Nadworny v. Fair
| Decision Date | 05 October 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-1096,92-1096 |
| Citation | 976 F.2d 724 |
| Parties | NOTICE: First Circuit Local Rule 36.2(b)6 states unpublished opinions may be cited only in related cases. William NADWORNY, Petitioner, Appellant, v. Michael FAIR, Commissioner of Corrections, Respondent, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts
Charles M. Burnim for appellant.
LaDonna J. Hatton, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Scott Harshbarger, Attorney General, was on brief for appellee.
Before Torruella and Stahl, Circuit Judges, and Hornby, * District Judge.
On July 20, 1982, approximately four months after she failed to return home from an evening visit with appellant William Nadworny, Lisa Belmonte's decomposed body was found in the trunk of Nadworny's automobile. Almost two years later, on June 12, 1984, a Massachusetts Superior Court jury found Nadworny guilty of second degree murder. Nadworny unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Commonwealt h v. Nadworny, 486 N.E.2d 675 (Mass. 1985), cert. denied, 477 U.S. 904 (1986).
After the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari, Nadworny filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The district court dismissed his petition for failure to exhaust his post-conviction state remedies. On appeal from that dismissal, we reversed and remanded the case for a decision on the merits. Nadworny v. Fair, 872 F.2d 1093 (1st Cir. 1989).
On April 5, 1991, after careful consideration of the merits of Nadworny's claims, the district court dismissed Nadworny's habeas petition and entered judgment for the respondent, Michael Fair, the Commissioner of Corrections for the Commonwealth. 1 It is from that dismissal that Nadworny now appeals. Finding no error in the district court's decision, we affirm.
In this appeal, Nadworny asserts the following four grounds for relief: (1) the district court erred in finding sufficient evidence to convict him of second degree murder; (2) the district court erred in finding no denial of due process in the state trial court's refusal to instruct on the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter; (3) the district court erred in finding no denial of due process in the state trial court's exclusion of evidence rebutting the prosecution's contention that certain of Nadworny's statements were indicative of his consciousness of guilt; and (4) the district court erred in finding no infringement upon his privilege against self-incrimination in the state trial court's admission of certain of Nadworny's involuntarily procured statements to the police and certain statements contained in a handwriting exemplar. We address these arguments seriatim.
Nadworny first contends that the district court erred in finding a sufficiency of evidence in the record to convict him of second degree murder. In essence, Nadworny asserts that his conviction cannot stand because it rests entirely upon circumstantial evidence and because the jury rejected the evidentiary inferences he believes were most reasonable. Nadworny's assertion is meritless. 2
In analyzing a sufficiency of evidence claim, we must review the evidence as a whole, including all inferences that may reasonably be drawn therefrom, in the light most favorable to the government, and determine if "any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Wright v. West, U.S.,, 112 S. Ct. 2482, 2485-86 (1992) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979)) (emphasis in original). Further, "[t]he evidence may be entirely circumstantial and the factfinder may choose among reasonable interpretations of it." United States v. Plummer, 964 F.2d 1251, 1254 (1st Cir. 1992).
Under Massachusetts law, second degree murder is defined as an unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Commonwealth v. Kane, 445 N.E.2d 598, 601 (Mass. 1983); Commonwealth v. Casale, 408 N.E.2d 841, 845 (Mass. 1980). The evidence before the state trial court included the following: 3
1. The testimony of four witnesses that Belmonte was at Nadworny's apartment on the evening of her disappearance.
2. The testimony of three witnesses that Nadworny had acknowledged that Belmonte's death occurred in his apartment on the night of her disappearance.
3. The testimony of one witness that Nadworny had informed him that the Commonwealth's evidence included "blood stains from Lisa's body" found on his apartment floor.
4. A letter from Belmonte to Nadworny making clear that she intended to end their relationship, and that if she met with him again it would only be for the purpose of saying "goodbye."
5. The testimony of one witness who spoke with Belmonte on the afternoon of her disappearance, indicating that, upon leaving her presence, Belmonte said that she intended immediately to go over to Nadworny's apartment to say "goodbye" to him and end the relationship.
