Commonwealth v. Carriere (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-177-14)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11339 COMMONWEALTH vs. EDMOND J. CARRIERE, JR. Barnstable. May 9, 2014. – October 28, 2014. Present: Spina, Cordy, Duffly, & Lenk, JJ. Homicide. Joint Enterprise. Evidence, Joint venturer, Testimonial statement, Pattern of conduct, Subsequent misconduct, Prior misconduct, Motive, State of mind, Declaration against interest. Constitutional Law, Confrontation of witnesses. Practice, Criminal, Capital case, Confrontation of witnesses, Argument by prosecutor, Presumptions and burden of proof. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on July 13, 2010. The case was tried before Robert C. Rufo, J. Neil L. Fishman for the defendant. Julia K. Holler, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth DUFFLY, J. On January 3, 1980, at approximately 8 P.M., the victim, who was the defendant’s wife, was found dead on the bathroom floor in her home in Bourne. She had died “quite some time” earlier of multiple stab wounds. When the victim’s body was discovered, the defendant and his fourteen year old daughter, who lived with the victim, were in Florida visiting one of the defendant’s older daughters. In June, 2005, Steven Stewart, the man who stabbed the victim, was convicted of murder in the first degree; this court reversed his conviction in 2009 based on errors in the admission of testimony by a key witness. See Commonwealth v. Stewart, 454 Mass. 527, 527-528 (2009). The defendant was indicted in July, 2010, after Stewart entered into a plea agreement under which he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, agreed to testify against the defendant, and was sentenced to time served. The Commonwealth’s theory at trial was that the defendant, who was in the midst of a highly contentious divorce from the victim, had engaged in a murder-for-hire scheme with Stewart and their mutual friend Richard Grebauski.[1] Grebauski, the alleged middleman, arranged to hire Stewart for $ 5,000 after accepting the defendant’s offer of $ 10,000 to kill his wife. The Commonwealth’s case relied heavily on evidence introduced through Stewart, who testified both to his own actions and to out-of-court statements by other asserted members of the joint venture, including Grebauski. The remainder of the evidence was based largely on out-of-court statements introduced by witnesses to those statements, such as the defendant’s friends and neighbors Russell Breault, Charles Berryman, and David Phinney. A police report and a letter sent to the […]