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Commonwealth v. Lopes1/22/2004
, who was laughing and clearly intoxicated, followed but returned to the room to retrieve his shirt. Pitts never saw him again.
At approximately 7 P.M. that evening, the defendant appeared in the motel office. He told the desk clerk that he had received an emergency telephone call and had to check out of the motel immediately. He asked the desk clerk to refund the money he had paid for the room. When informed that was impossible, the defendant responded that he would accept any amount of money. The desk clerk gave the defendant thirty dollars. At trial, the desk clerk described the defendant's demeanor as "real fidgety." After the defendant left, the desk clerk proceeded to room 37, where he discovered the victim's body. The body appeared to be unbruised, with the exception of red welts that encircled the neck area. Police officers subsequently recovered a wire coat hanger in the trees behind the motel, just below the window of room 37. The defendant was arrested the following morning at the home of friends in Hyannis.
In a statement to police, the defendant related the following version of events. According to the defendant, it was Pitts who left the motel room on Sunday morning. The defendant went back to sleep, and, when he awoke, the victim (who the defendant claimed weighed 300 pounds) and a younger male were holding him down on the bed. As the younger male fled with his wallet (which the defendant stated contained $400), and $100 that had been on the night stand, the victim held the defendant on the bed, punching him in the arms and legs. The defendant feigned unconsciousness. When the victim turned away, the defendant jumped up, and the victim "came at" the defendant. The defendant then punched the victim as hard as he could in the throat, and the victim collapsed. The defendant stated to police: "I killed him, but I did not strangle him." When confronted by police officers with the medical examiner's findings that the victim had, in fact, been strangled, the defendant speculated that someone else may have entered the motel room after he had left. He then conceded, however, that such a scenario was unlikely.
The Commonwealth proceeded against the defendant on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty (the latter theory was not selected by the jury on the verdict form). The medical examiner testified that the victim had died as a result of asphyxiation by ligature strangulation and testified that the ligature most likely was the wire coat hanger. The crossed marks on the victim's neck corresponded with the shape of the coat hanger and, the medical examiner concluded, could only have been made if the assailant was standing behind the victim and holding the ligature from behind. Small pinpoint, or petechial, hemorrhages, in the victim's eyes and airways, indicated an asphyxial death and confirmed that the victim was alive at the time the ligature strangulation occurred. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing of a bloodstain on the defendant's khaki pants and swabs taken from his left thumbnail, his right inside forearm, and his left sneaker revealed DNA consistent with the victim's.
The defendant did not testify. Through cross-examination of the Commonwealth's witnesses, and through witnesses of his own, the defendant's trial counsel presented evidence to support contentions that the killing occurred in the heat of passion or by the use of excessive force in self-defense, and, further, that the defendant was intoxicated and debilitated due to chronic alcoholism at the time of the killing, and, so, was incapable of premeditation.
1. Pursuant to G. L. c. 234A, § 22, each member of the venire was required to complete and sign a conf
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