Commonwealth v. Tinsley

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court·Decided May 6, 2021·No. SJC 13052·Published

Opinion

NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557- 1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us

SJC-13052 COMMONWEALTH vs. TONY A. TINSLEY.1

Berkshire. April 5, 2021. - May 6, 2021.

Present: Budd, C.J., Gaziano, Lowy, Cypher, Kafker, Wendlandt, & Georges, JJ.

Armed Home Invasion. Constitutional Law, Double jeopardy, Sentence. Practice, Criminal, New trial, Double jeopardy, Sentence. Words, "Dwelling place."

Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on September 23, 2005.

A motion for a new trial, filed on August 6, 2019, was heard by John A. Agostini, J.

The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court.

Steven M. Greenbaum, Special Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

S. Anders Smith for the defendant.

1 As is our practice, we spell the defendant's name as it appears in the indictments. The indictments state that the defendant also is known as Anthony A. Tinsley and Tone.

GAZIANO, J. Just after one o'clock in the morning on August 30, 2005, the defendant, along with Anthony Davis, broke into a home near Pittsfield. The family who lived in the house and had been asleep inside were injured as they fought the intruders and ultimately drove the intruders from their home. In 2007, a Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of armed home invasion, armed burglary, robbery while armed and masked, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, and assault and battery in conjunction with this incident. In 2019, he moved for a new trial on the charge of armed home invasion, on the ground that the Commonwealth had not presented sufficient evidence that he was armed when he entered the dwelling, as required by G. L. c. 265, § 18C. That motion was allowed by a Superior Court judge who also had been the trial judge.

We agree with the judge that the evidence supporting the charge of armed home invasion was insufficient to allow a finding beyond a reasonable doubt on each element of the offense. We therefore affirm the allowance of the defendant's motion for a new trial, and remand the matter to the Superior Court for resentencing on the remaining convictions. Under double jeopardy principles, a new sentence may be imposed only on those convictions for which the sentence has not been fully served at the time of resentencing.

1. Background. We recite the facts relevant to the issues in the motion for a new trial, based on the trial record.

Sophie and Jack Smith, wife and husband, had lived for fourteen years in a house that they had built in an isolated area in western Massachusetts.2 On Monday, August 29, 2005, the couple spent the evening at home. Their older son had just left to begin his first year at college; their younger son Alex, a senior in high school at that time, went out to see friends and returned home around 11:15 P.M.

All three family members had gone to sleep when, at approximately 1:13 A.M., Sophie was awakened by a noise outside her bedroom door. Without turning on any lights, she got up, went to the door, opened it, and encountered a man dressed in all black, who was wearing a hat and a mask that concealed his face. The intruder (the defendant) grabbed her and held an object that seemed to be a screwdriver against her neck. Sophie began screaming, which woke her husband. The defendant demanded money from Sophie, and took her into a bathroom, where she gave him the forty-nine dollars that she had on hand. The defendant brought her back into the bedroom and pushed her down onto the bed.

As one of the victims was a minor child, and the family 2

share a last name, we refer to all of the family members by pseudonyms.

While Sophie was getting the money from the bathroom, she heard what sounded like her husband being beaten. When Jack had gotten out of bed to help his wife, a second intruder, Davis, had struck him on the head with a club or bat that broke upon impact. Davis then held Jack down, choking him and telling him to "shut up." Eventually Jack was able to get to his feet, but in the subsequent struggle, he fell and "split open" the top of his head on a bureau. Davis then stabbed Jack's left hand with the jagged edge of the broken club, severing tendons and nerves. No lights were on in the bathroom or the bedroom during the struggle, leaving the bedroom "very dark," so that Sophie was only able to see silhouettes. The man fled the room as Jack attempted to defend himself by hitting the man on the back and neck with the broken club. Jack ran down the hallway after him.

The Smiths' son Alex also had been awakened by his mother's screams. He yelled and began turning on lights, at which point the defendant apparently fled from the house. Alex grabbed a knife from the side of his bed and ran into the hallway, where he heard his mother yelling to him to call 911. He returned to his room and attempted to call, but could not get through. Alex went back out into the hallway and encountered Davis, who also was fleeing from the Smiths' bedroom. Alex pursued Davis into the kitchen, tackled him, and stabbed him in the torso. Sophie attempted to call the police from a landline telephone in the

family's den, but there was no dial tone. She returned to help Alex, who was wrestling with Davis on the kitchen floor. Covered in his own blood, Jack joined them. Davis managed to seize the knife from Alex's hand and, after threatening the family, ran from the house. At that point, Sophie was able to reach a 911 operator on a cellular telephone.3 During the fight in the kitchen, Sophie injured her knee while kicking Davis in an effort to help her son; she required twenty-five to thirty-five stitches and, sometime later, surgery on her knee. Alex's finger had been cut when he and Davis struggled over the knife, and Alex required seven stitches. Jack sustained large gashes on his jaw and head, which had to be sutured and stapled; a pierced hand, which also had to be stitched and stapled; a broken nose; and bruises on his face and upper chest.

There was no obvious sign of forced entry into the Smiths'

house.4 The house had an attached garage, with a door giving

3 It later was discovered that a landline telephone in the kitchen had been unplugged from the wall.

4 An officer walking around the house after the Smiths had been taken to the hospital noticed that one side of the house had "a lot of sliding glass doors." The front door and all of the sliding glass doors were locked, except for one sliding door that led directly into the parents' bedroom, which was ajar. The screen door over the locked sliding glass door "had been pulled open" and was found open approximately four or five inches.

access from the interior of the garage to the kitchen. It appeared that the defendant and Davis likely entered and left the house through this door. Entry to the garage from the outside was through an ordinary door that usually was unlocked during the summer; the larger door for vehicles had been open when Alex came home, and he closed it upon his return. The intruders appeared to have attempted to enter the garage through a window; they had dragged a chair up to it and had removed a screen. Although the interior door from the garage to the house was locked, Alex had left his keychain, which contained a house key, in a truck parked in the garage. After the fight, the Smiths saw Davis flee the kitchen through the door to the garage; police later found a trail of blood on the garage floor. Investigating officers also found Alex's keychain lying in the grass outside the house.

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