Commonwealth v. Gray (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-027-14)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 12‑P‑1277 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. WILLIAM GRAY. No. 12‑P‑1277. Hampden. November 5, 2013. ‑ March 17, 2014. Present: Cypher, Brown, & Fecteau, JJ. Assault and Battery. Practice, Criminal, Bill of particulars, Variance. Evidence, Collateral matter. Due Process of Law, Elements of criminal offense. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on November 5, 2009. The case was tried before Richard J. Carey, J.; a motion to set aside the verdict was considered by him, and a motion for reconsideration was heard by him. Katherine E. McMahon, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. Deborah Bates Riordan for the defendant. BROWN, J. After a jury trial in the Superior Court, the defendant was convicted of a single count of assault and battery and was acquitted of extortion by threats, improper use of a credit card, and unarmed robbery. The day after the trial concluded, the defendant moved to set aside the jury’s guilty verdict; the motion was denied. The defendant later moved for reconsideration, and after a nonevidentiary hearing, the trial judge allowed the motion in a written memorandum of decision. The Commonwealth has appealed. The charges arose from an incident that occurred after the victim had consensual sex with the defendant at the defendant’s apartment. Relevant to the single count on which the defendant was convicted, the Commonwealth proffered evidence that showed, after the sex act, at about 4:00 P.M., the victim, at the defendant’s request, drove him to a nearby Friendly’s Restaurant (Friendly’s), where in the parking lot, a disagreement erupted. According to the victim, the defendant demanded payment for the sexual encounter and when the victim refused, the defendant grabbed the registration documents and other paperwork from the glove compartment of the victim’s vehicle. When the victim tried to stop him, the defendant struck him multiple times in the head, breaking the victim’s tooth and cutting his ear. The victim described a series of subsequent events that were the foundation for the additional charges of which the defendant was acquitted. The bill of particulars the Commonwealth provided to the defendant before trial mirrored this version of events as well as the evidence presented to the grand jury. In relation to the assault and battery charge, the document stated that it occurred at “Friendly’s […]