Commonwealth v. Groome

• Decision Date: 09 January 2001
• Citation: 755 NE 2d 1224,435 Mass. 201
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. PETER GROOME.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

435 Mass. 201

755 NE 2d 1224

COMMONWEALTH v. PETER GROOME.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Barnstable.

January 9, 2001.

October 5, 2001.

Present: MARSHALL, C.J., GREANEY, IRELAND, SPINA, & SOSMAN, JJ.

Catherine K. Byrne, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for the defendant.

Julia K. Holler, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

SOSMAN, J.

The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree (committed with deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty).¹ On appeal, the defendant argues that his confession should have been suppressed and that the judge erred in not instructing the jury on voluntary manslaughter. He also asks that we exercise our power under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the verdict or grant him a new trial. We decline to reduce the verdict or order a new trial, and affirm the conviction.

1. Facts. On Monday morning, December 8, 1997, the body of the defendant's girl friend, Elsie Korpela, was found underneath an automobile in the driveway of her home in Hyannis. After initial statements to the police that afternoon denying knowledge of or involvement in the victim's death, the defendant ultimately gave the police a full and detailed confession. Prior to trial, he moved to suppress both his earlier statements and that confession. After a three-day evidentiary hearing, the motion to suppress was denied in its entirety. The motion judge's findings are as follows.

Police arrived at Korpela's home at 9:23 A.M. after a passerby had spotted a body lying underneath a Chevrolet Cavalier automobile. The Chevrolet was registered to the defendant. Korpela's own vehicle, a black Volvo automobile, was missing. Relatives told the police that Korpela had been particularly attached to the Volvo, and that she had never loaned it to anyone or let anyone else drive it. Based on that information, the police treated the vehicle as stolen. Relatives also told police that the defendant was Korpela's boy friend, and that one Keith Davis was her former boy friend. State Trooper John Kotfila and Barnstable police Detective Sean Balcom were dispatched to try to locate the defendant, while another officer was sent to find Davis.

After checking at the defendant's residence, the police were advised that the defendant worked as a teacher's aide at a residential school in Middleborough. Kotfila contacted State police in Plymouth, asking that they go to the school to try to locate the defendant and the missing vehicle. Lieutenant Robert Kelliher and Detective Bruce Gordon, wearing plain clothes and driving an unmarked cruiser, proceeded to the school. Kelliher and Gordon went into the administration building to ask for the defendant, while another trooper in a separate vehicle looked for the Volvo.

School personnel contacted the defendant, and he came out to meet with the officers. Kelliher and Gordon explained that they had been asked to find him, and that two other officers were coming from Cape Cod (Cape) to talk with him about a missing black Volvo.² They asked the defendant for his license and identification, which he provided. The defendant then volunteered that he had traded cars that day with his girl friend so that she could take his car for an oil change at a shop in Hyannis. He also told the officers that he had been with his girl friend in New York over the weekend. The officers did not question him, but merely engaged in small talk while waiting outside the building for other officers to arrive.³ At one point, the defendant went back into the administration building to get water or use the bathroom. He was not accompanied by either officer when he did so.

Meanwhile, another trooper had found the Volvo parked elsewhere on school grounds. He radioed that discovery to Kelliher, who told him to remain with and secure the vehicle.

After the defendant had waited and chatted with Kelliher and Gordon for about twenty minutes, Kotfila and Balcom arrived. They told the defendant that they were investigating a stolen Volvo.⁴ The defendant told Kotfila and Balcom, as he had told Kelliher and Gordon, that he had the Volvo, and that he had arranged to swap cars with his girl friend so that his car could be taken for an oil change. Kotfila asked the defendant if he would accompany them back to the Cape so that "any problem about the car could be straightened out." The defendant agreed to go with them. Although no handcuffs had been produced or suggested by any of the officers, the defendant asked that the officers not put him in handcuffs in front of the schoolchildren. Kotfila responded to the defendant's request by telling him that he was not under arrest.

