Com. v. Woods

• Decision Date: 18 February 1993
• Citation: 414 Mass. 343,607 N.E.2d 1024
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Eric C. WOODS.

Page 1024

607 N.E.2d 1024

414 Mass. 343

COMMONWEALTH v. Eric C. WOODS.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Worcester.

Argued Jan. 7, 1993.

Decided Feb. 18, 1993.

Donald A. Harwood, (Conrad W. Fisher, with him), for defendant.

Michael Edmond Donnelly, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Com.

Before LIACOS, C.J., and WILKINS, ABRAMS, NOLAN and GREANEY, JJ.

NOLAN, Justice.

The defendant, Eric C. Woods, appeals from convictions on two separate counts of vehicular homicide by negligent operation, ¹ G.L. c. 90, § 24G(b ) (1990 ed.), and one count of operating a motor vehicle after the suspension of a license pursuant to G.L. c. 90, § 24N (1990 ed.). We transferred this case on our own motion, and we now affirm the convictions.

Defendant's convictions stem from a motor vehicle accident in which two people were killed. The accident occurred at 12:52 A.M. on November 17, 1989, in Dudley. After drinking at a local establishment, Jonathan Edgerly, Patrick Donnelly, Todd Gillis, and the defendant entered a Ford Bronco motor vehicle belonging to the defendant's father. Not long after that, the motor vehicle careened off the road and struck a tree. When help arrived, they found Edgerly and Donnelly dead in the back seat of the vehicle. In the front seat, both Gillis and Woods were seriously injured. They were taken by police and emergency personnel to a hospital for treatment of their injuries. At the hospital, Woods disclosed to the emergency personnel that he had drunk some beer earlier in the evening. His blood alcohol level was tested, and it registered .03 several hours after the incident. ²

Woods was charged in the District Court with (1) operating under the influence of alcohol in violation of G.L. c. 90, § 24; (2) two separate counts of vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol under G.L. c. 90, § 24G; (3) two separate counts of vehicular homicide by negligent operation in violation of G.L. c. 90, § 24G(a ); (4) operating to endanger in violation of G.L. c. 90, § 24; and (5) operating after the suspension of his license pursuant to G.L. c. 90, § 24N. After opting for a bench trial, Woods was found guilty only on the counts in (3) and (5), above. As to the counts in (1) and (2), Woods was found not guilty. The remaining charge, operating to endanger, was dismissed as duplicative.

The defendant then exercised his right to trial de novo pursuant to G.L. c. 218, § 26A (1990 ed.). He filed two motions in limine. The first requested that the Commonwealth be precluded from offering any evidence pertaining to his alcohol consumption on the ground that he had been acquitted of all alcohol-related charges at the bench trial. The second motion requested that the Commonwealth be precluded from offering any evidence regarding ownership of the Ford Bronco by the defendant's father on the ground that such evidence would be unfairly prejudicial to the defendant on the issue of who was operating the vehicle at the time of the accident. The trial court judge denied both motions. A jury-of-six found the defendant guilty on the same counts. He filed a timely appeal.

The defendant alleges several errors in his appeal. We shall address each point seriatim.

1. Double jeopardy. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the Federal government from subjecting a defendant to more than one prosecution for the same offense. ³ This prohibition was extended to the State governments through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 794, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 2062, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969). Although not expressly included in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, the guarantee against double jeopardy has long been recognized as part of our common law, see Thames v. Commonwealth, 365 Mass. 477, 479, 312 N.E.2d 569 (1974), and our statutory law, see G.L. c. 263, § 7 (1990 ed.). The defendant contends that his prosecution in the second trial was barred on double jeopardy grounds under the "same conduct" test announced in Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990). In Grady, supra 495 U.S. at 510, 110 S.Ct. at 2087, the United States Supreme Court held that "the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a subsequent prosecution if, to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, the government will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted." ⁴ To establish that he had committed vehicular homicide by negligent operation of a motor vehicle, Woods argues that the Commonwealth proved conduct for which he had already faced prosecution, namely, driving while intoxicated. Woods concludes that in light of Grady the trial court should have excluded any evidence relating to the influence of alcohol. The failure of the trial court to exclude such evidence, Woods maintains, subjected him to double jeopardy. ⁵

