Lussier v. Gunter
Decision Date | 31 March 1977 |
Docket Number | No. 76-1282,76-1282 |
Citation | 552 F.2d 385 |
Parties | Alan Lloyd LUSSIER, Petitioner, Appellant, v. Frank O. GUNTER et al., Respondents, Appellees. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Richard S. Goldstein, Boston, Mass., for appellant Deborah S. Solomon, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boston, Mass., with whom Francis X Bellotti, Atty. Gen., and John J. Irwin, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Chief, Crim. Bureau, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellees.
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, CLARK, Associate Justice, * (Retired), CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge.
The district court dismissed appellant Lussier's petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and he appeals.
Lussier was convicted after a jury trial in Massachusetts Superior Court of first degree murder committed with extreme cruelty or atrocity and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Commonwealth introduced evidence that in 1971, at the time of the murder, Lussier was a part-time resident superintendent at an apartment building on Westland Avenue, Boston. Late in the evening of October 30 he arrived at a Halloween party in the building which was attended by the victim, a 19-year-old student nurse, and scores of other persons. While Lussier was there a fight broke out between one Devereaux and others. The testimony was conflicting as to the amount which Devereaux bled and petitioner's proximity to him. The defense contended that the type O positive blood which was later found caked in small amounts on Lussier's boot and clothing had originated with Devereaux.
There was evidence that Lussier conversed with the victim and several others for about one half hour. Two participants in this conversation testified that they later saw petitioner and the victim leaving the apartment hand in hand. About eighteen hours after the couple had left the party, the victim's badly battered, nude body was found in a vacant apartment in the same building. A downstairs neighbor's testimony recalling sounds of a struggle and a loud thud emanating from the vacant apartment at about 2:30 a. m. on the night of the party tended to show that the murder occurred no later than one half hour after petitioner was observed leaving the party with the victim. The wounds about the victim's head were consistent with those which might have been inflicted by repeated kicks with boots such as those worn by petitioner. The victim's blood was of type O positive, the same type as that found on petitioner's boot. There was testimony indicating that petitioner had been aware that the apartment was vacant, he having assisted in cleaning it on the day before the party.
The prosecutor's closing statement to the jury included a number of comments the propriety of which Lussier has since challenged. The comment which Lussier focuses upon here, and which he argues entitles him to issuance of a writ of habeas corpus as in violation of his privilege against self incrimination, is the following:
(Emphasis supplied.)
Lussier's attorney, who does not now represent him, did not object or request a curative instruction from the court. The court's lengthy jury instructions included, however, the following:
On appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Lussier argued that the prosecutor's comments were "improper and (he) challenge(d) the failure of the trial judge to order the remarks struck when they were made or to subsequently instruct the jury to disregard them." Commonwealth v. Lussier, 364 Mass. 414, 424, 305 N.E.2d 499, 505 (1973). The court ruled:
Id. at 424-25, 305 N.E.2d at 506.
In a footnote the Supreme Judicial Court quoted the prosecutor's remarks which were asserted to be prejudicial. With reference to the comment that "(t) here's only one person that could tell us that," the court stated:
"This last remark would raise serious questions as to the infringement of the defendant's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, see Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 611, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965), were it not for that portion of the judge's charge specifically explaining to the jury that the defendant had the right not to testify, and that no unfavorable inferences were to be drawn from his exercising that right." Id. at 424 n. 3, 305 N.E.2d at 506 n. 3.
In the district court the Commonwealth resisted the habeas corpus petition on grounds that Lussier had waived objection to constitutional errors in failing to take exception to the prosecutor's comment. According to this argument, Massachusetts' statutory "miscarriage of justice" exception to a waiver is the equivalent of the federal "plain error" rule, Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b). The Commonwealth also argued that the prosecutor's comment was harmless in light of the trial judge's extensive instructions on the defendant's right to remain silent. The district court denied the petition.
On appeal, Lussier presses the argument that the prosecutor's remark was an unconstitutional and harmful comment on an accused's exercise of the right to remain silent. He contends that his attorney's failure to except was not a "deliberate by-pass" of state court procedure, see Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 438, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), for the prosecutor's misconduct had put him in the position of making a "grisly choice" between suffering the comment in silence and objecting, thereby calling further attention to the prejudicial remark. He denies that a calculated tactical decision to forego objection was ever made. Id. at 439, 83 S.Ct. 822. Furthermore, Lussier argues, the Supreme Judicial Court actually reached the constitutional issue, so the Commonwealth's reliance on a theory of waiver is inapposite.
We need not decide whether or to what extent Fay's "deliberate by-pass" standard has been broadened by the Supreme Court in giving effect to state rules concerning waiver. See Francis v. Henderson, 425 U.S. 536, 96 S.Ct. 1708, 48 L.Ed.2d 149 (1976); P. Bator, et al., Hart & Wechsler's The Federal Courts and The Federal System 256-58 (Supp.1977). We agree with petitioner that the Supreme Judicial Court decided the substance of his constitutional claim. It characterized the prosecutor's offensive comments as "not so prejudicial as to justify reversal." Id., 364 Mass. at 424, 305 N.E.2d at 506. The comment that is the subject of this appeal was said to "raise serious questions as to the infringement of the defendant's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent . . . were it not for that portion of the judge's charge...
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