Commonwealth v. Knight

• Citation: 773 NE 2d 390,437 Mass. 487
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. EDWARD KNIGHT.
• Decision Date: 12 August 2002
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

437 Mass. 487

773 NE 2d 390

COMMONWEALTH v. EDWARD KNIGHT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

April 5, 2002.

August 12, 2002.

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

Edward B. Gaffney for the defendant.

Jane A. Sullivan, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

CORDY, J.

Edward Knight appeals from his conviction of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and felony-murder.¹ He also appeals from the denial of his motion for a new trial, which is now consolidated with his direct appeal. Knight claims the trial judge erred in (1) allowing the Commonwealth's motion to amend the indictment to change the date of the victim's death; (2) precluding the defendant's cross-examination of the Commonwealth's principal witness about the effect of the verdict in the criminal trial of Louise Woodward on the witness's decision to testify against Knight; and (3) admitting testimony of that same witness on direct examination to the effect that she had made prior consistent statements. Knight also claims that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the conviction and decline to exercise our power under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the verdict or order a new trial.

1. Facts. We summarize the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, reserving certain details for discussion in conjunction with the issues raised. See Commonwealth v. Fowler, 431 Mass. 30, 31 (2000).

Pasquale Candelino was a sixty-one year old man who resided in the North End section of Boston. In the afternoon of Saturday, June 22, 1996, his body was found by his landlord in the bedroom of his apartment. The apartment had been "ransacked, drawers were open, doors, cabinet doors were open," and there was blood on the floor and the walls of the bedroom and bloody fingerprints inside an open drawer.²

The medical examiner conducted an autopsy and determined that the victim died of multiple stab wounds to the neck.³ The state of the body's decomposition was consistent with the injuries having been inflicted, and death having occurred, as early as the previous Wednesday, June 19, 1996.⁴

Knight and his girl friend, Betsy Kelley, were drug addicts who supported their habits principally by shoplifting. They had sold stolen goods to the victim in the past, and had also purchased pills from him. On Wednesday evening, June 19, 1996, sometime after 9 P.M., they were in the North End looking for money to buy drugs. Their normal hunting grounds, the malls, were closed. They saw the victim on the street, and Knight suggested they rob him. Kelley agreed. She approached the victim and asked if she could use the bathroom in his apartment. While Kelley was in the victim's apartment (and the victim was in his bedroom), Knight rang the door bell and Kelley let him in.

Knight hid behind the refrigerator in the kitchen. When the victim came out of the bedroom Knight attacked him, pushing him back into the bedroom where a struggle ensued. Kelley remained in the kitchen searching for drugs and money. Kelley heard the victim saying, "Eddie, what — what are you doing? What are you doing?," and "Eddie, no." She also heard Knight tell the victim "to shut the fuck up." After the struggle ended, "It was just quiet," and Kelley heard "drawers opening." When Knight came out of the bedroom, he had blood on his sneakers. Kelley and Knight put drugs and "stuff" from the victim's apartment into a black bag, then wiped the door knobs with their shirts as they were leaving. They went to a friend's apartment, where Knight told Kelley he had killed the victim.

Late in the evening of the next day, Thursday, June 20, 1996, Knight, Kelley, and two friends left for Florida on a bus that arrived in Orlando on Saturday morning, June 22, 1996. Knight and Kelley returned separately to the Boston area the following week. After their return, they went to the Boston Public Library and looked for newspaper accounts of the murder. The articles they found reported that the police believed the murder to have occurred on Saturday, June 22, 1996, the day on which Knight and Kelley arrived in Florida. Knight told Kelley not to worry, because "they have the dates wrong."

In September, 1996, three detectives came looking for Kelley at her father's home where she was staying. Her father was not at home, and she did not answer the door. After the detectives left, Kelley telephoned her father and told him that she was in trouble and had been present when Knight had killed someone. Her father began arranging for a lawyer to represent her. Kelley's father drove her to a friend's house, and she told the friend what had happened in the victim's apartment on the night of the murder.

