Opinion
19-P-1147
12-17-2020
COMMONWEALTH v. ERIKA MULLEN.
NOTICE: Summary decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to M.A.C. Rule 23.0, as appearing in 97 Mass. App. Ct. 1017 (2020) (formerly known as rule 1:28, as amended by 73 Mass. App. Ct. 1001 [2009]), are primarily directed to the parties and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's decisional rationale. Moreover, such decisions are not circulated to the entire court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case. A summary decision pursuant to rule 23.0 or rule 1:28 issued after February 25, 2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted above, not as binding precedent. See Chace v. Curran, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 258, 260 n.4 (2008).
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0
The defendant, Erika Mullen, appeals from her conviction, after a Superior Court jury trial, of one count of voluntary manslaughter, G. L. c. 265, § 13. Concluding that the eyewitness's testimony and the defendant's own statements, viewed in light of the video surveillance, provided sufficient evidence that the defendant stabbed the victim and thus that there was sufficient evidence to convict her of manslaughter, we affirm.
1. Background. "Because the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, we recite the facts that the jury could have found in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth." Commonwealth v. Salazar, 481 Mass. 105, 107 (2018). On October 3, 2015, at approximately 11 P.M., a witness observed a man (the victim), and a woman, later identified as the defendant, fighting inside of Crystal Park in Worcester. The witness could not see their faces, as he was standing outside of the park. He heard them arguing, and noted that "the female[] was more mad at the guy," yelling loudly. The defendant was bigger and taller than the victim. He saw the defendant and the victim using their arms to fight one another.
By the time of the trial, the park's name had changed to University Park.
The defendant was dominating the fight, and the witness did not get involved because "she had a male accomplice with her." The man present with the defendant, later identified as Anthony Chambers, appeared to be "trying to pull her away." It did not appear that Chambers struck the victim at all. Although Chambers tried to pull the defendant away, she continued to attack the victim. When the fight ended, the witness observed Chambers and the defendant walk through the park, heading north on Main Street, while the victim followed them and called them back. After a five to ten minute meeting with his friend, the witness walked back up Gates Street and saw a man lying on the sidewalk near the park with people, ambulances, and police surrounding him. The victim subsequently died from his wounds, having been stabbed five times.
On cross-examination, the witness admitted that he told the police that the man did fight with the victim.
Police obtained video footage capturing the incident from multiple security cameras. The video footage shows a woman and a man in Crystal Park at the time of the crime, and at surrounding locations before and after the crime. The video shows two figures fighting, with a third figure joining the other two at certain points. After the altercation, a woman and a man exited the park, with another man following at a distance. A few minutes later, what appears to be the same woman and man reentered the park from where they exited and then left from the same exit a few minutes later. As they exited, the woman pointed out a stain on the ground. After they left, they walked east on Allen Street behind the Family Dollar store.
A montage of the relevant footage was played for the jury.
Although the video depicts the fight, and consequentially, the murder, it is impossible to discern from the video alone which person was doing what at the operative points because of the resolution of the footage.
The defendant brought a white bag to a friend's apartment on Allen Street, where the defendant stayed on the night of the crime. Police later found a black-handled knife in a white bag in the bathroom, near a cleaning agent. This knife had neither blood nor usable fingerprints on it. The friend testified that the defendant used her bathroom, along with Chambers.
The next day, around 11:30 A.M. to 12:00 P.M., a detective observed the defendant at the Family Dollar and believed that he recognized her from the video. The clothes she was wearing matched the clothes she was wearing in the video footage. The defendant agreed to accompany detectives to the police station, where she consented to an interview. She voluntarily provided the detective with a gray-handled knife she had on her person.
Police did not notice any blood or other "trace evidence" on the defendant's clothes or person.
This knife had no visible blood stains, and the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) found on it matched neither the victim nor Chambers. In any event, this knife was significantly shorter than the stab wounds suffered by the victim.
The interview, which was video and audio recorded, was played for the jury (with certain redactions). The defendant initially denied she was in the area at the time of the crime. When shown some of the video footage, she admitted she was there, and that she was the individual fighting with the victim. She stated that the victim had a knife in his hand but she kicked it out of his hand. When detectives asked the defendant what she thought happened to the victim, she responded, "obviously, he got stabbed," without any prior indication from the detectives that stabbing was the victim's cause of death. The defendant said that she knew the victim must have been stabbed because,
When the police arrived, the victim had a closed, bronze-handled knife and a bag of heroin in his right hand. This knife had no usable fingerprints on it. There was blood on the handle, but the DNA on it was insufficient for comparison.
"[w]hen I was fighting with him, he went -- like I was punching him and punching him and kicking and all of a sudden he was like ahhhh, and he went like that and that's when I clocked him in the side of the head right here. He was shorter than me to begin with. And he was like this, he went down like that, you know what I mean? I don't know. I've never stabbed --."The defendant indicated that the man she was with, whom she later admitted was Chambers, was not involved in the fight at that point.
In describing the fight between herself and the victim, the defendant said,
"I had him by the shirt like this. I was trying to run away. I kept screaming at him, I said how dare you. I said what do I look like some little toy fucking, some little rat bitch that you can just come over and do whatever you want to. I said because I'm not. I said I will ruin your whole world."When a detective told her the victim was dead, she responded, "Good, good, good." She described the victim as a "fucking Spic."
The defendant stated that, after she and Chambers left the park, they returned to retrieve Chambers's glasses. Near the end of the interview, the defendant blamed the stabbing on Chambers. She asserted that Chambers said that "he stabbed [the victim] because he had his knife out and he was going to stab him."
