Commonwealth v. Hall

• Decision Date: 26 June 2020
• Docket Number: SJC-11952
• Citation: 485 Mass. 145,147 N.E.3d 1078
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Adam Lee HALL.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

485 Mass. 145

147 N.E.3d 1078

COMMONWEALTH

v.Adam Lee HALL.

SJC-11952

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Berkshire..

Argued January 10, 2020

Decided June 26, 2020

James W. Rosseel, Worcester, for the defendant.

David F. Capeless, Special Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Gants, C.J., Gaziano, Budd, Cypher, & Kafker, JJ.

KAFKER, J.

In February 2014, the defendant was found guilty by a jury of three counts of murder in the first degree for the brutal killings of David Glasser, Edward Frampton, and Robert Chadwell.¹ The Commonwealth's theory of the case was that the defendant committed the murders with two coventurers, David Chalue and Caius Veiovis, to prevent Glasser from testifying against the defendant in two pending criminal cases. They also kidnapped Frampton, Glasser's roommate, and Chadwell, who was visiting Glasser and Frampton's apartment at the time. After the three victims were killed, the defendant, Chalue, and Veiovis dismembered the victims' bodies and placed the body parts in plastic bags, which the defendant arranged to be buried. The defendant, Chalue, and Veiovis were tried separately, and all were convicted. We affirmed Veiovis's convictions of murder in the first degree, kidnapping, and witness intimidation. See Commonwealth v. Veiovis, 477 Mass. 472, 490, 78 N.E.3d 757 (2017).²

The defendant presents multiple claims on appeal: (1) that there was insufficient evidence that the murders took place in Massachusetts; (2) that the judge erred in denying the defendant's request for a special verdict question regarding territorial jurisdiction; (3) that the indictments against the defendant should have been dismissed due to the prosecutor's failure to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury, the presentation of allegedly false testimony to the grand jury regarding the accuracy of cell site location information (CSLI), or the presentation of arguably impermissible character evidence; (4) that the defendant's conviction of kidnapping based on a 2010 incident (2010 kidnapping) be vacated because the theory of kidnapping was invalid or at least foreclosed by the ruling of a Superior Court judge (motion judge) on a pretrial motion to dismiss; (5) that photographic evidence of codefendant Veiovis's weapons was erroneously admitted against the defendant; (6) that anatomical drawings of dismembered human bodies found in Veiovis's apartment were erroneously admitted against the defendant; (7) that evidence of assorted uncharged attempts to frame Glasser for various crimes was erroneously admitted; (8) that the joinder of lesser indictments with the murder charges prejudiced the defendant and instead required severance; and (9) that alleged prosecutorial misconduct resulted in a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice requiring a reversal of the defendant's convictions or a new trial. We vacate the defendant's conviction for the 2010 kidnapping, as the kidnapping theory presented at trial had already been dismissed by the motion judge, but affirm all other convictions and conclude that the defendant is not entitled to relief under G. L. c. 278, § 33E.

1. Background. Because the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence at trial with regard to territorial jurisdiction, we recite the facts the jury could have found, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. See Commonwealth v. Combs, 480 Mass. 55, 57, 100 N.E.3d 730 (2018). In July 2009, the defendant beat Glasser with a baseball bat in Peru, Massachusetts, because he believed Glasser had stolen and sold motor vehicle parts that belonged to the defendant. The defendant then forced Glasser to sign over the title to his pickup truck, and the defendant subsequently sold the truck. The police later recovered it, and the defendant was criminally charged for beating Glasser and taking the truck. The trial was scheduled for September 2010.

Glasser was expected to testify against the defendant as a witness at the September 2010 trial. In August 2010, the defendant sought to discredit Glasser as a witness by framing him for a false kidnapping charge. The defendant schemed to frame Glasser for the kidnapping and armed robbery of Nicole Brooks, the defendant's girlfriend. The defendant arranged for Brooks to falsely accuse Glasser of kidnapping her and shooting at her. To provide support for this story, the defendant drove with Brooks to a location in rural upstate New York and shot a gun two or three times into a tree to fabricate proof of the framed attack. The gun the defendant used to shoot the tree was supposed to be planted in Glasser's vehicle by Scott Langdon, another acquaintance of the defendant, so the police could later trace the bullet holes in the tree to the planted gun. The defendant asked Langdon to offer one hundred dollars to Glasser in exchange for a ride to New York, which Langdon did. During that drive, Langdon planted the gun -- as well as Brooks's wallet -- in Glasser's truck. When the defendant had planned this scheme, he told Brooks that, if the plan did not work, he would have to make Glasser disappear.