We conclude that the defendant has misinterpreted the holding in Grady and misapplied it to the facts of his case. Essentially, the defendant interprets Grady as precluding from use in a subsequent trial any evidence that was used to support the prosecution's case in the original trial. This interpretation, however, finds no support in the language of Grady decision. The Grady Court explicitly refused to adopt an "actual evidence" or "same evidence" test for double jeopardy. Id. 495 U.S. at 521, 110 S.Ct. at 2093. ⁶ Instead, the Court reaffirmed its previous position that "the presentation of specific evidence in one trial does not forever prevent the government from introducing that same evidence in a subsequent proceeding." Id. at 521-522, 110 S.Ct. at 2093-2094, citing Dowling v. United States, 493 U.S. 342, 110 S.Ct. 668, 107 L.Ed.2d 708 (1990). The Grady Court's disavowal of the "same evidence" test was reiterated most recently in United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. 378, ----, 112 S.Ct. 1377, 1382, 118 L.Ed.2d 25 (1992). On the other hand, the Grady Court noted that "a State cannot avoid the dictates of the double jeopardy clause merely by altering in successive prosecutions the evidence offered to prove the same conduct." Grady, supra, 495 U.S. at 522, 110 S.Ct. at 2093. The Court explained that "the critical inquiry is what conduct the State will prove, not the evidence the State will use to prove that conduct" (emphasis added). Id.

In Grady, the defendant pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated and failure to keep right of the median strip. Id. at 512-513, 110 S.Ct. at 2088-2089. In a subsequent prosecution, the State sought to use proof of this same conduct, driving while intoxicated and failure to keep right of the median strip, to prove vehicular homicide by operation of a motor vehicle in a criminally negligent and reckless manner. Id. at 514, 110 S.Ct. at 2089. The prosecution admitted that it would prove "the entirety of the conduct for which [the defendant] was convicted ... to establish the essential elements of the homicide and assault offenses." Id. at 523, 110 S.Ct. at 2094. In other words, the prosecution in the second trial attempted to use the same evidence from the first trial to prove the same conduct. Because the defendant in Grady had already been prosecuted for the conduct offered for proof of the subsequent charges, the Court held that the second prosecution was barred by the double jeopardy clause. Id.

In fashioning its decision, the Grady Court expressly adopted the dicta of an earlier opinion, Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 100 S.Ct. 2260, 65 L.Ed.2d 228 (1980). In Vitale, the motor vehicle driven by the defendant struck and killed two children. Id. at 411, 100 S.Ct. at 2262. Vitale was convicted of failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident. Id. at 412. He was then tried a second time for involuntary manslaughter based on reckless driving. Id. at 413, 100 S.Ct. at 2263. The Court applied the Blockburger [v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932) ] test to the issue of double jeopardy. Successive prosecutions are constitutionally valid under the Blockburger test if the crime in each prosecution "requires proof of a fact which the other does not." ⁷ Vitale, supra 447 U.S. at 416, 100 S.Ct. at 2265. When the prosecution is required to prove a separate set of facts in a subsequent prosecution, the defendant is not placed twice in jeopardy for the same offense. See id. In Vitale, the Court reasoned that if the charge of failure to reduce speed did not require proof of a fatality and, conversely, if the failure to reduce speed was not a statutory element of the involuntary manslaughter charge, then the defendant was not being tried twice for the same offense. Id. at 418-419, 100 S.Ct. at 2266-67. However, the Vitale Court cautioned that if the State found it "necessary to prove a failure to slow or to rely on conduct necessarily involving such failure," then the defendant would have a double jeopardy claim "because [he] has already been convicted for conduct that is a necessary element of the more serious crime for which he has been charged" (emphasis added). Id. at 420, 100 S.Ct. at 2267.

In United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. 378, ---- - ----, 112 S.Ct. 1377, 1384-1385, 118 L.Ed.2d 25 (1992), the Court limited its holding in Grady. The Felix Court held that "prosecution of a defendant for conspiracy, where certain of the overt acts relied upon by the Government are based on substantive offenses for which the defendant has been previously convicted, does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause." Id. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 1380. Felix was prosecuted for attempting to manufacture drugs in Missouri, convicted, and subsequently tried in Oklahoma for manufacturing drugs and conspiracy to manufacture drugs. Id. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 1382. Despite the prosecution's use of the same evidence presented in the first trial, the Court held that the second prosecution was not barred by the double jeopardy clause. Id. at ----, ----, ...