Commonwealth v. Ronchi
| Decision Date | 14 February 2023 |
| Docket Number | SJC-13043 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Peter RONCHI. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Neil L. Fishman, for the defendant.
Marina Moriarty, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Present: Budd, C.J., Gaziano, Cypher, Kafker, & Wendlandt, JJ.
On the evening of May 16, 2009, the defendant repeatedly stabbed his nine months pregnant girlfriend, Yuliya Galperina, killing her and her viable fetus. At trial, there was no dispute that the defendant had stabbed Galperina; the primary issue before the jury was whether the fatal stabbing had been mitigated by heat of passion upon reasonable provocation so as to reduce the defendant's liability from murder to manslaughter. The basis for the provocation, the defendant argued, was Galperina's (false) disclosure that he was not the father.
A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of two counts of murder in the first degree. In this appeal, the defendant argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions of murder in the first degree, on the ground that no rational juror could have found that the stabbings were not the result of a heat of passion upon reasonable provocation. The defendant also argues that he cannot, as a matter of law, be held liable for the death of the full-term fetus because he did not stab or injure the fetus, who died due to loss of maternal blood circulation. In addition, the defendant challenges certain of the judge's evidentiary rulings, statements in the prosecutor's closing argument, and the discharge of a deliberating juror. The defendant also asks this court to exercise its extraordinary authority under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the verdicts to manslaughter.
For the reasons that follow, we affirm the defendant's convictions and, after a thorough review of the entire trial record, decline to allow relief under G. L. c. 278, § 33E. We also take this opportunity to disavow our precedent on reasonable provocation based on sudden oral revelations of infidelity, and, relatedly, lack of paternity. See Commonwealth v. Schnopps, 383 Mass. 178, 180-182, 417 N.E.2d 1213 (1981), S.C., 390 Mass. 722, 459 N.E.2d 98 (1984).
1. Facts. We recite the facts the jury could have found, reserving certain facts for later discussion of specific issues.
a. Commonwealth's case. In May of 2009, Galperina was living in an apartment in Salem with her eight year old son and three year old daughter; the apartment was on the fifth floor of a two-building complex. Galperina and the defendant had been dating for approximately two years. She was nine months pregnant, with a due date of May 21 or 22, 2009; the defendant was the father.
On Saturday, May 16, 2009, the defendant ate dinner and watched a movie at a friend's house in Gloucester. He left at approximately 10 P.M. The friend described the evening as ordinary and the defendant's demeanor as "pleasant" and "jovial." Security surveillance footage at Galperina's apartment building showed the defendant entering the building at 10:16 P.M. and reaching the fifth-floor hallway at 10:17 P.M. The defendant left Galperina's apartment approximately ninety minutes later, at 11:46 P.M. A neighbor, who lived two apartments away from Galperina, had heard a scream sometime between 11:30 P.M. and midnight.
At around 7:20 A.M. on the morning of May 17, 2009, Alvaro Espinal-Martes took the elevator to the fifth floor to get a ride to work from his friend and coworker. When the elevator door opened, he saw Galperina's distraught children in the hallway. One of the children grabbed his hand and led him to Galperina's apartment. Her body was on the living room floor, bloody and covered with a sheet. Espinal-Martes brought the children to his friend's nearby apartment and called 911.
First responders observed Galperina lying on her back next to a futon, covered in a sheet. She had lacerations to her torso, and blood was splattered on the furniture, the floors, and the walls. In the bathroom, police found a pair of blood-soaked pants on the floor and bloodstains on the sink, faucet, and toilet.
An autopsy revealed that Galperina had sustained at least fifteen stab wounds, including wounds to the back of her head, upper chest, and back. She died of blood loss from the multiple stab wounds to her neck and torso. The fetus was full term and would have been capable of surviving outside the uterus. The fetus had not been stabbed; the cause of death was "loss of maternal [blood] circulation due to stab wounds to the mother."