Brooks gave a statement to New York police, claiming Glasser had robbed her and shot at her. She provided a description of Glasser and the license plate number of his truck. She later identified Glasser in a photographic array. Glasser was never arrested by New York authorities, but was instead arrested by police in Pittsfield. Glasser was in custody for about one week.

The accomplices to the scheme to frame Glasser eventually confessed to the police that they had been a part of the setup, and those confessions were corroborated by other evidence. Specifically, surveillance footage from a grocery store and a gasoline station raised suspicions about the truth of the accomplices' original reports to police and the legitimacy of Glasser's arrest. The defendant was charged with kidnapping under two theories: (1) under a theory of inveiglement when the defendant framed Glasser for a crime that led to his arrest and detention, and (2) under a theory that defendant enticed Glasser to drive to New York under false pretenses. The first theory of inveiglement was dismissed by the motion judge on August 3, 2011, who reasoned that "[n]o case law suggests that an arrest by police officers, acting in good faith but upon false information, can constitute kidnapping by inveiglement by the person who furnished the false information. Otherwise, by extension, any case of detention based on a false police report could also constitute kidnapping." The false pretenses theory, however, was determined to be valid, and for that reason the kidnapping charge was not dismissed in its entirety.

After his plan to frame Glasser failed, the defendant tried to bribe Glasser not to testify against him for the pending charges for beating Glasser with the baseball bat and the kidnapping. On August 26, 2011, Glasser expressed to a friend that he was worried about testifying in an upcoming trial, and stated that he was going to "hide out for a couple days" and "stay in the house." Glasser and his roommate, Frampton, lived in a first-floor apartment in Pittsfield and were both clients of mental health and social services agencies. Both received Federal disability assistance.

On Friday, August 26, 2011, the defendant picked up a friend, Katelyn Carmin, in a tan Buick.³ With the defendant in the car at the time were Chalue and Veiovis. While driving, the defendant spoke about Glasser, saying "I ought to kill that motherfucker for ruining my life." Chalue and Veiovis responded to the defendant, saying: "Don't worry about it. We will get him." The defendant ultimately drove Carmin, Chalue, and Veiovis to the Hells Angels clubhouse in Lee that evening.⁴ At the clubhouse, Carmin drove an all-terrain vehicle around the property with Chalue and Veiovis. The defendant told Carmin to be careful, because he needed Chalue and Veiovis to do a job for him and did not want them to get hurt.

The next day, Saturday, August 27, the defendant, Chalue, and Veiovis went to a Hells Angels party in Springfield. That evening, the three men went to the clubhouse, where they met up with two women, Allyson Scace and Kayla Sewell, and then proceeded to Veiovis's apartment in Pittsfield. The defendant drove separately to the apartment in his Buick. Before he went to Veiovis's apartment, he went to Steven Hinman's home in Lenox. At Hinman's home, the defendant showed Hinman several firearms he had, including a .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol in his vest and a "dog food bag" with a .44 caliber magnum revolver and a sawed-off M-16-type weapon. When he arrived at Veiovis's apartment, the defendant pulled the firearms out of the dog food bag and asked Veiovis where he kept his cleaner and gloves. Veiovis directed the defendant to a cabinet, and then the defendant and Chalue proceeded to disassemble and clean out the firearms.

That same night, on Saturday, August 27, Chadwell -- Glasser's neighbor from down the street -- visited Glasser and Frampton and stayed into the evening. The upstairs neighbor asked Glasser to move his truck sometime after 10 P.M. , which is when the victims were last seen. The three men were last heard from around 11:20 P.M. that night. Shortly after midnight, the upstairs neighbor heard banging downstairs on Glasser's front door. The defendant later told a friend, Karen Sutton, that one of the victims was fixing a computer and another was playing a video game when the defendant arrived at Glasser's apartment with Chalue and Veiovis. He said the man fixing the computer "picked a bad night to work on the computer," and was "collateral damage."

Early Sunday morning at 1:30 A.M. , the defendant was driven to the Sutton family residence in Pittsfield, where he met with Dawson. The defendant asked to use Dawson's cell phone, and then left with it. He later returned the cell phone to Dawson, and instructed her to...