Commonwealth v. Colton, SJC-08772

• Citation: 73 N.E.3d 783,477 Mass. 1
• Decision Date: 04 May 2017
• Docket Number: SJC-08772
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Nicholas R. COLTON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

477 Mass. 1

73 N.E.3d 783

COMMONWEALTH

v.Nicholas R. COLTON.

SJC-08772

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex..

Argued December 9, 2016.

Decided May 4, 2017.

Michael J. Traft for the defendant.

Casey E. Silvia , Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Gants, C.J., Lenk, Hines, & Gaziano, JJ.

LENK, J.

In December, 2000, the defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree on theories of extreme atrocity or cruelty and deliberate premeditation in the August, 1998, stabbing death of his cousin, Robert McDonald. At the time of the killing, the defendant was twenty-one years old. On appeal, the defendant argues that a statement he made to police was not voluntary and should not have been admitted at trial. He also challenges certain evidentiary rulings, and he argues that there were errors in the jury instructions and that the judge abused his discretion in failing to dismiss several jurors for cause. In addition, the defendant claims that the prosecutor's closing argument was improper and that his mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole violates the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. Finally, the defendant seeks extraordinary relief pursuant to G.L.c. 278, § 33E.

Having carefully reviewed the entire record, we discern no error warranting reversal, nor any reason to exercise our authority under G.L.c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the verdict or order a new trial. We therefore affirm the defendant's conviction.

1. Background . a. Facts . We recite the facts the jury could have found, reserving certain details for later discussion.

i. Day of the stabbing . The victim and the defendant had grown up together and had continued their friendship as adults.¹ On the evening of August 15, 1998, the defendant and his friends Mark Heymann and Kenneth Scott Cronin picked up the victim at his cousin's house in Newton.²

The four then drove to a liquor store near Pettee Square in Newton, where the defendant purchased a "30-pack" of Budweiser beer and a two-liter bottle of Bacardi Limon rum. They joined a larger group of people who were drinking beer at a nearby park. Although the defendant remained fairly sober, the victim soon became highly intoxicated. The defendant told several people that he was angry with the victim and that he intended to beat him up. One of those individuals responded that the defendant "should be a man about it and wait till the next day and ... settle it one-on-one straight, [and] not do it while ... everybody's drunk." The defendant responded that he probably would follow that advice.

Later in the evening, the group of people at the park began to disperse. At some point, Cronin left. Around 10:30 P.M. , the defendant, the victim, and Heymann left in Heymann's vehicle, a blue Oldsmobile Cutlass. The group arrived at around 11 P.M. at the defendant's mother's house in Newton, where the defendant was then living and where he kept a collection of knives.³ The three men thereafter headed to Minute Man National Historical Park in Lincoln, approximately thirteen miles away. At some point during the drive, Heymann pulled the vehicle over into a parking lot. The defendant then attacked the victim with a knife. Defensive wounds

on the victim's hands and wrists demonstrate that he attempted to fend off the attack. Bloodstains on the tops of his feet and in the area surrounding the vehicle suggest that he got out of the vehicle during the attack. Ultimately, the victim was stabbed eighty-six times, both inside and outside the vehicle, including at least once after he died. The victim's body was then dragged across a hiking trail in the park and left in the woods.

ii. The investigation . The next day, August 16, 1998, two hikers walking on the trail found the body approximately twenty-five feet from the trail, and contacted a park ranger, who notified police. Police made casts of tire tracks at the scene and of footprints found near the victim. The following day, shortly after a conversation with the victim's father, State police Troopers Owen Boyle and David Burke went to the home of the defendant's uncle, Richard D'Angelo, and, after one-half hour of conversation with him, went to the defendant's mother's house. They found Heymann sitting in the driver's seat of his vehicle, parked in the driveway. One of the officers walked over and spoke with Heymann, who remained in his vehicle.

