Commonwealth v. Reavis

• Citation: 992 N.E.2d 304,465 Mass. 875
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Nile REAVIS.
• Decision Date: 16 July 2013
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

465 Mass. 875

992 N.E.2d 304

COMMONWEALTH

v.Nile REAVIS.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Suffolk.

Argued March 8, 2013.

Decided July 16, 2013.

Willie J. Davis, Boston, for the defendant.

Zachary Hillman, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: IRELAND, C.J., CORDY, GANTS, DUFFLY, & LENK, JJ.

LENK, J.

The defendant appeals from his conviction of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation for the stabbing death of his wife. The identity of the defendant as the person who stabbed the victim was not a live issue at trial. The defense was based on the theory that the stabbing was not premeditated, and that the defendant should be found guilty of murder in the second degree, both because he was intoxicated at the time of the stabbing and because he was under extreme provocation, having learned that his wife had been unfaithful. The defendant argues that the admission of testimony of a substitute medical examiner violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and that the judge abused his discretion in denying the defendant's motion for individual voir dire of the venire with respect to their experience with domestic violence. The defendant argues also that it was an abuse of discretion to deny his motion under Mass. R.Crim. P. 25(b)(2), 378 Mass. 896 (1979), to reduce the verdict to murder in the second degree.

Concluding that there was no error, and, after review of the entire record pursuant to our responsibility under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, that there is no reason to exercise our power to reduce the defendant's conviction to a lesser degree of guilt or to order a new trial, we affirm.

Background and prior proceedings. The defendant and the victim were involved in a romantic relationship for seventeen years and had five children. The defendant was the biological father of the victim's three youngest children; he had known the victim's two older children for most of their lives and viewed them as his own. The relationship between the defendant and the victim was volatile, characterized by verbal outbursts and periods of separation, both before and after they were married in 1999, some years into the relationship. ¹ The confrontations involved the defendant's drinking; the victim's going out and staying out late without the defendant; the victim's association with a close friend, Karen Browder; ² the defendant's suspicion that the victim used drugs and drank heavily with Karen; and the defendant's suspicion that the victim was seeing other men. The defendant also argued with the victim over her attending church and cooking food for members of the church rather than cooking for her family; the defendant accused the victim of having an affair with the minister. The defendant was constantly concerned that the victim was cheating on him and always tried to find out where the victim was going whenever she left the house.

At some point, the victim left the defendant and lived with her four youngest children in a family shelter until a few weeks before the stabbing; during that period, the defendant lived in a rooming house. At the time of the victim's death, the family had only recently been reunited and was living in a two-bedroom apartment in the Dorchester section of Boston. The oldest child was away at college when the family moved into the apartment. The victim and the defendant shared the back bedroom, and the two older boys, Jonathan and Christopher, then fifteen and twelve years old, shared the other bedroom. Cheryl, then eighteen years old, slept on a pallet on the dining room floor; she was planning to leave for college in a few weeks. The youngest boy, five-year-old Justin, sometimes shared the bedroom with his two older brothers and sometimes slept with Cheryl.

Several weeks prior to the stabbing, the defendant accused the victim of having an affair with her friend Karen's nephew, DuJuan Browder.³ The defendant went to Karen's house, where the victim was visiting, at approximately 5 or 6 p.m. He was acting normally when he arrived; although he smelled of alcohol and appeared to have been drinking, he was not slurring his speech and was not “drunk drunk.” After DuJuan came to the house and rang the doorbell, the defendant began accusing the victim of having an affair with DuJuan; he claimed that DuJuan had climbed out the window of a back bedroom and had come around to the front of the house to ring the doorbell. The defendant searched Karen's house, yelling that the only reason the victim was there was because she was having an affair with DuJuan. After DuJuan left, the defendant and the victim stayed for several hours. The defendant had a small bottle of alcohol with him, and drank it while he was at Karen's apartment.

On November 1, 2006, the day before the stabbing, the victim telephoned her sister, Angela Goss, and asked for a ride to do some shopping for household items. Angela took the victim to several stores, then dropped her off at Karen's house. Several hours later, the victim telephoned Angela to pick her up at Karen's house. Angela returned to pick up the victim, and then accompanied her into her apartment, where the victim and the defendant had an argument. The defendant became upset because the victim said she was leaving again with Angela to go to another store. The defendant asked for a ride to work and Angela agreed to drive him as far as a subway station.

While the three were driving to the subway station, the defendant said to Angela, without apparent emotion, “You know your sister and I are getting a divorce?” Angela was not surprised, because the victim had mentioned it to her previously; the victim herself did not respond to the defendant's statement. After they reached the subway station, the victim and the defendant had another argument when the victim requested the defendant's bank automated teller machine (ATM) card; the argument became heated, drawing the attention of passersby, before the defendant handed the victim the ATM card and walked away. Angela dropped the victim off at a bank, and returned home. The victim said she would run some errands and return to Karen's house by bus.

As she had done the previous day, however, the victim actually had intended to purchase and smoke “crack” cocaine with Karen that afternoon. The victim was to supply the money for the purchase, and Karen was to obtain the cocaine. The victim stopped to pick up Karen, then tried to use the defendant's ATM card to obtain cash for the purchase. When she discovered that the ATM card did not work, the women instead purchased six bottles of beer and a pint of brandy, and went to Karen's house to drink. Around midnight, the defendant arrived at Karen's house carrying an unopened forty-ounce bottle of beer. Karen and the victim were drinking the alcohol. The defendant offered some of his beer to Karen and to the victim. Karen drank a small amount, but the victim refused.

The defendant seemed “fine” when he arrived, but became agitated as he drank the beer, accusing the victim of having an affair. He searched Karen's apartment, saying to Karen, “I know some guy was here, I know somebody was here ... I know [the victim] was here with a guy, she was with some guy tonight because there's blood on your sheet.” Approximately two hours after he arrived, when the defendant told the victim that it was time to leave, Karen was alarmed and suggested that she stay, but the victim declined, saying that the defendant would only make noise and wake everyone if she refused to go with him. When Karen told the victim not to forget to pick her up the following day so that the two could go to a particular store, the defendant said, “You might not see her tomorrow. You might not never see her again.” Karen suggested that she telephone the police, but the victim said that she would “be okay” and would just leave with the defendant. Karen asked the victim to telephone her when she got home, but the victim never did so.

The defendant and the victim arrived home at approximately 2:30 a.m. The victim went into the dining room, where her daughter, Cheryl, had been sleeping on the floor with her youngest brother, Justin. The victim climbed into bed next to Cheryl and attempted to go to sleep. The defendant yelled at her to come with him to their bedroom, but the victim refused. The defendant walked past them into the kitchen. He bypassed a small knife lying on a counter, picked up a large knife, returned to the dining room, knelt down next to the victim, and began stabbing her in the left side of the chest. She struggled to get away and was able to stand up, but the defendant began punching and hitting her. As the victim's two older sons entered the room and tried to pull the defendant from the victim, Cheryl ran upstairs to her aunt's apartment to seek help. She and the aunt telephoned 911, and the aunt then went down to the apartment. The victim was lying on the floor bleeding, and the defendant was pacing back and forth, muttering, “She was cheating on me and she's not going to cheat on me no more.” Cheryl testified that, when she returned to the apartment after talking to the emergency dispatcher, the defendant's voice was slurred and he appeared to be drunk; her aunt and DuJuan (her aunt's live-in boy friend) testified that the defendant's speech was not slurred and that he was not difficult to understand.

By the time that paramedics arrived, the defendant had left the apartment. He telephoned the victim's cellular telephone sometime thereafter. When the defendant's son Jonathan answered, the defendant said that he was sorry for hurting Jonathan's mother and that he did not deserve to live. Several hours after the stabbing, the defendant arrived at his sister's house, badly injured, rambling in his speech and not making sense, and having serious difficulty breathing; his sister...