Chambers was originally charged with murder. He cooperated in the case against the defendant and ultimately pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, based on removing the glasses from the scene of the crime. He was not called to testify at the defendant's trial.
The defendant was ultimately tried for first-degree murder, G. L. c. 265, § 1. The jury convicted her of the lesser included charge of voluntary manslaughter. This appeal followed.
2. Standard of review. "[W]e consider the evidence introduced at trial in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, and determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Commonwealth v. Oberle, 476 Mass. 539, 547 (2017). "The inferences that support a conviction 'need only be reasonable and possible; [they] need not be necessary or inescapable.'" Commonwealth v. Tsonis, 96 Mass. App. Ct. 214, 216 (2019), quoting Commonwealth v. Waller, 90 Mass. App. Ct. 295, 303 (2016).
3. Sufficiency of the evidence of manslaughter. "Voluntary manslaughter is commonly defined as 'a killing from a sudden transport of passion or heat of blood, upon a reasonable provocation and without malice, or upon sudden combat.'" Commonwealth v. Ware, 53 Mass. App. Ct. 238, 241 (2001), quoting Commonwealth v. Soaris, 275 Mass. 291, 299 (1931). "[T]o prove voluntary manslaughter, the Commonwealth must prove 'an intentional infliction of injury likely to cause death, which causes death' and 'the defendant acted unlawfully.'" Commonwealth v. Jones, 75 Mass. App. Ct. 38, 40 (2009). "A killing that would otherwise be murder . . . is reduced to the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter where the Commonwealth has failed to prove that there were no mitigating circumstances." Commonwealth v. Gardner, 479 Mass. 764, 778 (2018), quoting Model Jury Instructions on Homicide 64 (2013). Accord Commonwealth v. Vargas, 475 Mass. 338, 353 (2016) ("malice and mitigating circumstances are mutually exclusive").
As the defendant was acquitted of murder, we need not address whether the evidence was sufficient to convict her of murder. That question is moot.
Here, the judge instructed on the mitigating circumstances of heat of passion on reasonable provocation and heat of passion by sudden combat, as the defendant did not assert self-defense and did not request a self-defense instruction.
Here, the jury could have reasonably found that the defendant intentionally inflicted an injury that was likely to cause death, by stabbing the victim, which did in fact cause his death. See Ware, 53 Mass. App. Ct. at 241. During her interview, the defendant identified the precise moment when the victim was stabbed, notably stating that Chambers was not present at that time. She knew that the victim was stabbed before the officers even mentioned his injuries. The witness testified that the defendant dominated the fight, in which she used her arms, and that Chambers was unsuccessful in his attempt to pull her away. See Commonwealth v. Spinucci, 472 Mass. 872, 878 (2015) (sufficient evidence defendant stabbed victim where three eyewitnesses saw defendant "standing or crouching next to or over" victim's body, "inferably engaged in stabbing him").
To be sure, the knife the defendant surrendered to the police the next day could not realistically have been the weapon used in the stabbing. Similarly, the next morning neither the defendant nor her clothes (which matched those worn during the altercation) had blood on them. Neither the absence of the weapon used nor the absence of blood on the defendant's person the next day, however, negated the eyewitness testimony, as supplemented by the video and the defendant's statements. See Commonwealth v. Ayala, 481 Mass. 46, 51 (2018) (in evaluating sufficiency, "we draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the Commonwealth").
The jury did not need to find malice to convict the defendant of manslaughter. See Commonwealth v. Gonzalez, 465 Mass. 672, 686 (2013), quoting Commonwealth v. Acevedo, 446 Mass. 435, 443 (2006) ("Voluntary manslaughter is an unlawful killing 'arising not from malice, but from . . . sudden [heat of] passion induced by reasonable provocation, sudden combat, or [the use of] excessive force in self-defense'" [emphasis added]). Accord Gardner, 479 Mass. at 778. Nonetheless, the jury could have found malice from the defendant's own reported threats to the victim, her indifferent, if not contented, response to discovering that the victim had died, and the sheer number of stab wounds that the victim sustained. See Commonwealth v. Walczak, 463 Mass. 808, 819 (2012) ("Malice may be inferred from the intentional use of a dangerous weapon, . . . and the number of wounds resulting from the use of that weapon"). The evidence of manslaughter was sufficient.
Of course, the jury could have (and presumably did) find that the Commonwealth failed to prove the absence of mitigating circumstances (and thus malice) in light of the victim's repeatedly trying to sell drugs to the defendant, a recovering drug user with post-traumatic stress disorder, allegedly while holding a knife. See Commonwealth v. Colon, 449 Mass. 207, 220, cert. denied, 552 U.S. 1079 (2007), quoting Commonwealth v. Andrade, 422 Mass. 236, 237 (1996) (provocation must "cause the accused to lose [her] self-control in the heat of passion," and "the killing [must have] followed the provocation before sufficient time had elapsed for the accused's temper to cool").
As the evidence was sufficient that the defendant stabbed the victim, we need not consider whether the Commonwealth proved a joint venture. See Commonwealth v. Gallett, 481 Mass. 662, 673 (2019), quoting Commonwealth v. Zanetti, 454 Mass. 449, 468 (2009) ("We do not 'examine the sufficiency of the evidence separately as to principal and joint venture liability'").
Judgment affirmed.
By the Court (Rubin, Neyman & Ditkoff, JJ.),
The panelists are listed in order of seniority.
/s/
Clerk Entered: December 17, 2020.