Stokes v. Com.

Decision Date16 October 1975
PartiesJames J. STOKES v. COMMONWEALTH.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Thomas H. Walsh, Jr., Boston, for plaintiff.

Barbara A. H. Smith, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the Commonwealth.

Before TAURO, C.J., and REARDON, QUIRICO, BRAUCHER and HENNESSEY, JJ.

QUIRICO, Justice.

This case was commenced by a petition for a writ of error filed in the county court. After the writ was issued, and the pleadings were completed, a single justice reserved and reported the case to the full court on the petition, the assignment of alleged errors, the return of the Superior Court, the Commonwealth's answer, and a statement of agreed facts.

The petitioner and two codefendants were each indicted, and in a single trial were convicted, of the crimes of breaking and entering a building in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony and of murder in the first degree. On the conviction of murder the jury recommended that the death penalty be not imposed. In Commonwealth v. Rego, 360 Mass. 385, 274 N.E.2d 795 (1971), an appeal by the present petitioner and his two codefendants under G.L. c. 278, §§ 33A--33G, we affirmed the judgments on the breaking and entering indictments and directed that verdicts of guilty of murder in the second degree be entered against all three defendants on the murder indictments. The petitioner is now confined at Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Concord, serving two concurrent sentences, one for life imposed in the murder case, and one for eight to fifteen years imposed in the breaking and entering case. The circumstances of the petitioner's crimes and of the trial and certain related proceedings are set forth at some length in Commonwealth v. Rego, supra, and we will include here only those additional facts necessary to place the issues of the present proceeding in context.

The petitioner alleges seven errors, all relating to the juvenile delinquency proceeding which resulted in the transfer of the petitioner's case from the juvenile jurisdiction of the Municipal Court of the Dorchester District to the adult jurisdiction of the Superior Court. The alleged errors are that: (1) the petitioner was twice put in jeopardy for the same offense, in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, when he was tried in the Superior Court for offenses which had previously been the subject of juvenile delinquency complaints brought and dismissed in the Municipal Court; (2) the petitioner was convicted, in violation of his right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and under art. 24 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the Commonwealth, of crimes which, because of his age (sixteen years and two months) at the time of the acts in question, were not crimes when he committed them; (3) the statute under which the Municipal Court dismissed the juvenile delinquency complaints, G.L. c. 119, § 61, is so vague and indefinite as to violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; (4) General Laws c. 119, § 61, delegates legislative functions to the judiciary in violation of art. 30 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the Commonwealth; (5) the Municipal Court judge violated the petitioner's rights under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to review, or to permit the petitioner to comment on, his prior juvenile record or on the possibility of his successful treatment as a juvenile, and by failing to give a statement of reasons for dismissal of the juvenile complaints; (6) the Municipal Court judge violated the petitioner's rights under G.L. c. 119, § 61, for the same reasons alleged in (5) above, to be violations of the petitioner's rights under the due process clause; and (7) the dismissal of the juvenile delinquency complaints violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States because no compelling reason was demonstrated for that dismissal. In short, the petitioner argues that it was error of constitutional proportions to try him at all as an adult following juvenile delinquency proceedings of the nature of those to which he was subjected.

The circumstances of the juvenile proceedings are summarized briefly. Because the petitioner was under seventeen years of age at the time he committed the acts alleged to constitute breaking and entering and murder, adult criminal proceedings could not be commenced against him unless juvenile delinquency proceedings had previously been commenced and dismissed. G.L. c. 119, § 74. The petitioner was first charged in two complaints issued on June 23, 1969, with juvenile delinquency (a) by reason of breaking and entering in the nighttime with intent to commit larceny and (b) by reason of murder. On June 25, 1969, the petitioner was arrested and brought before the Municipal Court, whereupon he was committed to jail without bail pending a hearing on the delinquency complaints.

On July 8, 1969, a proceeding was held in the Municipal Court. The transcript of this proceeding carries the caption 'Probable Cause Hearing--Commonwealth vs. John Stokes, et al.' It appears that this proceeding actually consisted of two parts, the first being a hearing concerned only with the present petitioner and resulting in a decision that '(t)his young man is to be held.' We take this to be an indication of the judge's decision in accordance with G.L. c. 119, § 61, that the interests of the public required that the petitioner should be tried for his offenses as an adult rather than be dealt with as a delinquent child.

Immediately following this portion of the proceeding, the two juvenile complaints were dismissed, and sometime later on that same day two adult complaints were issued against him. See G.L. c. 119, § 75. The second part of this July 8 proceeding seems to have been a bind-over hearing involving all three defendants (the petitioner's two codefendants apparently being over seventeen years of age) as required to be held by G.L. c. 218, § 30, and c. 119, § 75. In the case of the petitioner, as well as in the cases of his codefendants, probable cause was found, and he was ordered bound over to await action of the grand jury. The indictments and convictions which resulted are those recounted in Commonwealth v. Rego, 360 Mass. 385, 274 N.E.2d 795 (1971).

