Commonwealth v. Rosa-Roman
| Citation | 151 N.E.3d 863,485 Mass. 617 |
| Decision Date | 08 September 2020 |
| Docket Number | SJC-12504 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Dennis ROSA-ROMAN. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
Neil L. Fishman for the defendant.
David L. Sheppard-Brick, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Present: Gants, C.J., Gaziano, Budd, Cypher, & Kafker, JJ.
The defendant, Dennis Rosa-Roman, was convicted by a jury of murder in the first degree, G. L. c. 265, § 1, for stabbing to death the victim, Amanda Plasse, in her apartment. He was convicted on theories of both deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. The defendant appeals from his conviction on the grounds that his statements to police should have been suppressed after his Miranda rights were violated and that the trial judge erred by ruling against him on two juror challenges pursuant to Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 491, 387 N.E.2d 499, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881, 100 S.Ct. 170, 62 L.Ed.2d 110 (1979) ; by excluding third-party culprit evidence; by denying the defendant's motion to strike the prosecutor's opening statement; by striking a portion of the defendant's opening statement; and by declining to instruct the jury in accordance with Commonwealth v. Reid, 29 Mass. App. Ct. 537, 562 N.E.2d 1362 (1990), prejudicing the verdict. After careful consideration of the record and the defendant's arguments, we affirm the defendant's conviction, and we decline to grant extraordinary relief pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E.
Background. We summarize the facts that the jury could have found at trial, leaving the recitation of other facts for discussion in connection with the issues raised on appeal.
On August 26, 2011, the victim was found stabbed to death in her apartment in Chicopee. The victim had sustained multiple blunt force injuries to her face, head, and shoulders. She had scrapes and sharp force injuries to her face, neck, chest, and abdomen, including six stab wounds
and two slashes to her neck from chin to collar bone.
During the two-year investigation that followed, police received information from the victim's friends, family, and acquaintances. In 2013, while reviewing the case file, State police Trooper Ronald Gibbons noticed a dry-erase board in a photograph of the victim's bedroom. Written on the board were the words, "Dennis was here," with a date of "8/11/11." Gibbons performed a search for people named Dennis who lived near the victim. He found the defendant, who lived in nearby Westfield, and whose telephone number appeared in the victim's telephone records.
On October 29, 2013, police approached the defendant and told him that they wanted to speak to him about a woman named Amanda from Chicopee. The defendant confirmed that he knew the victim because he had sold marijuana to her. At some point, the defendant told Gibbons that he had to leave and asked Gibbons for a telephone number so he could call Gibbons the following week. The defendant discarded the cigarette he had been smoking, and Gibbons retrieved it for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing.
That same day, the defendant and his girlfriend went to the home of Melissa Hoy. The defendant told Hoy about his encounter with police. Hoy asked the defendant whether the investigation concerned the victim, and the defendant stated that he did not know. Hoy showed the defendant a picture of the victim on her telephone, and the defendant "got really quiet" and "put his head down." He admitted that he knew her and that he sold her marijuana occasionally. That night, the defendant returned to Hoy's home and apologized for lying to Hoy and his girlfriend. The defendant then told them that he had gone to the victim's home to deliver marijuana, and an unknown white male opened the victim's door, grabbed the bag of marijuana out of the defendant's hand, and told him to leave and not to return.
In addition to these statements and additional statements made by the defendant over the course of multiple police interviews, the Commonwealth introduced forensic evidence. DNA evidence recovered from underneath the victim's fingernails on both hands matched the Y-chromosome short tandem repeat DNA testing method profile of the defendant and his patrilineal male relatives. The defendant's right palm print was found on a broken window near the door of the victim's apartment. Bloody shoe prints were found on the right side of the victim's body that corresponded with a size seven of a certain brand of sneaker. During the defendant's first interview at the police station, he was wearing sneakers similar to those matching the prints found on the victim, and police later recovered two pairs of the same size and brand of sneaker from a bedroom closet in the defendant's residence.
