Commonwealth v. Galvin

• Decision Date: 23 July 1948
• Citation: 323 Mass. 205,80 N.E.2d 825
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. JOSEPH T. GALVIN.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

323 Mass. 205

80 N.E.2d 825

COMMONWEALTH v. JOSEPH T. GALVIN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

July 23, 1948

May 3, 1948.

Present: QUA, C.

J., LUMMUS, DOLAN SPALDING, & WILLIAMS, JJ.

Pleading, Criminal Indictment. Practice, Criminal, Disclosure of evidence of Commonwealth, Grand jury proceedings, Empanelling of jury New trial. Grand Jury. Homicide. Jury and Jurors. Evidence Relevancy and materiality, Of identity, Photograph, Admissions and confessions, In cross-examination, In rebuttal.

A motion to quash an indictment for murder in the first degree rightly was denied where the form of the indictment was that set forth in G. L.

(Ter. Ed.) c. 277, Section 79.

No abuse of discretion appeared in the denial of a motion by a defendant indicted for murder in the first degree to require the district attorney to furnish him with a transcript of the evidence offered before the grand jury and copies or memoranda and notes of any oral or written confession, and a description of the person and dress of the one alleged to have committed the crime.

A motion to quash an indictment on the ground that it was based on incompetent and insufficient evidence before the grand jury, and a motion that certain persons be ordered to appear and testify at the hearing of that motion, rightly were denied.

No error was shown in voluntary action by a judge presiding at the trial of an indictment for murder in excusing juror number 8 during the empanelling of a jury, after he and juror number 12 had been accepted, because the judge then learned from juror number 8 that his "present state of mind" was "that, even if the evidence warranted conviction of murder in the first degree," he "would not want to come to that" and that he then had "an opinion with reference to the guilt or innocence of" the defendant which "would prevent" him "from arriving at a just decision."

No error appeared in the admission, at the trial of an indictment for murder by assault accompanied by theft of the victim's handbag, of testimony respecting conversations in which the defendant participated, which had a bearing on the state of the defendant's finances about half an hour before the crime and which were in corroboration of previous testimony admitted without exception.

No error appeared, at the trial of an indictment for murder, in a refusal to strike out testimony of a police officer, who had seen a man running from the scene of the crime but had not seen his face, identifying the defendant as that man from his "particular" style of running in the station house about two weeks after the crime.

At the trial of an indictment charging murder by assault, photographs of the victim of the assault properly were admitted in evidence.

Evidence of alleged statements and confessions by the defendant properly was admitted at the trial of an indictment for murder following a preliminary hearing by the trial judge in the absence of the jury and a finding by him that they were made voluntarily.

No error appeared in questions asked in cross-examination of a defendant charged with murder to contradict testimony by him in direct examination as to the real reason which led to his making admissions and confessions tending to prove his guilt.

At the trial of an indictment charging murder, no error appeared in cross-examination of the defendant to prove his knowledge of police routine in connection with his actions and statements while under arrest where no attempt was made to introduce evidence of other offences committed by him, and where he had testified to previous experiences while under arrest.

Following testimony by a defendant charged with murder that he did not know the victim had died when he made certain admissions, evidence of a statement made to the defendant by a police officer before the making of the admissions, offered by the Commonwealth in rebuttal, was admissible, not as evidence of the defendant's guilt, but to show that he did know of the victim's death when he made them.

Evidence at the trial of an indictment for murder, which included evidence of a voluntary admission and confession by the defendant, warranted a finding that the defendant committed a brutal assault on a woman resulting in her death in order to rob her of her handbag, and a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.

No abuse of discretion appeared in the denial of motions for a new trial of an indictment for murder on the ground that the verdict was against the evidence, the law and the weight of the evidence, and also on the ground of alleged newly discovered evidence, including evidence not of such a character that it would be likely to be a real factor in affecting the result of the case and evidence not offered to show insanity of the defendant but to show that he was a chronic alcoholic and a victim of alcoholic psychosis and pathological intoxication.

