Commonwealth v. Young

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
• Writing for the Court: Present: IRELAND
• Citation: Commonwealth v. Young, 461 Mass. 198, 959 N.E.2d 943 (Mass. 2012)
• Decision Date: 03 January 2012
• Docket Number: SJC–10428.
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Victor YOUNG.

461 Mass. 198

959 N.E.2d 943

COMMONWEALTH

v.Victor YOUNG.

SJC–10428.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued Oct. 7, 2011.Decided Jan. 3, 2012.

Jeanne M. Kempthorne, Boston, for the defendant.

Paul B. Linn, Assistant District Attorney (David J. Fredette, Assistant District Attorney, with him) for the Commonwealth.

Present: IRELAND, C.J., SPINA, CORDY, BOTSFORD, & DUFFLY, JJ.

SPINA, J.

The defendant, Victor Young, was convicted of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. The conviction arose from an altercation in the early morning hours of September 14, 2003, on Cambridge Street in Boston, during which the defendant fatally stabbed Waymond Pearson. The defendant also was convicted of assault with intent to kill, and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, with respect to James Morgan.¹ On appeal, the defendant argues (1) the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction of murder on the theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty; (2) the prosecutor argued facts not in evidence and he appealed to the emotions of the jury; and (3) the trial judge's instructions to the jury on malice, defense of another, and the use of excessive, deadly force in defense of another were erroneous. We affirm the convictions and decline to exercise our power under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, to reduce the murder verdict or order a new trial.

1. Background. The jury could have found the following facts. We reserve certain facts for our discussion of the issues raised. On the evening of September 13, 2003, a dispute arose between Calvin Goffigan and Jacqueline Badger over their child. Goffigan and Badger had been dating since 2001 and had lived together in an apartment at 250 Cambridge Street in Boston. In the summer of 2003, they began having difficulties. Badger ended the relationship and moved in with her family on Cape Cod. Despite the separation, the two took turns caring for the child and had an informal custody arrangement.

Around this time, Badger entered into an intimate relationship with the defendant. This relationship made Goffigan upset, and in late August and early September of 2003, he and Badger would often argue. Goffigan wanted to continue the relationship with Badger, but she did not want to see him.

The dispute reached a boiling point on the evening of September 13, 2003, a Saturday. That night Badger was at the house of a friend, Melissa Muller, in Sandwich. Also present were the defendant and his friend of many years, Jerry Dean Hall. The group played some card games and watched television. They had consumed alcohol, but no member of the group was intoxicated. That weekend, the child was with Goffigan in Boston pursuant to the couple's informal arrangement.

At approximately 11:30 p.m., as Muller was preparing to go to sleep, ² she began receiving calls on her cellular telephone. On each occasion, the caller hung up. Eventually, Muller spoke to the caller—it was Goffigan. Goffigan asked for Badger. When Badger got on the telephone, Goffigan told her that she would never see her baby again. Badger relayed this to the defendant, and the defendant took the telephone. The defendant told Goffigan that the child was his, not Goffigan's. He also told Goffigan that he and Badger were about to have sexual intercourse when he called.

The group in Sandwich decided to go to Boston to retrieve the baby from Goffigan.³ When Goffigan telephoned again, Badger and the defendant both told him they were going to Boston to retrieve the child. The group got into Muller's automobile and embarked on the trip to Boston. The defendant drove.

After hearing of the Sandwich group's trip to Boston, Goffigan met with some friends in the courtyard behind his apartment at 250 Cambridge Street: Terrell Williams, Leonard Gibson, James Morgan, Emmanuel Francois, and Waymond Pearson. Pearson was the child's godfather and knew both Badger and Goffigan well.⁴ Pearson, Gibson, Morgan, and Francois had been drinking heavily, and they were intoxicated.⁵ Goffigan told the group that his child's mother and “some dude” were coming to take his child, and that “we might need to beef tonight.” ⁶ He asked his friends to wait with him in front of 250 Cambridge Street.

As the defendant, Badger, Muller, and Hall drove from Sandwich to Boston, there was a flurry of cellular telephone activity between them and the individuals in Boston. In one exchange, Goffigan told Badger that he was going to get all his friends to come meet them. Either Williams or Pearson called Badger and said, “You better have your burners because we're going to shoot you up,” a message that she relayed to the others in the car. The defendant spoke to Goffigan, who threatened to “bring his gun out.” The defendant's response was, “You don't have a fucking gun and you're from fucking downtown Boston and I'm from Orchard Park. In Orchard Park we live for blood.” Badger disclosed that one caller had told her they “better be ready.”

