Commonwealth v. Welch
| Decision Date | 14 May 2021 |
| Docket Number | SJC-11839 |
| Citation | 487 Mass. 425,167 N.E.3d 1201 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Ryan D. WELCH. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Alan Jay Black for the defendant.
Cynthia M. Von Flatern, Assistant District Attorney (Jeremy C. Bucci, Assistant District Attorney, also present) for the Commonwealth.
Present: Budd, C.J., Gaziano, Lowy, Kafker, & Wendlandt, JJ.
During the early hours of February 20, 2012, the victim, Jessica Pripstein, foreshadowed her own death. In a brief and frantic emergency call, she relayed to the dispatcher that her boyfriend was trying to kill her. Soon after, officers from the Easthampton police department responding to the call found the victim dead on the bathroom floor of her apartment, her throat cut. Her boyfriend, the defendant Ryan D. Welch, was on the bedroom floor with his throat cut, but alive. The defendant subsequently was convicted of murder in the first degree, G. L. c. 265, § 1, on theories of both deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. The defendant's direct appeal from that conviction was consolidated with an appeal from the trial judge's denial of his motion for a new trial, and both are now before this court.
On appeal, the defendant argues that the judge who heard his motion to suppress (motion judge) erred in not suppressing several statements that he made while hospitalized and that the trial judge erred in admitting in evidence allegedly unauthenticated text messages as well as prior bad acts evidence and in denying his motion for a new trial without first holding an evidentiary hearing. Finding no reversible error either in any issue raised by the defendant or in our review under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, we affirm the defendant's conviction and the order denying his motion for a new trial.
Background. We summarize the facts the jury could have found, reserving certain details for later discussion.
The defendant and the victim had been dating since the fall of 2011. As 2012 dawned, signs of unease in their relationship were apparent. Around early February, the victim told a coworker that she had "broken things off" with the defendant. Then, on February 10, one of the victim's neighbors overheard an argument between the victim and the defendant. This altercation culminated in the victim slamming a door and yelling at the defendant to leave, which he did. The victim told her sister on February 18 that she planned on finding a way to end the relationship.
On the evening of February 19, the defendant spent several hours eating and drinking at a local bar. He explained to a bartender how he had recently both lost his job and been arrested for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol (OUI). In regard to the OUI, the defendant complained that the victim had refused to post his forty dollar bail even though he had just spent seventy dollars on a bouquet of flowers for her for Valentine's Day. According to the bartender, the defendant appeared to be "aggravated." The victim later joined the defendant at the bar. When the bill was due, the defendant did not have enough money to pay it and the victim paid the difference, appearing to be embarrassed. Then, at around 11:05 P.M. , the defendant and the victim left the bar.
At 12:04 A.M. on February 20, the victim called 911, screaming that her boyfriend was trying to kill her. By the time the call was transferred to a public safety dispatcher, the victim was no longer on the line. The dispatcher's attempts to call the victim back went unanswered. Officers arrived at the victim's apartment within three minutes of being dispatched.
After knocking on the apartment's door and receiving no response, an officer peered through a window and noticed blood on the floor. Officers then forced their way through the front door, which was blocked by a futon. Once inside the apartment, the officers discovered the victim dead on the bathroom floor with her throat cut and a knife lying on her back. The defendant was lying nearby on the floor of the bedroom, a knife in his back pocket. His throat, too, was cut, but he was alive. Bloody sock prints led from the bathroom toward where he lay. The defendant's fingerprints were later found on the futon that had blocked officers’ entry through the front door, and a large amount of his blood was found in front of the futon.
The defendant received emergency medical treatment at the scene and then was transported to a nearby hospital, where he underwent surgery. Autopsy results later confirmed that the victim's throat wound -- which measured two and one-half inches deep and four inches across -- was inconsistent with suicide. The defendant subsequently was arrested and charged with the victim's murder.