When the defendant walked out of the house, Boyle asked him about the victim's whereabouts shortly before his death. The defendant said that he had last seen the victim on the night of August 15, 1998, when he and two other friends had picked up the victim on their way to Pettee Square to drink beer with a group of friends. He said that, at some point, Heymann had driven the victim to the Eliot Street Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) station so that the victim could go to Chelsea to purchase "crack" cocaine from someone named "EJ."⁴ When the trooper told the defendant that the victim had been found dead in Lincoln, the defendant became "upset" and "emotional." He took off his sunglasses, threw them to the ground, and sat down on the front steps, "cradl[ing] his head in his hands" for some time. When Boyle asked for more information, the defendant stated that he was done talking to him and would not respond to any additional questions. At that point, Boyle went to speak with Heymann, whose account of the evening was essentially the same as the defendant's. The defendant and Heymann also gave their friend Cronin a similar account when he asked what had taken place after the defendant, Heymann, and the victim left the party.

Investigators also spoke with others who had been at the party. One partygoer, Matthew Bosselman, said that, earlier on the day of the killing, he had seen the defendant take an aluminum bat from Heymann's vehicle and hide it by the railway tracks near Pettee Square. Bosselman reported that the defendant had said he was angry with the victim and intended to beat him up. Police later discovered an aluminum baseball bat in a shack near the railroad tracks, which Bosselman identified at trial.

Police then went to Heymann's house to examine the tires on his vehicle. When they arrived, they found the vehicle in the driveway with a number of cleaning products on its roof. The vehicle was impounded for analysis. There were numerous bloodstains on the back seat; all of the blood matched that of the victim. There was a fingerprint smeared in the victim's blood near the switch on the interior dome light. The fingerprint belonged to Heymann. The tire treads on the vehicle matched tire imprints found near the hiking trail where the victim had been dragged.

Soon thereafter, police learned that the defendant and a man fitting Heymann's description had gone to a junkyard to purchase parts from the interior of a vehicle similar to Heymann's Oldsmobile Cutlass. They were unable to purchase the parts, and were asked to leave because the vehicle they had been examining, without permission, was in a restricted area of the yard. After learning of the visit to the junkyard, police decided to speak to the defendant. In an effort to locate him, they spoke with D'Angelo, who arranged for the defendant to go to Pettee Square, where Boyle and two other officers were waiting. The defendant agreed to go to the Newton police station for questioning, and was brought there in a police cruiser. D'Angelo followed in his own vehicle. The officers took the defendant to an interview room. Boyle observed that he appeared to be steady on his feet, did not smell of alcohol, and did not appear to be intoxicated.

Boyle read the defendant the Miranda rights from a preprinted card. The defendant signed the card indicating that he understood each of the rights and agreed to waive his rights and speak to police. He repeated the account that he had given two days earlier, stating that he had last seen the victim walking to the Eliot Street MBTA station on his way to purchase crack cocaine. Boyle then said that he "had some information that led [him] to believe that [the defendant] was not telling ... the truth about what had happened" that night. He told the defendant that he had reason to believe the defendant had been in the area of Pettee Square with a baseball bat earlier that day, and that the victim had been with the defendant and Heymann later than they had suggested. Boyle also said that the tire treads on Heymann's vehicle matched those found near the location where the victim's body had been discovered. At that point, the defendant asked if he could speak with Boyle alone.

After the other officers left the room, the defendant asked Boyle if he needed a lawyer. Boyle responded that he could not decide for the defendant but added that, if the defendant thought it would be helpful, he could consult with his uncle D'Angelo, who was downstairs. The defendant assented. Boyle brought D'Angelo to the interview room and left the two alone. The substance of the conversation that followed is disputed, but it appears that, at some point, the Federal death penalty was discussed. After about ten minutes, D'Angelo opened the door and told Boyle that the defendant wanted to cooperate with police. D'Angelo commented that the defendant was concerned about the possibility of the Federal death penalty;⁵ Boyle told the defendant that, as this was a State matter, the death penalty could not be imposed.

The defendant then provided a different account of events on the night of the victim's death.⁶ The defendant said that he, Heymann, and the victim had driven around for a while after leaving Pettee Square, with no particular destination in mind. At some point, Heymann pulled over and left the vehicle to relieve himself. While Heymann was away from the vehicle, the defendant said that the victim attacked him with a knife, and that he killed the victim in self-defense. He said that...