INDICTMENT, found and returned on November 16, 1945, charging the defendant with murder.

The case was tried before Hanify, J. B. W. Taylor, for the defendant.

J. F. McAuliffe, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

WILLIAMS, J. On October 23, 1946, the defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree on an indictment returned by the grand jury on November 16, 1945, which charged that the defendant "on the eighth day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty-five, did assault and beat one Sarah Rodman, with intent to murder her, and by such assault and beating did kill and murder the said Sarah Rodman." The case is before us, after sentence, upon the defendant's appeal accompanied by an assignment of errors, a summary of the record, and a transcript of the evidence, as required by G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 278, Sections 33A-33G, as amended by St. 1939, c. 341. See Commonwealth v. McDonald, 264 Mass. 324; Commonwealth v Taylor, 319 Mass. 631 .

There was evidence substantially as follows. At or about 10:50 P.M. on the evening of October 8, 1945, the body of Sarah Rodman, an unmarried woman forty-one years of age, was found on the sidewalk in front of her home at number 7 Fottler Road in the Mattapan-Dorchester district of Boston. The woman had left her place of employment in Cambridge about 9:50 P.M. carrying a black handbag which contained a small amount of money and some articles of personal property. When her body was found the bag was missing. She was lying on her back across the sidewalk with her head toward the street and her feet toward the steps which led up to the front walk of the house in which she lived. Her skirt was "a bit up from her waist," her undergarments were not disturbed, her left shoe was partly off, and her right shoe was lying six to eight feet north of the body on the sidewalk. Her face was badly cut and bruised and her skull was fractured in several places. She was unconscious and died in the hospital the following morning from her injuries. In the opinion of the medical examiner the fractures of the skull were caused by the use of a blunt instrument in the nature of a club, possibly a bottle. Injuries to the neck were consistent with an act of throttling.

The body was found by a police officer, Thomas M. Norton, who was returning from the theatre to number 11 Fottler Road, next door to the Rodman house. As he drove up the street and turned left into a driveway, the lights of his automobile disclosed a beach wagon some seventy feet distant in front of number 7 Fottler Road and a man stooping over or crouching on the sidewalk. This man stepped over toward the beach wagon as if to conceal himself and then, as the lights of Norton's automobile caught him, straightened up and ran across the banked front lawn of the house on the corner of Hazleton Street and disappeared around the corner to the northwest. As he ran he was in Norton's view for a distance of about sixty-four feet but Norton did not see his face. Norton alighted from his automobile, and then saw the body of the woman on the sidewalk. He ran after the man but failed to find him. Although a search of the neighborhood was made the next morning Miss Rodman's bag was not found.

Fottler Road is a short street about six hundred feet northwest of and parallel to Blue Hill Avenue, extending between Walk Hill Street on the southwest and Hazleton Street on the northeast. The place where the body was found was on the northwest side of Fottler Road about seventy-four feet from the corner of Hazleton Street. Hazleton Street intersects Blue Hill Avenue about six hundred twenty-five feet southwest of a certain cafe called Blanders. The defendant, who was unmarried and was living with his mother and sister at 11 Mulvey Street, a street in the vicinity of Fottler Road, had spent most of the evening of October 8 in this cafe drinking ale. Since early morning he had been drinking at various places along Blue Hill Avenue. His funds were low, and during the day he had borrowed money from an acquaintance. He left Blanders Cafe around 10:40 P.M. and did not return. Shortly before 11 P.M. he boarded a street car at a stopping place on Blue Hill Avenue between Blanders Cafe and the end of Hazleton Street and rode to Egleston Square. From there he went to Dover Street and spent the night in a vacant building with which he was familiar on Fay Street off of Dover Street. The following morning he signed up to work with a railroad construction gang, and with other employees went by train to New Haven and from there to a construction camp at Montuwese, Connecticut. He left that camp the next morning and "thumbed" his way to New York city. There he obtained some work in the Beth Abraham Home for Incurables. He was treated in the Bellevue Hospital for some form of alcoholism, and on October 22 "hi...