Commonwealth v. Amran (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-073-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11686 COMMONWEALTH vs. ASIM AMRAN. Worcester. February 6, 2015. – April 30, 2015. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, & Hines, JJ. Homicide. Evidence, Photograph, Inflammatory evidence. Jury and Jurors. Practice, Criminal, Capital case, Mistrial, Instructions to jury, Assistance of counsel, Jury and jurors, Deliberation of jury, Voir dire. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on November 20, 2009. The case was tried before Janet Kenton-Walker, J. Leslie W. O’Brien for the defendant. Stephen J. Carley, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. SPINA, J. The defendant was convicted of killing his wife with deliberate premeditation. On appeal he alleges error in (1) the admission of photographs prejudicially depicting the victim’s body in an advanced state of decomposition, and lacking any relevance to any issue at trial; (2) the failure to grant a mistrial after the medical examiner testified that the victim’s death was a homicide, when the defense was that it was a suicide; (3) the admission of the defendant’s statement to police with no redactions of (i) inadmissible accusations by police, (ii) assertions that police had inculpatory evidence that was not presented to the jury, and (iii) hearsay; and (4) the failure to conduct a voir dire of jurors after at least one juror had been exposed to prejudicial extraneous material. We affirm the conviction and decline to exercise our powers under G. L. c. 278, § 33E. 1. Background. The jury could have found the following facts. We reserve additional details for discussion of particular issues. The defendant and the victim were married in Pakistan in 2003 or 2004. The marriage was arranged by the defendant’s family. Shortly after the marriage, the defendant, an American citizen, returned to the United States with the victim. She spoke no English and did not drive. She was entirely dependent on the defendant’s family for companionship and transportation. The couple had a son with whom the victim was very close. The couple came under stress after the defendant lost a lucrative job. They began arguing and discussed separating. In 2008, their financial circumstances forced them to move to an apartment owned by the defendant’s parents in Fitchburg. That year the defendant obtained employment as a staff nurse at a nursing home in Tewksbury. One of his responsibilities included […]