Commonwealth v. Bruneau

• Citation: 472 Mass. 510,36 N.E.3d 3
• Decision Date: 27 August 2015
• Docket Number: SJC–11820.
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Peter BRUNEAU.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

472 Mass. 510

36 N.E.3d 3

COMMONWEALTH

v.Peter BRUNEAU.

SJC–11820.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Hampden.

Argued April 7, 2015.

Decided Aug. 27, 2015.

Rebecca A. Jacobstein, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for the defendant.

Jane Davidson Montori, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: GANTS, C.J., SPINA, CORDY, BOTSFORD, DUFFLY, LENK, & HINES, JJ.

Opinion

DUFFLY, J.

We are asked in this case to determine whether a defendant who has been found not guilty of murder in the second degree by reason of mental illness may appeal from his conviction pursuant to G.L. c. 278, § 28, or, whether, as the Commonwealth contends, the sole avenue by which such a defendant may seek to appeal is a petition filed pursuant to G.L. c. 211, § 3.

In 2008, the defendant was indicted on a charge of murder in the first degree for the stabbing death of the victim, George Roy, but was repeatedly found not competent to stand trial until 2013. At that time, having heard testimony by a medical expert and having considered representations by defense counsel, a Superior Court judge concluded that the defendant was then competent. The Commonwealth filed a nolle prosequi with respect to so much of the indictment that charged murder in the first degree, and after a colloquy, the defendant waived his right to a jury trial and agreed to the entry of stipulations to numerous facts. The defendant's motions for a required finding of not guilty, made at the close of the Commonwealth's case and at the close of all evidence, were denied. The sole defense offered by the defendant at trial was that, at the time he committed the murder, he lacked criminal responsibility due to mental illness. In his closing argument, the defendant's counsel conceded that the defendant killed the victim by “stabbing him repeatedly.” The defendant was found not guilty by reason of mental illness and ordered hospitalized at Bridgewater State Hospital pursuant to G.L. c. 123, § 16. The defendant filed an appeal under G.L. c. 278, § 28, which the Commonwealth argues was inappropriate, and we granted his application for direct appellate review.

We conclude that a defendant who is found not guilty by reason of mental illness may appeal under G.L. c. 278, § 28. We conclude also that the evidence in this case was sufficient to support a conviction of murder in the second degree and, therefore, that the judge did not err in denying the defendant's motion for a required finding of not guilty.

Facts. We recite the facts a fact finder could have found. On September 5, 2008, Chicopee police Officer John Provost, responding to reports that the victim had not been at work for several days, went to the victim's second-floor apartment in a building on Florence Street in Chicopee to conduct a well-being check. Provost rang the doorbell and knocked loudly on the front and back doors several times, but there was no answer. After seeing an open window to the apartment, he called for a supervisor and a fire engine. Three other officers arrived on the scene. Sergeant Roy Landry and Sergeant David Heroux, the victim's nephew, again rang the doorbell and knocked loudly on the front and back doors but received no response. Members of the fire department arrived and put up a ladder to the open second-floor window; a fire fighter gained access to the apartment and opened

the back door, through which Provost and Heroux entered. The officers saw the defendant, who lived with the victim, standing in the kitchen with the fire fighter. The defendant was wearing shorts and was sweating; a pornographic movie was playing on a television. The victim's automobile was later found parked on the street outside the apartment, covered in a layer of pollen. According to Provost, this was unusual, because the victim washed his vehicle frequently, sometimes as often as daily.

In response to questions from Heroux, the defendant responded that he had not answered the door despite the repeated knocking and doorbell ringing, because he had been sleeping. When asked when he had last seen the victim the defendant said that he had not seen the victim since Tuesday night, three days previously, when the victim had come home with a “lover,” a man named Chet. When Heroux again asked the defendant when he had last seen the victim, the defendant responded that it had been about two weeks earlier. Reminded that he had said he saw the victim on the previous Tuesday night, three days earlier, the defendant said, “Oh, yeah, it was Tuesday night.” Landry asked the defendant if he was injured, and the defendant said either, “I got stabbed” or, “I got stab wounds also.” The defendant pulled up his shirt and pulled down his pants to expose his groin; there were no visible injuries.

