Com. v. Townsend

• Decision Date: 16 March 2009
• Docket Number: SJC-10035
• Citation: 902 N.E.2d 388,453 Mass. 413
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Seymour G. TOWNSEND.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

902 N.E.2d 388

453 Mass. 413

COMMONWEALTH v. Seymour G. TOWNSEND.

SJC-10035

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Berkshire.

Argued December 5, 2008.

Decided March 16, 2009.

Stewart T. Graham, Jr., for the defendant.

David F. Capeless, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: MARSHALL, C.J., IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, & CORDY, JJ.

IRELAND, J.

Based on the stabbing of his estranged wife Michelle Townsend, that occurred in the early morning of March 3, 2006, a jury convicted the defendant of murder in the first degree on the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. Represented by new counsel on appeal, the defendant argues error in (1) the denial of his motion to suppress evidence and statements; (2) the denial of his motion for required findings of not guilty; and (3) the trial judge's instructions to the jury. We affirm the defendant's conviction and discern no basis to exercise our authority under G.L. c. 278, § 33E.

The jury could have found the following. The victim and the defendant were married in 2003 after they had dated for about one year. At the time of their marriage the victim had three children. After they married, the victim and the defendant had a daughter together.

During their marriage, the victim and the defendant often fought, verbally and physically. Friends and family, on multiple occasions, observed injuries to the victim, which the victim sometimes attributed to having been caused by the defendant. On February 2, 2006, the victim obtained a protective order against the defendant.¹ In March, 2006, the defendant admitted to a friend of the victim that he had "abused" the victim.

The defendant and the victim lived together in a second-floor apartment at 111 Lincoln Street in Pittsfield. The victim left that apartment and moved into another apartment in Pittsfield on Dartmouth Street. Her friend, Kristen Gralia, lived with her in the Dartmouth Street apartment. The defendant remained at the Lincoln Street apartment (the defendant's apartment).

Over the years, the victim had intermittent problems with drugs, particularly cocaine. In January or February of 2006, the Department of Social Services obtained custody of the victim's four children. Two of the children went to live with the victim's mother; the other two were placed in foster care. The victim visited and telephoned the children at her mother's residence every day. The victim blamed the defendant for her having lost custody of her children; she wanted to regain custody of them, and was thinking about obtaining a divorce.

The victim was last seen by those close to her on Thursday, March 2, 2006. Prior to midnight, Gralia saw the victim leave their apartment and drive off in her automobile. A couple of hours later, at approximately 2 A.M., March 3, the victim telephoned Gralia from the defendant's apartment. She and Gralia spoke for a few minutes. Gralia heard the defendant's voice in the background; it sounded loud and angry. The victim said she would meet Gralia for breakfast; she never did so.

An employee of a local bar saw the defendant arrive at the bar at about 11:30 P.M. on March 2. The defendant was wearing an orange and white jacket, orange and white baseball hat, and orange shirt. He left about one hour later. At approximately 1 A.M. (now March 3), the victim entered the bar, looked around, and left, staying for no longer than five minutes.

On March 3, when the victim did not return home, Gralia spoke with Michelle Matthews, a friend of the victim who lived in a downstairs apartment. The two women made some telephone calls trying to locate the victim. Gralia telephoned the defendant's cellular telephone and his apartment, but received no answer. In addition, the victim's mother attempted to contact the victim by calling her cellular telephone and home telephone. The victim did not answer.

On Saturday, March 4, Gralia and Matthews went to the Pittsfield police department. They recounted the victim's telephone call to Gralia. Officer Thomas Dawley was dispatched to the defendant's apartment. He went to the back parking lot and observed the victim's automobile. He did not see a green van, which was the vehicle used by the defendant. Officer Dawley went to the defendant's apartment, announced his presence, and knocked on the door. No one answered. He reported back to dispatch that there was no response.

