Commonwealth v. Henry

• Decision Date: 01 October 2021
• Docket Number: SJC-13048
• Citation: 173 N.E.3d 1080,488 Mass. 484
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Christopher HENRY

488 Mass. 484

173 N.E.3d 1080

COMMONWEALTH

v.Christopher HENRY

SJC-13048

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued March 5, 2021

Decided October 1, 2021

Amy Codagnone, Boston, for the defendant.

Paul B. Linn, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

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

GAZIANO, J.

In 2012, the defendant entered into a plea agreement with the Commonwealth and pleaded guilty to indictments charging robbery, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, unlawful possession of a firearm, and possession with intent to distribute a class B controlled substance. After learning of chemist Annie Dookhan's misconduct in falsifying drug test results at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute (Hinton lab), the defendant moved to withdraw his guilty pleas. While the motion to withdraw was pending, the defendant's drug conviction was vacated and dismissed with prejudice pursuant to an order by a single justice in the county court arising from the court's decision in Bridgeman v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 476 Mass. 298, 332, 67 N.E.3d 673 (2017). A Superior Court judge subsequently held an evidentiary hearing to determine whether to allow the defendant to withdraw his guilty pleas with respect to the nondrug-related charges that had been tendered as part of the over-all plea bargain. The judge then denied the motion; his ruling was affirmed by the Appeals Court, see Commonwealth v. Henry, 98 Mass. App. Ct. 229, 230, 153 N.E.3d 428 (2020), and we allowed the defendant's petition for further appellate review. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the denial of the defendant's motion to withdraw his guilty pleas.

1. Background. a. Facts. We summarize the facts as recited by the prosecutor at the plea hearing, supplemented with undisputed facts from the record. On March 24, 2011, at 9:10 P.M. , Boston police received a report of an armed robbery that had taken place in the Mattapan section of Boston. Police officers met the victim at his parents’ home at around 9:30 P.M. The victim informed the officers that he had been walking along a residential street when he was approached by two young Black men who had just come from a nearby apartment building. One of the men, later identified as the defendant, pulled a revolver out of his pocket and held it against the victim's head. The other man robbed the victim of his cellular telephone, a ring, and a wallet containing more than $500 in cash. The victim described the individual who was brandishing the revolver as about five feet, nine inches tall, with a dark complexion, and shoulder length braids.

Based on this information and additional evidence, police entered the apartment building later that evening to investigate the crime. Standing at the threshold, the officers spoke to the occupants of a second-floor apartment;¹ police eventually made their way inside the apartment. Once inside, they saw the defendant walk out of a bedroom. The defendant, who was dressed in a white tank top and gym shorts, matched the approximate physical description provided by the victim of the armed robbery; he had a dark complexion, was close to the described height and age, and appeared to have his hair in braids.

While checking the defendant's pants pockets for weapons, police found a small bag of what appeared to be "crack" cocaine. The defendant was arrested for possession of a class B controlled substance. During a search incident to that arrest, the police located an additional quantity of suspected crack cocaine in the defendant's shorts. Police then secured the scene and returned to the apartment with a search warrant. During a search of the bedroom from which the defendant had emerged, officers found eleven bags of what appeared to be cocaine. In addition to narcotics, the officers found a loaded .22 caliber revolver and a box of .22 caliber ammunition in the bedroom. The defendant's fingerprints were recovered from the box of ammunition.

The substances seized from the defendant's person later were tested by chemist Annie Dookhan at the Hinton lab, and she signed certificates of drug analysis stating that the substances tested positive as cocaine. The bags of powder seized from the bedroom also were tested and certified by Dookhan as class B controlled substances.