Knight was arrested on December 16, 1996, and was indicted on December 31, 1996, for murder in the first degree and armed robbery. The indictment stated that the victim died "on or about June 21, 1996." Kelley was also indicted and, as arranged by her lawyer, surrendered to the police on January 2, 1997. After being held in jail pending trial for more than one year, Kelley agreed to be interviewed by detectives and, in January, 1998, negotiated a plea agreement with the Commonwealth. The agreement required that she testify at Knight's trial and plead guilty to manslaughter. The Commonwealth agreed to recommend an eighteen-month sentence, guaranteeing Kelley's release from prison shortly after Knight's trial.

When Kelley was interviewed, she told the detectives that the victim had been robbed and killed on June 19, 1996, before she and Knight went to Florida. Thereafter, the Commonwealth moved to amend the indictment to change the date of the murder to "on or about June 19, 1996." After a hearing, the motion judge allowed the amendment over Knight's objection.

At trial, the Commonwealth relied primarily on Kelley's testimony to establish Knight's guilt. The Commonwealth also introduced evidence of a knife that police seized from Knight when he was arrested on unrelated charges on June 27, 1996, five days after the victim's body was found. The medical examiner's testimony indicated that the knife was not inconsistent with the victim's wounds. The defense relied primarily on the testimony of six witnesses from the victim's neighborhood who testified that they had seen the victim at various locations on Thursday, June 20, and Friday, June 21, when the undisputed evidence demonstrated that Kelley and Knight were on a bus bound for Florida.⁵ The defense contended that Kelley's testimony was a fabrication induced by the Commonwealth's offer of an eighteen-month sentence and by her fear of remaining in prison for life if she were convicted. The Commonwealth attempted to rebut this contention by calling the friend to whom Kelley had confided the details of the murder in September, 1996, long before her indictment, arrest, and incarceration.

Knight filed a timely notice of appeal from his conviction, and a motion for new trial.

2. Discussion.

a. Motion to amend the indictment. Knight asserts that the judge improperly allowed the Commonwealth's motion to amend the indictment to change the date of the victim's death. Knight preserved this issue at trial, and also raised it in his motion for a new trial.

Under Mass. R. Crim. P. 4 (d), 378 Mass. 849 (1979), "a judge may allow amendment of the form of a[n] ... indictment if such amendment would not prejudice the defendant or the Commonwealth." Cases interpreting rule 4 (d) set forth two requirements for such amendments. First, the amendment must be a matter of form and not a matter of substance. See Commonwealth v. Snow, 269 Mass. 598, 606 (1930).⁶ Second, even if the amendment is a matter of form, it must not result in prejudice. See Commonwealth v. Hobbs, 385 Mass. 863, 870 n.8 (1982). The power of the court to allow amendment to an indictment also has constitutional constraints. Under art. 12 of the Declaration of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution, "no one may be convicted of a crime punishable by a term in the State prison without first being indicted for that crime by a grand jury." Commonwealth v. Barbosa, 421 Mass. 547, 549 (1995). An amendment that "materially changes the work of the grand jury" interferes with that right. Commonwealth v. Benjamin, 358 Mass. 672, 679 (1971).

We first consider whether the amendment was a matter of form or substance. Matters of form are those that are "not essential to the description of the crime charged." Commonwealth v. Snow, supra at 606. "The time alleged for an offense is ordinarily treated as a matter of detail rather than substance." Commonwealth v. Campiti, 41 Mass. App. Ct. 43, 50 (1996). See G. L. c. 277, § 20 ("The time and place of the commission of the crime need not be alleged [in the indictment] unless it is an essential element thereof"). Although a date of death was included in the original indictment, it is not an essential element of the crime of murder. See Commonwealth v. Wright, 411 Mass. 678, 683 (1992) (amending date of murder alleged in indictment proper because change involved nonessential element of indictment); G. L. c. 265, § 1 (definition of murder does not include date of victim's death); G. L. c. 277, § 79 (form of murder indictment does not include date of victim's death). In fact, the Commonwealth could have proceeded on the original indictment and properly proved, without fear of dismissal based on variance of proof, that the murder occurred on June 19, a date that clearly comes within the original time frame of "on or about" June 21. See G. L. c. 277, §§ 20, 34, 35.⁷

One test for determining whether an amendment is a matter of form or one of substance is whether a conviction on the original indictment would bar the subsequent prosecution of the defendant based on the amended indictment. See Commonwealth v. Snow, supra at 609 (amendmen...