The only evidence presented or offered at the portion of the July 8 proceeding involved with the juvenile complaints against the petitioner was introduced by the Commonwealth. This evidence consisted of the testimony of a single witness who recounted several meetings he had had with the petitioner at which the petitioner had made various admissions concerning the alleged breaking and entering and the murder. The petitioner, through counsel, cross-examined this witness, but offered no evidence of his own. It does not appear in the transcript whether the judge had before him or considered the petitioner's record of past juvenile offenses. This record included at least five previous adjudications of delinquency for offenses ranging from being a stubborn child to possession of burglarious tools, breaking and entering, and larceny. The only indication of the reasons for the dismissal of the juvenile complaints is the following statement which appears on the back of each of the dismissed complaints: 'July 8, 1969 That the interest of the public requires that he shall be tried for the said offence.'

1. Double Jeopardy. The petitioner's argument that he was twice put in jeopardy for the same offense by first being subjected to proceedings in the Municipal Court on the juvenile delinquency complaints and then being tried in the Superior Court on the indictments on which he was convicted is substantially the same one which we recently rejected on similar facts in A JUVENILE, PETITIONER, --- MASS. ---, 306 N.E.2D 822 (1974)A. In that case we concluded that '(t)he dismissal of the juvenile complaint and the issuance of an adult complaint are contemplated by the statute (G.L. c. 119, § 75) to be in effect one event, and, as such, any jeopardy to which a juvenile was initially subjected under the juvenile complaint continues under the adult complaint.' Id. at ---, b 306 N.E.2d at 829.

Following argument of the present case, however, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered its decision in Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 44 L.Ed.2d 346 (1975), relating to proceedings in courts of the State of California. In that case, involving a young man whose criminal trial and conviction for robbery followed a Juvenile Court determination that he had committed the robbery but that he was unfit for treatment as a juvenile, the court held 'that the prosecution of respondent in Superior Court after an adjudicatory proceeding in Juvenile Court, violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.' Id. at 541, 95 S.Ct. 1791.

In light of the Supreme Court's decision, we authorized the parties to this case, as well as the district attorney who had originally prosecuted the underlying criminal cases, to file briefs limited to the effect of the decision in Breed v. Jones, supra, on this case. The parties and the district attorney were invited, in particular, to address (1) whether Breed v. Jones, if applicable to the present case, would require a holding that the petitioner's right not to be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense was violated, and (2) whether Breed v. Jones is applicable to a case like the present one in which all of the lower court proceedings at issue occurred before the date of that decision. The petitioner filed a brief urging that both questions be answered in the affirmative while the Attorney General, for the Commonwealth, and the district attorney, as amicus curiae,...

To continue reading

Request your trial
33 cases
  • Commonwealth v. Bell
    • United States
    • Appeals Court of Massachusetts
    • January 11, 2013
    ...prior to the conduct in issue.” Santiago v. Commonwealth, 428 Mass. 39, 43, 697 N.E.2d 979 (1998), quoting from Stokes v. Commonwealth, 368 Mass. 754, 773, 336 N.E.2d 735 (1975). 9. Although the defendant objected at trial on confrontation grounds, the thrust of his argument was that the do......
  • Com. v. Moreira
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
    • March 29, 1983
    ...on the accused of an ex post facto statute." State v. Koonce, supra 89 N.J.Super. at 185, 214 A.2d 428. Cf. Stokes v. Commonwealth, 368 Mass. 754, 765-769, 336 N.E.2d 735 (1975); Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 533-541, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 1787-1791, 44 L.Ed.2d 346 Our conclusion does not apply to......
  • Commonwealth v. Mogelinski
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
    • December 23, 2013
    ...the point of jeopardy-attachment, resulting in the individual twice being prosecuted for the same offense. See Stokes v. Commonwealth, 368 Mass. 754, 762, 336 N.E.2d 735 (1975) (juvenile delinquency hearing qualifies as adjudicatory proceeding; where trier of fact has begun to hear evidence......
  • Chardin v. Police Comm'r Boston, SJC–11196.
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
    • June 4, 2013
    ...by the disposition of the charges against him, he nonetheless committed an unlawful act that was a felony. See Stokes v. Commonwealth, 368 Mass. 754, 772, 336 N.E.2d 735 (1975) (act committed by juvenile against laws of Commonwealth is criminal act). [989 N.E.2d 402] It has been a “long-sta......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT