Commonwealth v. Entwistle
| Decision Date | 14 August 2012 |
| Docket Number | SJC–10788. |
| Citation | 973 N.E.2d 115,463 Mass. 205 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Neil ENTWISTLE. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Stephen Paul Maidman, Springfield (Stephanie Page, Committee for Public Counsel Services, with him) for the defendant.
Casey E. Silvia, Assistant District Attorney (Michael L. Fabbri, Assistant District Attorney, with her) for the Commonwealth.
Present: IRELAND, C.J., SPINA, CORDY, GANTS, & DUFFLY, JJ.
On the evening of Sunday, January 22, 2006, the defendant's wife and their nine month old daughter were found dead in a bed in the master bedroom of their home in Hopkinton. His wife had been shot once in the forehead; his daughter had been shot in the abdomen from close range while cradled in her mother's arms, and the bullet had exited the daughter and entered her mother's breast. The defendant, a British citizen, was charged with their murders and extradited from the United Kingdom, where he had traveled early in the morning of Saturday, January 21. A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of two indictments charging murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation, in violation of G.L. c. 265, § 1.1
On appeal, the defendant raises two issues. First, he argues that the motion judge (who was also the trial judge) erred in denying his motion to suppress the fruits of the warrantless searches of his home by police officers attempting to find his missing family. Second, he argues that he was denied his right to a fair and impartial jury because the jury pool was tainted by the “saturating and inflammatory” media coverage of the case and because the judge refused during jury selection to probe more deeply into whether prospective jurors had already concluded from the pretrial publicity that the defendant was guilty of the crimes charged. For the reasons detailed below, we affirm the convictions and, after a complete review of the record, decline to exercise our authority under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, to order a new trial or reduce the murder convictions to a lesser degree of guilt.
Background. Because the defendant does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence at trial, we briefly summarize the key evidence supporting the jury's guilty findings, saving for the discussion of the motion to suppress the details leading to the discovery of the bodies inside the house.
The defendant met his wife at the University of York in England, where he was an engineering student and she was a student on her junior year abroad from the College of the Holy Cross. They were both on the crew team, he as a rower and she as a coxswain. After she graduated, she returned to England to earn a teaching certificate and to be with the defendant. In August, 2003, they married, and on April 9, 2005, his wife gave birth to their daughter. After the birth, they decided to move to the United States. The defendant's wife and daughter arrived in August, 2005, living in Carver at the home of his wife's mother and stepfather. The defendant joined them in September.
The stepfather owned various firearms, including a .22 caliber revolver, that were secured by trigger locks and stored in his bedroom closet in Carver. He kept the keys to the trigger locks on the kitchen counter, with a spare set of keys in his bedroom night stand and a second spare set in his truck. The stepfather belonged to a sportsmen's club and twice took the defendant with him to target practice, where the defendant learned how to handle and load the firearms, including the .22 revolver. The defendant's wife showed no interest in firearms and never went with her stepfather to target practice.
Although the defendant's wife was home taking care of their daughter and the defendant had been unable to find work, they leased a four-bedroom single-family house in Hopkinton and moved in during the first week of January, 2006. On January 16, someone using a laptop computer later recovered from the Entwistle home made an Internet search for the phrase “how to kill with a knife” and visited various Web sites that offered escort services in the Hopkinton area. On the afternoon of January 17, someone using the laptop made Internet searches for “knife in neck kill” and “quick suicide method.”
The defendant told State Trooper Robert Manning in a telephone call on Monday, January 23, that he had found his wife and daughter dead in the bedroom at approximately 11 a.m. on Friday, January 20, after he had returned home from shopping. He did not contact the police or advise anyone that they were dead. He stated that after he found their bodies, he went to the kitchen to commit suicide with a kitchen knife, but feared the pain and did not cut himself. Instead, he said, he went to the home of his wife's mother and stepfather in Carver to shoot himself with one of the stepfather's firearms, but the house was locked and he was unable to find a key to gain entry.
