Commonwealth v. Darryl S. Green.

• Decision Date: 27 September 2017
• Docket Number: No. 16-P-396.,16-P-396.
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Darryl S. GREEN.
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

92 Mass.App.Ct. 325
85 N.E.3d 983

COMMONWEALTH
v.
Darryl S. GREEN.

No. 16-P-396.

Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Barnstable..

Argued May 3, 2017.
Decided September 27, 2017.

Eric W. Ruben for the defendant.

Elizabeth A. Sweeney, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Green, Wolohojian, Massing, Shin, & Ditkoff, JJ.

DITKOFF, J.

92 Mass.App.Ct. 325

The defendant appeals after his conviction at a jury-waived trial of stealing in a building, G. L. c. 266, § 20, arising out of his theft of $240 from the home of his recently murdered neighbors. This case requires us to consider the nature

92 Mass.App.Ct. 326

of the corroboration required to support a conviction based on a defendant's confession and to discern the dividing line between property stolen from a building and property stolen from the custody of a person in the building. Concluding that the confession was adequately corroborated and that the evidence made out the crime of stealing in a building, we affirm.¹

1. Background. Sometime between the evening of June 11, 2013, and the early morning of June 12, 2013, Crystal Perry and Kristofer Williams were murdered in their home in Falmouth by persons unknown. At approximately 1:30 A.M. on June 12, police found their bodies in the kitchen and living room, surrounded by blood. The front door had been forced open and "[t]he house ... had been ... ransacked," but jewelry and a wallet remained in the house. The defendant was a neighbor of the victims and suffered from a heroin addiction.

The defendant had been working as a mason's assistant for approximately two and one-half years. His boss paid him in cash at the end of each day, and the defendant "never had cash the next day." When the defendant's boss picked up the defendant the morning of June 12, the defendant showed him cash and said, "Let's go get this," meaning that they should purchase heroin together. It was more money than the defendant had been paid the day before. The defendant and his boss then purchased $200 to $300 of heroin. The defendant's boss also noticed that the defendant was wearing rubber boots that day, as opposed to the work boots he had worn every other day.

The next day, and again four days after that, State police troopers interviewed the defendant. The defendant stated that he went into the victims' home "looking for drugs" and noticed that the house had been "ransacked." He found $100 on the floor near the entrance, and he took it. After going through Perry's wallet and checking at least some of both victims' pockets,² he went into a bedroom. There,

85 N.E.3d 986

the defendant found another $140 on the bed. The defendant took this money as well and spent all of the money on drugs. The defendant adamantly denied taking any jewelry.

2. Discussion. a. Corroboration of confession. The defendant challenges his conviction as impermissibly based on an uncorroborated confession. He argues that the Commonwealth presented

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no evidence, apart from the defendant's statements, that anything was taken from the home. Historically, Massachusetts permitted a conviction to be based solely on an extrajudicial confession. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Killion, 194 Mass. 153, 155, 80 N.E. 222 (1907) ( "[C]onfessions and admissions when freely and voluntarily made have ever been regarded as amongst the most effectual proofs that can be furnished"). In 1984, however, the Supreme Judicial Court held that "an uncorroborated confession is insufficient to prove guilt." Commonwealth v. Forde, 392 Mass. 453, 457, 466 N.E.2d 510 (1984). The court adopted this rule to "preclude[ ] the possibility of conviction of crime based solely on statements made by a person suffering a mental or emotional disturbance or some other aberration." Ibid.

The corroboration required, though important, is "quite minimal." Commonwealth v. Villalta-Duarte, 55 Mass. App. Ct. 821, 826, 774 N.E.2d 1144 (2002), quoting from Commonwealth v. Sineiro, 432 Mass. 735, 745 n.11, 740 N.E.2d 602 (2000). The requirement is "merely that ‘there be some evidence, besides the confession, that the criminal act was committed by someone, that is that the crime was real and not imaginary.’ " Commonwealth v. Rodriguez, 76 Mass. App. Ct. 59, 63, 918 N.E.2d 865 (2009), quoting from Villalta-Duarte, supra at 825, 774 N.E.2d 1144. As the Supreme Judicial Court observed, the absence of corroboration should be rare as "[p]olice interrogations are not conducted at random, but often focus on persons who are already suspects, i.e., persons as to whom there is at least some basis for suspicion." Commonwealth v. DiGiambattista, 442 Mass. 423, 432, 813 N.E.2d 516 (2004).

The corroboration requirement has been applied twice before to larcenies. In Commonwealth v. Landenburg, 41 Mass. App. Ct. 23, 25, 668 N.E.2d 1306 (1996), we found insufficient corroboration of a defendant's confession to stealing merchandise where the only other evidence was the existence of the items described in the confession in the apartment of the defendant's girl friend. The fact that the presence of the items matched the defendant's statements that the stolen items were in the girl friend's apartment "corroborate[d] nothing beyond the fact of the defendant's familiarity with that residence and its contents." Ibid.

The Supreme Judicial Court, by contrast, found sufficient corroboration in Commonwealth v. Jackson, 428 Mass. 455, 702 N.E.2d 1158 (1998). There, the defendant appeared in a friend's apartment "carrying a shotgun, money, cocaine, and jewelry" and told the friend that he (the defendant) had just committed a robbery. Id. at 457, 702 N.E.2d 1158. The court found that the corroboration requirement "was satisfied by

92 Mass.App.Ct. 328

the testimony of [the friend], who said he saw tangible evidence of the robbery in the form of cocaine and cash," in light of the evidence that the defendant broke into the victim's apartment armed with a shotgun. Id. at 467, 702 N.E.2d 1158. Because of this evidence, the absence of any other evidence that items were taken from the victim did not defeat the sufficiency of the evidence. Ibid.

85 N.E.3d 987

Applying these teachings to the present case, we conclude that the defendant's confession was sufficiently corroborated. The house had been "ransacked," with "items strewn about the house," a strong indication that items had been stolen. Cf. DiGiambattista, 442 Mass. at 431, 813 N.E.2d 516 (Corroboration need not show that "defendant was the actual perpetrator of the crime"); Commonwealth v. Weaver, 474 Mass. 787, 791, 54 N.E.3d 495 (2016) (same). The defendant's description of the condition of the house and of the presence of a wallet and jewelry all matched police observations and were the sort of details that would not be known without familiarity with the crime scene. See Commonwealth v. Hubbard, 69 Mass. App. Ct. 232, 236, 867 N.E.2d 341 (2007) (Confession to unlawful possession of firearm was sufficiently corroborated by evidence that defendant was found outside home where firearm was found, that firearm matched defendant's...