6. The testimony of one witness that Nadworny told her that he "couldn't bear it if they [he and Belmonte] broke up."
7. A letter purportedly from Nadworny to Belmonte stating that he felt "used" by her.
8. Evidence suggesting that Nadworny was the only one with her when she died.
9. Evidence tending to show that, in the four months between the time Belmonte met her death and the time her body was discovered in the trunk of Nadworny's automobile, Nadworny was concealing her body.
10. Testimony that Nadworny had asked a friend to "alibi" for him.
11. Testimony that Nadworny had told inconsistent stories about Belmonte's condition on the day she disappeared and about where she was located thereafter.
12. The testimony of the pathologist who examined Belmonte's body indicating that it was extremely unlikely that she had died of natural causes and that there was no evidence of pills in her stomach or major trauma to the body.
We agree with the district court that the sum total of this evidence was sufficient to allow a rational trier of fact to find that Nadworny unlawfully killed Belmonte with malice aforethought. Consequently, we affirm its conclusion that Nadworny's insufficiency claim did not merit habeas relief.
Nadworny next argues that the district court erred in finding no denial of due process in the state trial court's refusal to instruct on the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter. This claim does not require extended discussion.
In a recent case squarely on point, we held that a state trial court's refusal to instruct on a lesser included offense in a noncapital case "rarely, if ever, presents a constitutional question...." Tata v. Carver, 917 F.2d 670, 672 (1st Cir. 1990) (quoting Pitts v. Lockhart, 911 F.2d 109, 112 (8th Cir. 1990), cert. denied, U.S., 111 S. Ct. 2896 (1991)). To rise to the level of a due process violation, the refusal to instruct must "threaten[ ] a fundamental miscarriage of justice...." Id.
In Tata, we found that the trial court's refusal to instruct on a lesser included offense did not rise to that level. Id. at 672-73. The defendant in that case was convicted under state law of trafficking in one hundred grams or more but less than two hundred grams of cocaine. Id. at 670-71. The evidence introduced during the prosecution's case in chief included 111.82 grams of cocaine which had been lawfully seized from defendant's apartment. As part of his defense, defendant introduced evidence tending to show that he consumed as much as two grams of cocaine a week.
The trial judge instructed the jury on the offense of trafficking in one hundred grams or more but did not instruct on the lesser included offense of trafficking in less than one hundred grams of cocaine. On appeal, defendant argued that the failure to so instruct violated due process because the jury could have found the lesser amount by deducting an amount for his personal use. Id. at 671.
We rejected the defendant's argument in Tata on several grounds. First, we held that there was sufficient evidence in the record to show that the quantity of drugs seized from defendant's apartment was unsuitable for personal consumption. Id. at 672. Second, we held that the requested instruction would have been inconsistent with defendant's theory of the case, namely that he never possessed the cocaine at all. Id. at 672-73. More importantly, we questioned whether an evidentiary predicate for the requested instruction even existed. Id. at 672.
Likewise, in the instant case, we find that the failure to instruct on involuntary manslaughter did not amount to a "fundamental miscarriage of justice." After reviewing the record, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the final arbiter on matters of state law, found that "no view of the evidence, resolving all reasonable inferences in favor of the defendant, ... permitted a finding of ... involuntary ... manslaughter." Nadworny, 486 N.E.2d at 687 (citation omitted). Further, the federal district court, after reading the record in a light most generous to Nadworny, found the evidentiary predicate for an involuntary manslaughter instruction "gossamer thin." Nadworny, 744 F. Supp. at 1207. Finally, the record reveals that even Nadworny's trial counsel found such an instruction unwarranted. See id. at 1204 (). Thus, Nadworny's present complaint that the failure to instruct resulted in a "fundamental miscarriage of justice" is unpersuasive.
Accordingly, we agree with the district court's conclusion that Nadworny's due process rights were not violated by the trial court's refusal to...
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...1990) citing Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 428, 82 S.Ct. 468, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962). See also Nadworny v. Fair, 976 F.2d 724 (Table), 1992 WL 251379, **2–3 (1 Cir., Oct. 5, 1992), cert. denied,507 U.S. 963, 113 S.Ct. 1392, 122 L.Ed.2d 766 (1993). To constitute a violation of the Due P......