After the defendant's arrest, the victim of the armed robbery identified the defendant as the gunman from a photographic array. b. Procedural history. On June 21, 2011, a grand jury returned indictments charging the defendant with armed robbery, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 17 ; assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 15A ; illegal possession of a firearm, in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (a ), as an armed career criminal under G. L. c. 269, § 10G, and a subsequent offender, under G. L. c. 269, § 10 (d ) ; illegal possession of ammunition, in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (h ) ; illegal possession of a loaded firearm, in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (n ) ; possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 18B ; possession of a class B controlled substance with intent to distribute, in violation of G. L. c. 94C, § 32A (c ) ; and violation of the controlled substance laws in a school zone, in violation of G. L. c. 94C, § 32J.

In February 2012, the defendant filed a motion to suppress the physical evidence and the identification from the photographic array. The motion was denied after a hearing; the defendant's motion for reconsideration also was denied, as was his petition in the county court seeking the right to pursue an interlocutory appeal.

On July 13, 2012, the defendant entered into a plea agreement with the Commonwealth under the following terms. The defendant pleaded guilty to (1) so much of the armed robbery indictment charging robbery, with a sentence of incarceration from three years to three years and one day; (2) assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, with a sentence of two years of probation from and after the sentence imposed on the charge of robbery; (3) unlawful possession of a firearm, with a sentence of from three years to three years and a day in prison, concurrent with the sentence on the robbery charge; and (4) possession with intent to distribute a class B substance, with a sentence of from three years to three years and one day of incarceration, concurrent with the sentence on the charge of robbery. The Commonwealth filed a nolle prosequi of the indictments charging armed career criminal, subsequent firearm offense, unlawful possession of ammunition, possession of a loaded firearm, carrying a firearm while committing a felony, and the school zone violation. After a detailed colloquy, a Superior Court judge accepted the defendant's guilty plea.²

c. Motion to withdraw guilty plea. In July 2015, the defendant filed a motion pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. 30 (b), as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001), to withdraw his guilty plea. He contended that his plea had not been knowingly and voluntarily made due to the withholding of exculpatory evidence regarding Dookhan's misconduct at the Hinton lab, and that his plea counsel failed to inform him of the collateral consequences of pleading guilty, including possible future sentencing enhancements, thus making it impossible for him to assess adequately the "possible risks and advantages" of changing his plea.³ Relying on Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion in Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 391, 130 S.Ct. 1473, 176 L.Ed.2d 284 (2010), and 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), the defendant argued that the risk of the "severe" consequences of a sentencing enhancement in the Federal system, or being found to be a "career criminal" in that system, with its "particularly severe penalty" under Federal sentencing guidelines, was "analogous" to the risk of deportation in Padilla. The defendant also argued that, at the plea colloquy, when the judge asked the prosecutor whether he was "aware of any other collateral consequences" "apart from the [deoxyribonucleic acid] sample requirement," and a possible suspension of the defendant's driver's license, that would "attend" the guilty pleas, the prosecutor said that he was not.

In an affidavit attached to his motion, the defendant averred that he would not have pleaded guilty had he been aware of the tainted drug evidence. The defendant asserted, "I was concerned with proceeding to trial on all charges because the Commonwealth alleged that there were drugs found on my person and in my clothing, and I did not believe that I had a strong defense to the drug charges." At the same time, the defendant believed that he had a legitimate basis upon which to challenge the denial of his motion to suppress evidence and identification. He also believed that he had a "strong misidentification case." This belief was based on a statement by the victim to a private investigator expressing some doubt about his identification of the defendant.⁴ The misidentification defense, the defendant explained, was further supported by evidence that he did not exactly match the physical description provided by the victim (he did not have braids at the time of the robbery), and because, when he was arrested, he was wearing clothing different from that which had been described by the victim. The clothing the victim had described was not found in the apartment where the defendant was arrested.

The defendant also submitted an affidavit from his plea counsel. Plea counsel stated that prior to the plea agreement, neither he nor the defendant were aware of any problems at the Hinton lab. According to counsel, had he known about Dookhan's misconduct, his advice to the defendant would have been "markedly different." The Dookhan defense to the drug charges, plea counsel asserted, could have been combined with a misidentification defense and a third-party culprit or Bowden defense, to contest the...