Commonwealth v. Walters
| Decision Date | 18 September 2015 |
| Docket Number | SJC–11799. |
| Citation | 472 Mass. 680,37 N.E.3d 980 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Michael WALTERS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Ethan C. Stiles, Pembroke, for the defendant.
David B. Mark, Assistant District Attorney (Shoshana Stern, Assistant District Attorney, with him) for the Commonwealth.
The following submitted briefs for amici curiae:
Claire Laporte, Marco J. Quina, Rebecca M. Cazabon, Stephen T. Bychowski, & Bendan T. Jarboe for Domestic & Sexual Violence Council, Inc., & others.
Helen Gerostathos Guyton, Sandra J. Badin, Lyzzette M. Bullock, & John Nucci, Boston, for Jane Doe Inc. & others.
Steven M. Freeman, Lauren A. Jones, & Melissa Garlick, of New York, & Joseph Berman for Anti–Defamation League.
Kirsten V. Mayer, Kavitha A. Mecozzi, Jennifer S. Pantina, Alexandra L. Roth, Matthew R. Segal, Jessie J. Rossman, & Mason Kortz for American Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Present: GANTS, C.J., SPINA, CORDY, BOTSFORD, DUFFLY, LENK, & HINES, JJ.
BOTSFORD
, J.
This case raises the question whether a posting to the Web site Facebook may constitute a threat within the meaning of the stalking statute, G.L. c. 265, § 43 (a )
(§ 43 [a ] ). We conclude that although content posted to Facebook may qualify as a threat as defined in the statute, in this particular case, a reasonable jury could not have found that the defendant's Facebook profile page constituted such a threat. We therefore vacate the defendant's conviction of stalking. The defendant's remaining convictions of criminal harassment, criminal violation of a restraining order pursuant to G.L. c. 209A, § 7
(two counts), and perjury (two counts) are affirmed.1
Background. 1. Facts. Because the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence presented with respect to the charges of stalking and criminal harassment, we summarize the facts the jury could have found in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. See Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677, 393 N.E.2d 370 (1979)
. We reserve certain facts for further discussion in connection with other issues raised.
The defendant met the victim,2 an elementary school teacher in Rhode Island, in the late 1990s or early 2000s. They began dating and later bought a house together in Rhode Island where they lived for about three years. During that time, the defendant asked the victim multiple times to marry him; she initially refused but eventually agreed to become engaged. However, they made no wedding plans and never married.
In May, 2006, the defendant and the victim jointly purchased a new home in Seekonk, Massachusetts (Seekonk house). The Seekonk house had four bedrooms and a finished basement, and was located on one and one-half acres of land. There were two sheds on the property as well as a driveway and a garage.
On July 4, 2007, the defendant and the victim had a barbecue and invited members of each of their families.3 During the party, the defendant became involved in a physical altercation with the victim's son, who had been living with them.4 The victim, seeing this, was concerned for her son's safety, and shouted at the defendant to leave her son alone. After the incident, the victim told the defendant that she could no longer be involved with him romantically, and returned the engagement ring he had given her. However, the victim continued to live in the Seekonk house because she did not know where else to go, her dog and all of her belongings were there, and her personal finances were comingled
with the defendant's.5
a. Pattern of harassment following the breakup. The defendant refused to accept the breakup. Although around the beginning of August, 2007, he agreed to sell the Seekonk house, he repeatedly told the victim that there would be “repercussions” if she left him, such as that he would take their dog and she would never see it again. He also told her that he was “keeping a file” on her, and would often go into their computer room, say that he was “adding to the file,” and shut the door. In addition, the victim began to notice more often that the defendant was appearing unexpectedly in places outside the home that she went on her own, such as a craft store and a work-related conference. The defendant also insisted on accompanying the victim to a gymnasium, and when she told him she did not want him to come, he would wait near or in her vehicle when she came home from work. During this period, the victim slept with a cellular telephone under her pillow, so that she could make a call immediately if she had to, and to prevent the defendant from gaining access to her telephone in order to see to whom she had been talking.
