Commonwealth v. Scott

885 N.E.2d 133, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 596, 2008 Mass. App. LEXIS 463
Massachusetts Appeals Court·Decided April 28, 2008·No. No. 06-P-1140·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

Katzmann, J.

Having been convicted by a District Court jury of breaking and entering a building in the daytime with the intent to commit a misdemeanor (a trespass) in violation of [597] G. L. c. 266, § 16A1 (count one of a five count complaint), the defendant now appeals. He claims that the judge erred in denying his motion for a required finding of not guilty at the end of the Commonwealth’s case.2 We affirm.

Background. We summarize the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, reserving certain details for discussion in conjunction with the issues raised. See Commonwealth v. Fowler, 431 Mass. 30, 31 (2000).

The Commonwealth presented evidence on the breaking and entering charge through the testimony of Obin Onujiogu, the owner of the premises in question, a two-family house located at 91 West Cottage Street in Roxbury (building). The building consisted of a first-floor apartment occupied by renter Richard Walker, a vacant four-bedroom apartment on the second floor, and an occupied third-floor attic level that had been converted into a two-bedroom living space. Outside one of the second-floor apartment windows was an emergency exit or fire escape, with iron stairs going all the way down to the ground. In the front of the building, there were two exterior doors at street level. One door was to Walker’s apartment and the other door opened into a hallway that led up to the entrance to the second-floor apartment.

Onujiogu, who lived three minutes away by car from the building, experienced continual problems with people breaking [598] into the vacant second-floor apartment. Onujiogu had a network of individuals who would inform him by telephone if they saw anyone on the second floor of the building. After receiving word that someone was inside the second-floor apartment, Onujiogu would drive to the building and would sometimes see people on the second floor.3 Other times, without being informed that someone was in the apartment, he sat in a van outside of the building in order to observe it. Onujiogu called the police “repeatedly,” but the “people would split” by the time the police arrived. In response to these problems, Onujiogu attempted to fortify the building. He replaced the window on the second floor beside the fire escape, and positioned a piece of wood on this window in order to prevent it from being raised from the outside. Onujiogu also replaced the locks on the doors of the second-floor apartment, and the locks to the front door that led from street level into a hallway and stairs leading up to the second-floor apartment.4 He kept the doors and windows of the apartment closed and locked.

Onujiogu further testified that on July 18, 2004, at approximately 6:30 a.m., he received a telephone call from the woman residing in the third-floor attic of the building. As a result of this call, he telephoned the police and drove immediately to the building, arriving there three minutes after receiving the third-floor tenant’s call. Upon arrival at the building, he saw the defendant walk down the stairs from the second floor and leave the building from the exterior front door (which led to the entrance to the second-floor apartment). The defendant did not have Onujiogu’s permission to be inside the building. Onujiogu (who had never seen the defendant before) asked him, “[S]o you keep doing this? So you keep doing this?” The defendant did not respond. The police arrived and began speaking with the defendant, who then started to run. Police officers stopped the defendant and restrained him.

[599] Onujiogu and two police officers went into the second-floor apartment. According to Onujiogu, the window beside the emergency exit was open and the “doors” were unlocked. While Onujiogu did not know precisely when he had last been at the building prior to July 18, he testified that he “should have been” there during that week, and that at that time he had locked every door and “barred” the window beside the emergency exit.5

Discussion. In contending that, at the close of the Commonwealth’s case, the judge erred in denying his motion for a required finding of not guilty on the charge of breaking and entering in the daytime with the intent to commit a misdemeanor, the defendant argues (1) that the Commonwealth did not present sufficient evidence to prove that he “broke into, or entered, the vacant second floor apartment of 91 West Cottage Street,” and (2) that trespass cannot be the intended misdemeanor, and even assuming that it could, the judge erred in finding that there was sufficient evidence of intent to trespass so as to permit the case to proceed at the close of the Commonwealth’s case. These contentions are unavailing.

Because the defendant’s argument is limited to the claim that [600] the judge denied his motion for a required finding of not guilty at the end of the Commonwealth’s case, “we consider only the evidence introduced up to the time that the Commonwealth rested its case, and the defendant first filed his motion[].” Commonwealth v. Kelley, 370 Mass. 147, 150 (1976). “The sole question raised ... is whether ‘there was sufficient evidence of the defendant’s guilt to warrant the submission of the case[] to a jury.’ ” Ibid., quoting from Commonwealth v. Altenhaus, 317 Mass. 270, 271 (1944). We must determine “whether the evidence, in its light most favorable to the Commonwealth ... is sufficient ... to permit [any rational trier of fact] to infer the existence of the essential elements of the crime charged.” Commonwealth v. Kelley, supra, quoting from Commonwealth v. Sandler, 368 Mass. 729, 740 (1975). Commonwealth v. Murphy, 31 Mass. App. Ct. 901, 901 (1991). “Inferences drawn from the evidence are permitted if reasonable, possible, and not unwarranted because too remote — although the inferences need not be necessary or inescapable. . . . More than only ‘some record evidence, however slight,’ is necessary to avoid a required finding of not guilty.” Ibid., quoting from Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677 (1979). “Nor may a conviction rest upon the piling of inference upon inference or conjecture and speculation.” Commonwealth v. Murphy, supra, quoting from Commonwealth v. Mandile, 403 Mass. 93, 94 (1988). A motion for a required finding of not guilty will be allowed only when the judge finds that “the evidence is insufficient as a matter of law to sustain a conviction on the charge.” Commonwealth v. Salemme, 395 Mass. 594, 595 (1985), quoting from Mass. R.Crim.P. 25(a), 378 Mass. 896 (1979). See Smith, Criminal Practice and Procedure §§ 36.4-36.11 (3d ed. 2007).

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Commonwealth v. Scott, 885 N.E.2d 133, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 596, 2008 Mass. App. LEXIS 463 (Mass. Ct. App. 2008).

885 N.E.2d 133 (Commonwealth v. Scott) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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