After two additional, but unsuccessful, well-being checks were made by police during the weekend, Sergeant Matthew Hill was dispatched to the defendant's apartment on Monday, March 6. Sergeant Hill attempted unsuccessfully to gain entry into the apartment through a window. Consequently, the fire department was contacted to force open the front door, which opened into the kitchen. Once the front door was opened, Sergeant Hill saw a large amount of dried blood on the kitchen floor. By himself, he proceeded into the apartment. Immediately past the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, Sergeant Hill found the victim lying face down on the living room floor with a sheet covering most of her body. (Her bare feet, on which there were bloodstains, were exposed.) He determined that the victim was deceased.

Bloodstains were found throughout the apartment, including in the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and a childrens' bedroom. Some of the bloodstains were apparent to the eye; others were visible through chemical enhancement. In the kitchen, there were bloodstains on the walls, on the floor, and on kitchen countertops. On the back of the front door to the apartment, which opened into the kitchen, there was blood spatter, smears of blood, and cast-off blood. A fingerprint of the defendant was recovered from the blood on the door as well as from the blood on the kitchen wall. Blood on the door was consistent with the victim's. Next to the kitchen sink, police recovered a bloody latex glove in which there was a bloody paper towel. Blood on the towel was consistent with the defendant's blood. In the bathroom, there were bloodstains in the bowl and countertop areas of the sink.

In the living room, there was blood spatter on the walls. A bloodstain on the wall was consistent with the victim's blood. There were bloodstains on a reclining chair, and blood smear on the back of another chair. On the couch, police recovered an orange and white jacket.

There were bloody footprints on the carpet in the living room leading to the childrens' bedroom, and then leading back into the living room. Some of the footprints led to a white plastic bag that contained the defendant's thumbprint. In this bag, police recovered a knife, a cotton blanket that was soaked with blood and had multiple holes throughout, a long-sleeve orange shirt, and a pair of brown and white boots. Bloodstains consistent with the victim's blood were found on the shirt and boots. On the knife, there were bloodstains, as well as tissue and hair. The tissue on the knife contained deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) consistent with the victim's. Blood on the knife was consistent with both the victim's blood and the defendant's blood. In the defendant's bedroom, police recovered an orange and white baseball hat. There were no bloodstains in that room.

During their investigation, police recovered photographs of the defendant from the victim's Dartmouth Street apartment. The pictures depicted the defendant dressed in the orange and white jacket. They also found a joint petition for divorce, which was blank.

Police obtained video surveillance tapes from the bar at which the defendant and the victim were seen on March 2 and March 3. A tape recording captured an image of the defendant inside the bar wearing the orange and white jacket, orange and white hat, and orange shirt.

The victim died as a result of a loss of blood caused by fifty-eight knife wounds. She sustained multiple knife wound injuries² to her head, face, neck, shoulders arms, hands, chest and back, and had defensive wounds on her arms and hands. Approximately two-thirds of the victim's injuries were "serious," and potentially fatal if left untreated. The remaining less serious wounds, by themselves, would be potentially fatal if the bleeding were not stopped. The victim's injuries were consistent with wounds that could have been inflicted by the knife seized from the white plastic bag in the defendant's apartment. A toxicology screen revealed that cocaine and cocaine metabolite, as well as trace levels of alcohol, were in the victim's bloodstream at the time of her death.³

On March 3, the defendant fled in the green van to the borough of Queens in New York City, where he was arrested on March 23.⁴ The following day, after being given Miranda warnings, the defendant agreed to speak with police. Detective Thomas Bowler of the Pittsfield police department conducted the interview (in New York City), which was recorded using a hand-held audio recorder.

The defendant told police that, on the evening of March 2, and into the early morning of March 3, he was at a local bar. He was wearing the orange and white jacket, orange and white baseball hat, and orange shirt. After he returned home to his apartment, the victim showed up. She was acting "crazy," and was upset about the situation with the children. She remarked that she would not get the children back because she was "smoking crack" again and she was not going to stop. The victim threatened to kill the defendant.⁵

The defendant offered different accounts of what next took place. The defendant stated that while he was playing a video game, the victim slapped him. He jumped up and saw that the victim was holding a knife that she brought with her into the apartment. He grabbed for the knife and took it from her. The defendant's other version was that while he and the victim were arguing, she attacked him by trying to stab him. The defendant took the knife from her.

While taking the knife away from the...