The defendant told the victim that he had been a sniper in the military, and he kept guns in the home. Prior to July 4, 2007, the victim rarely saw the defendant's guns, but after that date, she began to see them more often. Sometimes, she saw the defendant sitting on a stump in the backyard with a rifle. In November, 2007, the victim came home and saw the defendant cleaning a gun on the coffee table in the living room. At least three times, the victim also heard the defendant say, “[O]ne shot, one kill,” although he did not say it directly to her. Seeing the defendant's guns made the victim feel scared and threatened.
On Christmas Day, 2007, the victim went home briefly from her father's house, where she had been spending the holiday, to retrieve some forgotten presents. The defendant was sitting at the coffee table with a gun, and there was another gun on the stairs. The victim felt afraid; she retrieved the presents and left without speaking to the defendant. When she returned home later that evening, the defendant yelled at her for not having spent Christmas with him. The victim said that she was leaving, ran out of the house, and drove less than one mile to a corner store, where she sat in her automobile and telephoned her father. While on the
telephone, she saw the defendant pull up near her in his truck. She tried to lock her vehicle's doors, but the defendant jumped into her vehicle and tried to wrestle her telephone away while shouting and cursing at her. Another vehicle pulled up next to her's; the defendant got out and seemed to drive away. When the victim ultimately drove home to the Seekonk house, she discovered that she had been locked out. She then telephoned the police, who escorted her into her house to get some of her belongings; she spent that night at her father's home. Two days later, on December 27, 2007, the victim obtained an abuse prevention order pursuant to G.L. c. 209A (restraining order), requiring the defendant immediately to leave and stay away from the Seekonk house, and to remain at least one hundred yards away from her. The restraining order was served on the defendant, the defendant left the house, and the victim moved back in.
The defendant had a construction business and kept equipment related to this business on the Seekonk property. This equipment included a number of large items, including a trailer and an excavator. In order for the defendant to access his equipment, on December 31, 2007, at the defendant's request and with the victim's assent, a District Court judge modified the restraining order to allow the defendant “access to the garage area between 7:45 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. [,] Monday through Friday.”6
Around December, 2007, the victim began dating a sergeant in a Rhode Island police department whom we shall call “Stephen.”7 The victim and Stephen had been friends for approximately four years prior to that point, but the relationship did not become romantic until then. Nevertheless, from July 4, 2007, onward, the defendant frequently accused the victim of having an affair with Stephen. On the evening of January 14, 2008, the victim and Stephen were sitting in the victim's father's house, when the victim saw the defendant in her father's front yard. The victim and Stephen got into a vehicle and drove away from the house looking for him. When they caught up to him, Stephen and the defendant shouted at each other, and the defendant accused Stephen of “tagging” the victim for years.
In February, 2008, the victim came home one day and discovered that the defendant's excavator, which previously had been
parked on land to the right of the Seekonk house, had been moved so that it was now blocking access to one of the two sheds, and the victim was unable to move it. Around the same time, she also discovered that the doors to the other shed had been screwed and hammered shut, which had never been the case before.8 Around the end of February, the victim found the defendant's trailer at the end of her driveway. The trailer was blocking the entrance to the driveway, and was inoperable. For a time, she could still access the garage by driving to another part of the property and then across the lawn.9 However, shortly after the trailer began blocking the driveway, several boulders that were too large to have been placed by hand appeared on the property, preventing her access to the garage even by driving across the lawn.10 A sign that read “Michael J. Walters Inc., General Excavation Contracting,” and that had never been on the property before, also appeared. After that, around March, 2008, the victim found another piece of the defendant's heavy equipment in the garage, blocking the space where she would normally park her vehicle. Throughout this time, the restraining order remained in effect.
On another night in March, 2008, the victim discovered that the light bulbs had been removed from all of the lights on the outside of the Seekonk house. There were no other lights illuminating the path from the driveway to the door of the house, nor were there any streetlights, causing the area to be dark at night and stress for the victim. The defendant admitted to a Seekonk police officer that he had unscrewed the light bulbs because the lights were being left on twenty-four hours per day, the electricity b...
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