The ride to the Cape took about forty-five minutes. En route, the officers noticed that the defendant had an accent and asked him where he was from. The defendant explained that he was from Ireland, and the three chatted about Ireland for a while. There was no questioning about the Volvo or about Korpela.⁵

The defendant arrived at the Yarmouth State police barracks at around 2:30 P.M., where he was met by Trooper John Mawn and Barnstable police Detective James Tamash. Mawn, Tamash, and the defendant proceeded to a second-floor room that served as both an interview room and the officers' lunch room. The room was furnished with a table and chairs, along with some kitchen appliances (including a refrigerator and a microwave oven). Mawn thanked the defendant for coming to talk with them, and then asked the defendant to wait briefly while he completed some paperwork.

Mawn and Tamash began interviewing the defendant at around 2:50 P.M. They asked for some personal background information, which again led to a discussion of the defendant's home country. The defendant then asked to use the bathroom. Mawn gave him directions, and the defendant went to the bathroom unaccompanied. On his return, Mawn offered him a soft drink from the supply in the refrigerator. The defendant chose a beverage, and the three engaged in some conversation unrelated to the case. The defendant again asked to use the bathroom, and again went and returned unaccompanied by any officer. When he returned to the room, the defendant asked Mawn and Tamash if he "had to stay here." Mawn replied that they were not the "British Army," that he was not a suspected "Irish Republican Army collaborator," and that they could not make him stay. Mawn said that they did want to ask him some questions, but that he was free to go.

The defendant did not leave. In an apparent attempt to get to the point of the interview, the defendant said that the officers who drove him down had said something about a problem with the car. The defendant then, for the third time, volunteered his version about trading vehicles so that his girl friend could take his car for an oil change while he used her car to get to work. Mawn told the defendant that Korpela's relatives believed that the Volvo had been stolen, hence the investigation of a stolen vehicle. The defendant questioned why Korpela herself had not reported the vehicle missing and asked the officers why they had not talked to Korpela. At that point in the interview, somewhere between 3:15 P.M. and 3:30 P.M., Mawn told the defendant that Korpela was dead.

On hearing this news, the defendant became visibly shaken, and he began trembling and gagging. He again asked to use the bathroom, and again went there unaccompanied. He was still quite shaken on his return. He asked to smoke, which Mawn allowed. His hands were trembling such that he had difficulty lighting the cigarette himself, and Mawn ultimately helped him light it.⁶

The defendant asked the officers if he needed a "solicitor." Mawn queried, "What do you mean?" The defendant replied that the term "solicitor" meant "attorney," explaining that "we call them solicitors where I come from." Mawn then told the defendant that he was not under arrest, was not charged with anything, and therefore did not need an attorney.⁷

Mawn then asked the defendant about his activities with Korpela the previous evening. The defendant replied that he and Korpela had traveled to New York for the weekend, returning to the Cape by dinnertime. They had enjoyed dinner at a restaurant and gone to a bar, and then returned to Korpela's house. He again described the planned trade of vehicles so that Korpela could take his car to get the oil changed the next day. Pursuant to that plan, the defendant said that he had left Hyannis in Korpela's Volvo that night and driven to his residence in West Barnstable. Mawn asked the defendant if he knew of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Korpela. The defendant replied that she had had some problems with her prior boy friend, Keith Davis, and also mentioned another man named "Tom," who had been her boy friend before that.

At a little before 4 P.M., Mawn was called out of the interview room, and the defendant left for another unaccompanied trip to the bathroom. Mawn spoke with another trooper who was working on the investigation, who informed Mawn that blood spatters had been found on the Volvo.⁸ With that information, Mawn decided to arrest the defendant. He returned to the interview room, told the defendant that "[w]e have a problem," and confronted him with the discovery of blood on the Volvo. Mawn explained that the blood meant that the Volvo was probably at the scene at the time of the murder, and that it was a "serious problem" for the defendant because it was inconsistent with the version the defendant had given. As a result, Mawn said that he would have to read the defendant his rights.

Mawn read the defendant the standard Miranda warnings from a form, then handed the form to the defendant to read. Mawn asked if he understood his rights; the defendant replied that he did; and the defendant signed the upper portion of the form acknowledging that his rights had been read to him.⁹ The time of that signature was noted as 4:11 P.M. The defendant also...