Discussion. 1. Motion to suppress statements. Police spoke with the defendant outside his home on October 29, 2013; at the Westfield police station on November 1 (first interview); in Westfield again on November 5 (second interview); and at the Chicopee police station on November 5 (third interview. Before trial, the defendant filed a motion to suppress all statements he made after he allegedly invoked his Miranda rights during the second interview. After a three-day evidentiary hearing, during which two officers testified, a Superior Court judge (motion judge) granted in part the defendant's motion with respect to certain statements that the defendant made during booking at Westfield. The motion judge denied the defendant's motion as to all other statements. We affirm the motion judge's order. Because the defendant alleges multiple constitutional violations throughout a series of interviews, we discuss each allegation chronologically.
a. Standard of review. "In reviewing a ruling on a motion to suppress, we accept the judge's subsidiary findings of fact absent clear error, ‘but conduct an independent review of his ultimate findings and conclusions of law.’ " Commonwealth v. White, 475 Mass. 583, 587, 59 N.E.3d 369 (2016), quoting Commonwealth v. Hernandez, 473 Mass. 379, 382-383, 42 N.E.3d 1064 (2015). However, "an appellate court may independently review documentary evidence, and [the] lower court findings drawn from such evidence are not entitled to deference." Commonwealth v. Tremblay, 480 Mass. 645, 654-655, 107 N.E.3d 1121 (2018). "The case is to be decided upon the entire evidence, however, giving due weight to the judge's findings that are entitled to deference" (quotations and citation omitted). Id. at 655, 107 N.E.3d 1121. Ultimately, this court will "make an independent determination of the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles to the facts as found" (citation omitted). Hernandez, supra at 383, 42 N.E.3d 1064.
The following facts are derived from the motion judge's findings, and these facts are supplemented, as relevant, with statements drawn from the video exhibits in evidence. b. November 1 Westfield interview. On November 1, 2013, three days after police first spoke with the defendant at his home, the defendant telephoned Gibbons and told him that he had to speak with him immediately. The defendant agreed to meet with Gibbons that day in Westfield. Gibbons, Trooper Gary Fitzgerald, and Sergeant Eric Watson of the Chicopee police department met with the defendant in an interview room. The defendant was advised of and waived his Miranda rights. The defendant does not contest the validity of this particular waiver.
During this interview, the defendant told officers that he had met the victim one or two weeks before her murder. On the day of the murder, according to the defendant, the victim called him to ask for marijuana. When the defendant approached the victim's back door, he could hear a male voice arguing with the victim. The defendant knocked on the door, and an unknown male answered the door and took the marijuana from him. The defendant told police that he feared for his life because of this unknown male and that the male had been following him in different cars. He asked for police protection.
The defendant claimed that he had never been inside the victim's apartment, and he identified a friend who was with him on the day he had gone to the apartment. According to the defendant, he had been hanging out with this friend, the friend waited in front of the home while the defendant went around the back, and the two left together on foot after the defendant's encounter with the man at the victim's door.
Gibbons asked the defendant if they could collect a DNA sample, and the defendant readily agreed, stating, 1 At the end of the interview, Gibbons read the defendant his statement, which the defendant signed.
The defendant does not allege that his constitutional rights were violated in any way during the course of this first interview, and we conclude that there was no violation.
c. November 5 at Westfield police station. On November 5, 2013, Gibbons and other officers approached the defendant at his home and requested another interview. Officers wanted to follow up on statements that the defendant had made during his first interview. The defendant stated that he was willing to speak with officers, but that he was currently babysitting his girlfriend's child. Gibbons offered to have another officer watch the child at the station, and the defendant agreed to the arrangement.
Once in the interview room, Gibbons read the Miranda warnings to the defendant, which the defendant waived.2 At the start of the interview, the defendant was friendly with the officers, laughing with them before expressing concern that his girlfriend may be angry if she found out that he had brought her child to the police station.
Throughout the interview, as the motion judge noted, the defendant repeatedly expressed a desire to assist the detectives with their investigation. The defendant said, ...
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