The police officers searched the apartment for the victim, but he was not found. They noticed some red-brown stains on a rug in the doorway of the victim's bedroom that appeared to be blood. There were no apparent blood stains in the defendant's bedroom. There were red-brown stains on a cushioned chair in the living room, a pool of red-brown liquid in a corner of the chair, and spatter stains behind and around the chair. Police also found red-brown stains on the stairs leading to the second floor of the apartment building. A screening test of the stains on the rug and the stairs was positive for human blood. Samples were collected for further testing; that testing confirmed that the stains were human blood. Samples also were sent to the State police laboratory for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing, which established that the DNA matched that of the victim.

After obtaining a search warrant, police returned to search the defendant's apartment. They found additional stains in the kitchen in front of the oven and underneath a rug. In the defendant's bedroom, police found a hatchet leaning against a bureau. The bottom of the hatchet had a label with a bar code. Police also

searched the defendant's vehicle. They found a single cinder block in the bed of the defendant's truck.

The next day, September 6, 2008, Chicopee police received an announcement from the Vermont State police that a body had been found along the side of the road on the northbound side of Interstate Route 91. The body, with multiple stab wounds to the abdomen,¹ was wrapped in a sheet, duct tape, and a ten-foot length of chain. Attached to the chain was a tag with the letter “D” in white and orange, similar to a tag from a chain home improvement store. Chicopee police arranged for George Roy's fingerprints² to be sent to Vermont, where testing confirmed the body was Roy's.

On their way back from Vermont, Chicopee police officers stopped at one of the chain's home improvement stores in West Springfield. They gave store employees the bar code number from the label on the hatchet found in the defendant's room, and a description of the hatchet. A store employee was able to determine that two such hatchets had been purchased at that store, one six days earlier, and one about a year previously. The receipt for the hatchet that had been purchased six days earlier, in cash, showed that an eight-inch square cinder block, ten feet of zinc chain, and a pair of latex gloves had been purchased at the same time. Store surveillance video recordings showed the defendant making these purchases.

Discussion. 1. Right to appeal. There is no constitutional right to appeal from a criminal conviction. See Dickerson v. Attorney Gen., 396 Mass. 740, 743 n. 3, 488 N.E.2d 757 (1986) (“The due process clause does not require a State to afford any appellate process whatsoever”). The right to appeal is granted by statute. See, e.g., G.L. c. 278, § 28 (appeal by persons “aggrieved by a judgment” of District or Superior Court); G.L. c. 278, § 33E (direct appeal to Supreme Judicial Court for defendants convicted of murder in first degree).

The defendant's appeal from the denial of his motion for a required finding of not guilty was filed under G.L. c. 278, § 28. General Laws c. 278, § 28, provides that a “defendant aggrieved by a judgment of the [D]istrict [C]ourt or of the [S]uperior [C]ourt in any criminal proceeding may appeal therefrom to the

[S]upreme [J]udicial [C]ourt.” The Commonwealth argues that the defendant's appeal does not lie under G.L. c. 278, § 28, because a finding of not guilty by reason of mental illness is not a “judgment,” and the defendant is not “aggrieved” since he has not been convicted. The Commonwealth contends that the defendant may seek to pursue an appeal only by filing a petition for extraordinary relief pursuant to G.L. c. 211, § 3.³

We do not agree. We conclude that an appeal under G.L. c. 278, § 28, is the appropriate avenue by which a defendant found not guilty by reason of mental illness may challenge that verdict.

Prior to the enactment of the Massachusetts Rules of Appellate Procedure, we allowed a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity to appeal under G.L. c. 278, § 33B, from the denial of his motion for a required finding of not guilty. See Commonwealth v. Curtis, 318 Mass. 584, 585, 63 N.E.2d 341 (1945) (Curtis ). At that time, G.L. c. 278, § 33B,⁴ controlled the procedure for filing an appeal from convictions under G.L. c. 278, §§ 33A –33G. General Laws c. 278, § 33B, was repealed in 1979, when the Massachusetts Rules of Appellate Procedure took effect. See St. 1979 c. 346, § 1. Today, the Massachusetts Rules of Appellate Procedure establish the procedure for filing an appeal. Although the rules changed certain aspects of the procedures to be followed in filing an appeal, compare Guerin v. Commonwealth, 337 Mass. 264, 266, 149 N.E.2d 220 (1958), with Mass. R.A.P. 8(a), as amended,

378 Mass. 932 1979), they “shall not be construed to extend or limit the jurisdiction, as established by law, of the Supreme Judicial Court.” Mass. R.A.P. 1(b), as amended, 421 Mass. 1601 (1995).

2. General Laws c. 278, § 28. We allowed a defendant found not guilty by...