted to...