Commonwealth v. DEANE
| Decision Date | 20 September 2010 |
| Docket Number | SJC-10365. |
| Citation | 934 N.E.2d 794,458 Mass. 43 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Jessica DEANE. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.
Chauncey B. Wood, Boston, for the defendant.
Anna E. Kalluri, Assistant District Attorney (Patrick Haggan, Assistant District Attorney, with her), for the Commonwealth.
Present: MARSHALL, C.J., IRELAND, SPINA, CORDY, & BOTSFORD, JJ.
In 2007, a Superior Court jury found the defendant, Jessica Deane, guilty as a joint venturer 1 of the murders in the first degree of Kayla Ravenell (Ravenell) and her twenty-seven month old son (child), on the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. She appealed and now claims that the trial judge committed reversible error in denying her motion for required findings of not guilty, in admitting recordings of her telephone calls from jail, and in denying her request for a jury instruction distinguishing accessory after the fact from joint venture, as well as error in instructing the jury on joint venture. She also claims reversible error in the prosecutor's closing argument. Because we conclude that there was no error requiring reversal and our review of the entire record provides no basis to grant relief under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, we affirm the defendant's convictions.
Facts. We summarize the evidence at trial, in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, focusing on evidence relevant to the defendant's attack on the sufficiency of the Commonwealth's case and reserving certain details for our discussion.
1. Background. Jims Beneche was the former boy friend of Ravenell and the father of her son, who was born in February, 2002. 2 The relationship between Ravenell and Beneche deteriorated near the end of 2003. There was testimony that Beneche was ordered to pay child support of fifty-seven dollars per month. 3
The defendant, who lived in Brockton, started dating Beneche in 2003. In the spring of 2004, she began staying with Beneche, who lived with his mother and a brother in an apartment in the East Boston section of Boston. Beneche did not have a driver's license, and whenever the defendant was with Beneche in a vehicle, she was driving.
The defendant hated Ravenell and her son, and she told numerous friends and acquaintances that she wished they were dead.
She told Beneche's mother that she hated the child. At various times, she also said that she was going to “beat ... up” and “fuck up” Ravenell, and that she would kill Ravenell. The defendant told several friends that she did not want Beneche to pay child support and that she did not believe that the child was his son. She stated that she “did not want to pay a dime to that bitch and that baby,” 4 and “I'll make sure [Ravenell] and that kid's dead.” She wanted Beneche to take a paternity test. Whenever Beneche visited with his son and Ravenell, the defendant would harass them by repeatedly telephoning the victim or Beneche. The telephone calls were so harassing that Ravenell and Beneche's mother had their telephone numbers changed. The defendant also telephoned the Department of Social Services to report, anonymously and falsely, that the child looked sick and that Ravenell was hitting him.
In addition, the defendant hated the child because she wanted to have Beneche's first child. In the spring of 2004, she and Beneche told various people they were either married or engaged. The defendant told others that she was pregnant by Beneche. On Mother's Day, 2004, the child was hospitalized. Beneche went to the hospital to visit him. The defendant was angry and said that she wished the child would die and that she would get Ravenell and the child out of Beneche's life.
Several writings by the defendant were introduced at trial. In a letter to Beneche she wrote: In an unsent letter addressed to one of her friends, the defendant wrote, in part:
Moreover, the defendant told one of her friends that she would kill for Beneche.
2. The murders. The victims were killed on the night of May 22, 2004. At approximately 11 p.m., Ravenell and her son left their apartment and went to Beneche's apartment, ostensibly for Ravenell and Beneche to discuss their child support issues. Ravenell was driving her mother's 1996 Chevrolet Corsica automobile. The defendant was with Beneche; Beneche's mother and brother were away overnight.
At the apartment, Ravenell and the child were beaten and suffocated. The child's body was placed in a bag that had household trash in it. Ravenell's body was placed in some black trash bags and a coaxial cable was wound around the bags.