Discussion. 1. Motion to suppress. Prior to trial, the defendant moved to suppress handwritten notes and oral statements he made to officers while he was hospitalized on February 21 and February 22, 2012.1 The motion judge allowed the motion as to the statements the defendant made to officers after he had been arrested on February 22, but otherwise denied it. On appeal, the defendant makes three arguments pertaining to the motion to suppress: (1) that his handwritten notes should have been suppressed as the product of an illegal search; (2) that his statements were obtained in violation of his Miranda rights, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444-445, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) ; and (3) that even if these statements were not obtained in violation of Miranda, they were made involuntarily.2
"In general, 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. Tremblay, 480 Mass. 645, 652, 107 N.E.3d 1121 (2018), quoting Commonwealth v. Clarke, 461 Mass. 336, 340, 960 N.E.2d 306 (2012). As is noted infra, some of the interactions between the officers and the defendant were video recorded. When a judge's findings are based solely on documentary evidence such as a video recording, we review those findings de novo.
Tremblay, supra at 654-655, 107 N.E.3d 1121. "By contrast, findings drawn partly or wholly from testimonial evidence are accorded deference and are not set aside unless clearly erroneous." Id. at 655, 107 N.E.3d 1121.
a. Facts. Before considering each of the defendant's arguments in turn, we set out the relevant facts that the motion judge found following an evidentiary hearing. The facts are supplemented with uncontroverted facts in the record. Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429, 431, 35 N.E.3d 357 (2015).
After officers discovered the defendant at the victim's apartment on February 20, he was transported to a nearby hospital. Following surgery on his neck, the defendant was moved to the intensive care unit (ICU) for recovery. Officer Timothy Rogers accompanied the defendant into the ICU but did not have contact with him or communicate with him. The defendant was sedated, as hospital staff believed he might pose a suicide risk.
At around 11:45 A.M. on February 20, Rogers was relieved by Sergeant Bruce Nichol, who entered through the ICU's door, which remained open throughout the officer's stay. Nicol sat against a wall in the defendant's ICU room and observed him, although at no point did Nicol have any contact with him or communicate with him. Over the next twelve hours, the defendant began to regain consciousness and started to communicate with nurses by gesturing. Because the defendant was intubated with breathing and feeding tubes, he was unable to speak. The defendant also was connected to an intravenous line. Nichol observed that the defendant responded appropriately to questions asked by a nurse to assess his mental cognition.
Officer Dennis Scribner relieved Nichol at around 11:40 P.M. on February 20. Scribner mostly monitored the defendant from a position in the hallway outside the defendant's ICU room by looking into the room through its door, which remained open. Scribner observed hospital staff members entering and leaving the defendant's room freely. At around 5:30 A.M. on February 21, a nurse offered Scribner a note written by the defendant that the defendant had given to the nurse. In the note, the defendant asked if he would recover and be able to speak again, what would happen to him when he left, why there were police officers in his room, and about his girlfriend's condition. After Scribner read the note, it remained on a table in the hallway outside the defendant's room until one of Scribner's replacements eventually took it into custody.
At roughly 7:45 A.M. on February 21, Scribner was relieved by State police Trooper William McMillan. At around 9:50 A.M. , a nurse invited McMillan to approach the defendant's bedside to answer the defendant's question. The defendant wrote a note to McMillan that asked about whether he could be evicted because he was behind on rent. After telling the defendant that he would investigate the situation, McMillan had no more interaction with him during this shift.
State police Trooper John Riley, the lead investigator for the case, arrived at the ICU at around 1:35 P.M. on February 21. Upon entering the defendant's ICU room, Riley explained who he was and that he was there to investigate the circumstances surrounding the defendant's injury. The defendant was still unable to speak, so he nodded his head. After Riley suggested that the defendant might have information that would be helpful, the defendant nodded his head again. After an unclear gesture by the defendant, Riley asked if the defendant was not yet ready to speak because of his neck injury. The defendant nodded his head, and Riley left the defendant's room.
Later, a nurse informed Riley that they would be reducing the defendant's pain management medication, fentanyl
, and begin administering oxycodone so that the defendant could be moved out...
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