On May 17, 2009, at approximately 4 P.M. , the defendant approached a uniformed police officer outside a Norwalk, Connecticut, police station. The defendant was sobbing and asked the officer for help. He told the officer that he had had a nightmare in which "he killed his eight-and-a-half-month pregnant girlfriend." The defendant then explained to that officer, and others who had joined them, that it was actually not a nightmare at all. The defendant said that he had killed his girlfriend in Salem, Massachusetts, with a knife, but had left her children unharmed. He placed a blanket over Galperina so that her children would not see her when they awoke. The defendant then drove to Norwalk and parked at a discount department store. He left the knife he had used in the stabbing in his minivan, purchased a bicycle, and rode around until he reached a police station. The defendant told the officers that he was not a "bad guy," and that he had stabbed his girlfriend because she told him that he was not the father of her baby.
After the defendant was arrested, police obtained a warrant to search his house and the minivan. They found a pair of bloodstained white sneakers and a jacket with bloodstains inside one of the sleeves in the defendant's living room.1 Inside the minivan, investigators found a bloodstained knife and sheath in the driver's door compartment. There was occult blood
on the driver's door handle and seatback. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing on the sneakers, the knife, and the sheath, according to the Commonwealth's expert, matched Galperina's genetic profile. The knife handle and the bloodstain on the jacket each contained a mixture of DNA from Galperina and the defendant.2
b. Defendant's case. As stated, the theory of defense was that the defendant stabbed Galperina in the heat of passion following her announcement that he was not the baby's father, and that he lacked the intent for premeditated murder.
The defendant testified in his own defense. He said that he met Galperina in 2006 and they began an intimate relationship. At first, they agreed to use birth control. In 2008, Galperina told the defendant that she was pregnant. This upset the defendant, because he did not think they were ready to have a baby, and they had agreed they would not. The two split, and soon thereafter Galperina learned that she in fact was not pregnant.
Galperina and the defendant reconciled, and then they decided to have a child together. The defendant testified that he changed his mind because he "loved [Galperina] very much." He went with her to prenatal appointments, displayed an ultrasound image of the fetus in his living room, and purchased a changing table. He also kept a file of things having to do with his expected child, and he had chosen a name for the child. The defendant said that he and Galperina had agreed to
During the course of her pregnancy, the defendant and Galperina nonetheless had several disagreements concerning her parenting practices and, in particular, her use of natural and traditional remedies. The defendant pointed out that she left her young children unattended, failed to dress them in clothing appropriate for the weather, and allowed them to play in the rear seat of a moving vehicle while they were not wearing seatbelts. The defendant also disliked that Galperina brought her daughter to an unqualified healer to treat a learning disability. Galperina consumed "all kinds of weird concoctions," including large doses of raw apricot seeds, that the defendant believed were toxic and potentially harmful to their child. Galperina refused to allow the defendant to take the baby to meet his family until the baby was three months old, because her ethnic tradition required that a newborn child be isolated from visitors for the child's protection. As her due date approached, Galperina acquiesced to several of the defendant's demands; she promised to take the child to a conventional holistic pediatrician, and to permit State-mandated vaccinations
.
The defendant also testified that he usually visited Galperina on Saturday nights and carried a hunting knife for his own protection. He believed that her apartment building was in a "potentially dangerous area," and had seen groups of young and "seedy looking" individuals gathered around the entrance to the building. When he visited Galperina for the last time, he was carrying a knife in his coat pocket.
On that evening, he arrived at around 10 P.M. They discussed the pending birth, and Galperina said that she no longer wanted the baby to be vaccinated. The defendant was annoyed that she was reneging on their agreement. She further angered the defendant by telling him that she had paid one hundred dollars to the natural healer for the baby's care. She added that she had ignored his advice and had consumed a large number of apricot seeds, and she insisted that the baby could not visit with the defendant's family as a newborn. These statements made the defendant "quite angry," and he raised his voice. He announced that he was leaving because he was not being allowed to make "any decisions about the baby," and he put on his coat. The defendant told Galperina, "I'm leaving you and I'll send you money." She replied, ...
To continue reading
Request your trial