The defendant drove to Logan International Airport in Boston and entered the airport parking garage at 8:14 p.m., then left the garage at 9:38 p.m. and returned at 10:49 p.m. He purchased a one-way ticket to London at approximately 7 a.m. on Saturday, January 21, and boarded the 8:20 a.m. flight without any luggage. His wife's mother and stepfather did not learn of the deaths until the bodies were discovered by police on Sunday evening, January 22.
The firearms owned by the stepfather were seized by police from the Carver home and tested after the killings. Police found a stain on the end of the muzzle of the .22 revolver. A swab taken from this stain revealed a mixture of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from at least two individuals, with a major profile that matched the defendant's wife's DNA.2 In addition, a swab taken from the handle of the revolver contained a mixture of DNA from at least two individuals, with a major profile that matched the defendant's DNA.3 A swab taken from the trigger lock of the revolver also revealed a mixture of DNA from at least two individuals, with a major profile that matched the defendant's DNA.4
Although the defendant claimed that he could not gain entry into the Carver home, the keys to the house were found in the center console of the vehicle that the defendant drove to the airport on the evening of January 20. A spare set of house keys were kept in the dog house in the back yard of the home. Shortly after the killings, the stepfather discovered that this spare set was gone. He also discovered that the spare set of keys to his trigger locks that he kept in a night stand in his bedroom was missing.5
Discussion. 1. Motion to suppress. In reviewing a motion to suppress, we “accept as true the subsidiary findings of fact made by the judge absent clear error [and] defer to the credibility findings of the judge, who had the opportunity to observe and evaluate the witnesses as they testified” at the motion hearing. Commonwealth v. Peters, 453 Mass. 818, 822–823, 905 N.E.2d 1111 (2009)( Peters ). We summarize below the judge's relevant findings of fact, which are supported by the evidence presented at the suppression hearing. a. Facts. On Saturday, January 21, 2006, at approximately 8:25 p.m., the mother of the defendant's wife telephoned the Hopkinton police department and spoke with Sergeant Charles Wallace, who was the patrol supervisor on that shift. She reported that she was concerned about her daughter and son-in-law and their nine month old baby, who had just moved to Hopkinton the previous week. She said she last spoke with her daughter on Thursday, January 19, when she arranged to have lunch with her at her new home in Hopkinton on Saturday. She arrived at the house as arranged, but no one answered the door. She left a note on the front door and went home. She also tried unsuccessfully to call her daughter's cellular telephone.
The mother told Sergeant Wallace that she had just received a telephone call from her daughter's friend, who reported that she and another friend had arranged to have dinner at the Entwistle home that night but that no one answered the door when they arrived. The friend had seen a light in the hallway and heard a dog barking inside. The mother said it was “really unusual for [her daughter] to do this.” When Sergeant Wallace asked whether the Entwistles might have gone away unexpectedly, the mother said, “She's the type of girl that calls me whenever she does anything.” Sergeant Wallace told the mother that he would send officers to check the house. He then dispatched Sergeant Michael Sutton and Officer Aaron O'Neil to the Entwistle home “on a person check.”
Sergeant Sutton was the first to arrive at the Entwistle home, and was met by the two friends, who were waiting in the driveway. They explained that they were scheduled to meet the Entwistles for dinner at 5 p.m. but did not arrive until about 7:15 p.m. They had tried to telephone to say that they were running late but no one answered and instead they left voice mail messages. When the friends arrived at the house, no one answered the door even though there were lights on and a dog was barking inside. One of the friends was very anxious. She told Sergeant Sutton that the Entwistle dog was very “pampered” and that the Entwistles would not have gone away without making arrangements for the dog.
The friend told Sergeant Sutton that the Entwistles had one vehicle, a white BMW sport utility vehicle. Sergeant Sutton decided to check the garage to see if the vehicle was there, but the garage had no windows. He walked around the exterior of the house, “which was closed up,” and saw that the shades were drawn, but there were lights on. He could hear the dog barking and sounds from a television. He decided to enter the house to check on the occupants, believing that the Entwistles might be inside the home and in need of aid. 6
Accompanied by Officer O'Neil, who had just arrived, Sergeant Sutton used a plastic card to release the...
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