At approximately 2 a.m. on May 23, a neighbor saw the defendant and Beneche struggling to get a trash bag, which police later learned contained Ravenell's body, down the stairs of the apartment building; the two were dragging and kicking it because they could not lift it. The pair placed the bag in the trunk of Ravenell's car. The defendant then drove the car to the Great Pond Reservoir in Braintree, an area familiar to her. She and Beneche dumped Ravenell's body in the pond, where it was discovered the afternoon of May 23 by an off-duty State trooper who had been walking near the pond with his sons.
After they left the reservoir, the pair proceeded to Brockton to a hospital emergency room because Beneche had a cut on his finger. They arrived at approximately 6 a.m. on May 23. The hospital security camera photographed them; at one point, they were holding hands. At approximately 9 a.m., the couple left the hospital and drove to some woods, near an industrial area with which the defendant was familiar, where they left Ravenell's car. They made their way to the defendant's mother's house. The defendant asked her mother for some money for train fare back to Boston.
Before they left Brockton, the pair went to a coffee shop. The owner, who was friendly with the defendant, noticed that the defendant was smiling and seemed happy, whereas Beneche seemed sad. Others who spoke to or saw the defendant on that day also testified that there was nothing out of the ordinary in her behavior or demeanor.
Ultimately, the defendant and Beneche went back to Beneche's apartment. Police, who had been investigating Ravenell's murder, arrived at approximately 2 a.m. on May 24, looking for the child. Beneche's mother let them in. They asked for Beneche, and the mother indicated that his bedroom was upstairs. On the approach of the police, the trash bag containing the child's body was thrown out Beneche's bedroom window. A police officer, who had positioned himself in a parking area directly below the window, heard a sound “like plastic fluttering.” When he turned toward the sound he saw a plastic trash bag hitting the pavement.
When police officers went into the bedroom, the defendant and Beneche pretended to be asleep. The officers separated the pair for questioning; as discussed below, the defendant gave three different statements to police.
3. Evidence. The medical examiner who conducted Ravenell's autopsy reported that she had a laceration above her right eye caused by blunt force trauma, as well as a broken tooth socket that was consistent with blunt force trauma. She had four other points of blunt force trauma to her head, as well as bruises inside her mouth adjacent to her jaw that were consistent with blunt force trauma to both sides of her mouth. At least some of the wounds on her head were consistent with a shod foot. She also had bleeding in both eyes, consistent with suffocation, and injuries to her lips consistent with something being held over her nose and mouth or placed over her head. He testified that while she was being suffocated, Ravenell would have struggled for air for twenty to thirty seconds, and death could have taken as long as six minutes. Her cause of death was asphyxia due to suffocation.
The medical examiner who conducted the child's autopsy testified that he suffered several abrasions or bruises to his head, face, and under the surface of his upper and lower lips. The bone behind his left eye was fractured consistent with blunt force trauma to the eye. His brain was swollen, which was consistent with head trauma and indicated that he was still alive when he received his head and eye injuries. His eyes and larynx had injuries consistent with neck compression. The blunt force trauma to his head alone could have been fatal. He also was suffocated by having his mouth and nose compressed, and there were bruises under his chin the size of fingertips. It would have taken him ninety seconds before he lost consciousness, and death would have occurred within five to six minutes. His cause of death was head trauma and suffocation.
There was physical evidence tying the defendant to the killings. Testing of a mixture of blood on Timberland brand work boots the defendant had been wearing revealed that Ravenell could not be excluded or included as a source of that blood. In her statement to police, discussed infra, the defendant stated that the blood belonged to Ravenell, or Beneche, or both. Ravenell's blood was on the inside left sleeve and inside front of the sweatshirt the defendant had been wearing at the time of the killings. The defendant's fingerprints were found in three places on the exterior of the bag that held the child's body, and two hairs that matched the defendant's were found inside the bag, one of which was on the back of the child's head. 5 The...
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