The defendant then asked Badger whether his fishing knife was in the car. ⁷ She replied that it was. The defendant asked for it, and he placed the knife on his lap.

They approached 250 Cambridge Street on the opposite side of the road from where Goffigan and his group were waiting. The defendant testified that from this position, he saw “a sidewalk full of people” standing in front of 250 Cambridge Street.⁸ The defendant made a U-turn and double-parked.

Muller was the first to get out of the car; she called out for Goffigan to return the child. Morgan and others from Goffigan's group immediately approached the defendant as he left the vehicle. The defendant testified that they “started speed walking” toward him and told him, “Get the fuck out the car.” He did not see any of the individuals holding weapons. The defendant held the fishing knife in his right hand.⁹

The defendant and Morgan exchanged blows with their fists.¹⁰ The defendant testified that he was then hit from behind on the back of his head. He turned around to see two men, later identified to be Gibson and Francois. The defendant then swung at Morgan with the knife, cutting him in the neck, abdomen, and shoulder.¹¹ The defendant testified that the men he was fighting then dispersed because he started “swinging wildly” to “get them away from me.” He did not see Morgan and Gibson again that night.

The defendant next turned to see his friend Hall “getting beat down” by two men.¹² One of Hall's attackers, Francois, struck Hall once in the head and then backed away after realizing Pearson “had the situation handled.” Hall and Pearson continued to fight each other. At that point, the defendant ran to the other side of the car, and in his own words, “I stabbed a guy that had his back turned to me.” The person the defendant stabbed was Pearson. The defendant stabbed Pearson four times—twice in the back, once behind the left armpit, and once in the chest ¹³—and also inflicted eight superficial “drag” cuts.¹⁴

The entire altercation was over within minutes.¹⁵ The defendant and his group drove away, with Muller at the wheel. Pearson staggered about twenty to twenty-five feet in the direction of the Massachusetts General Hospital (hospital) before falling down in the middle of Cambridge Street. When Francois went to help him up, Pearson asked, “Why, dog, why?” About fifteen minutes later, an ambulance arrived and took Pearson to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:40 a.m.

Muller drove to the Orchard Park neighborhood in the Roxbury section of Boston, where Hall lived. On the way, the defendant threw his knife out of the window onto the highway. Muller asked him, “What did you do, what did you do to my friends?” The defendant replied that his “heart doesn't pump like Kool–Aid.” ¹⁶ He also stated that he hoped one of the individuals had died. On arriving in Orchard Park, before the group had learned of Pearson's death, the defendant said to Badger, “I had to do it for you.” When the group later learned of Pearson's death via cellular telephone, the defendant suggested they “all move to the South.” ¹⁷

2. Sufficiency of the evidence on extreme atrocity or cruelty. The defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of murder in the first degree on the theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty. His motion for a required finding of not guilty was denied. To convict a defendant of murder in the first degree on the theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty, the Commonwealth must prove three factors beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) the defendant committed an unlawful killing; (2) the killing was committed with malice; and (3) the killing was committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty. Model Jury Instructions on Homicide 11 (1999). The defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence as to the third element.

The factors a jury may use to support the third element were delineated in our decision in Commonwealth v. Cunneen, 389 Mass. 216, 227–228, 449 N.E.2d 658 (1983) ( Cunneen ). There, we said that the “factors which a jury can consider in deciding whether a murder was committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty ... include [1] indifference to or taking pleasure in the victim's suffering, [2] consciousness and degree of suffering of the victim, [3] extent of physical injuries, [4] number of blows, [5] manner and force with which delivered, [6] instrument employed, and [7] disproportion between the means needed to cause death and those employed.” Id. at 227, 449 N.E.2d 658. The jury need only find one of these factors to establish the third element of the crime. Model Jury Instructions, supra at 14.

Although there was evidence to support several factors, the Commonwealth's case focused largely on the fourth factor—number of blows. The Commonwealth presented evidence that the defendant stabbed Pearson four times and inflicted eight superficial “drag” cuts—a total of twelve wounds. The defendant...