It's the law of land:
"SJC reduces conviction of Theatre District killer to second-degree murder in death of Revere veteran" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, October 6, 2020
In a revision to an 1858 law that established separate crimes of first- and second-degree murder, the state’s high court on Tuesday ruled that shooting someone once in the back does not automatically warrant life imprisonment without parole, even if the victim suffers a painful death.
If you have a badge it doesn't even warrant a charge.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Judicial Court refined the legal reasoning juries must employ before convicting someone of first-degree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life without parole, when prosecutors allege the death was an act of “extreme atrocity or cruelty."
The ruling concerned the appeal of Peter Castillo, who was convicted of first-degree murder for the 2012 shooting of Stephen Perez, an Army veteran from Revere, and was sentenced to life without parole. Using its special powers, the SJC reduced Castillo’s conviction to second-degree murder, meaning he will eventually be eligible for parole.
One of the ruling’s key changes is that the "consciousness and degree of suffering of the victim” will no longer be a standalone reason for a conviction. That legal principle places too much focus on the victim and too little on the defendant, the court ruled.
“The extent of a victim’s suffering may bear on matters of chance or on whether the defendant was a poor shot, rather than on whether the conduct of the defendant was unusually atrocious or cruel,'' the late Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote for the court. Gants died last month at 65.
Since existing law “in some instances, [may] permit a jury to find extreme atrocity or cruelty based only on the degree of a victim’s suffering without considering whether the defendant’s conduct was extreme in either its brutality or its cruelty, we now revise them,'' Gants wrote.
On April 28, 2012, Perez was in Boston’s Theatre District with friends when he fought with two associates of Castillo. Castillo then fired a shot into Perez’s back. Castillo, who fled to the Dominican Republic shortly after the shooting, was recorded shooting Perez on cellphone video taken by bystanders, the court ruled.
Perez was conscious when he was rushed to a Boston hospital and reached out to the EMT caring for him, rising up from the stretcher during the ambulance ride. Suffolk prosecutors said that was proof of the intense suffering Perez experienced, the court ruled, but the overriding concern should have been Castillo’s actions and not Perez’s pain, the court ruled.
“The defendant’s conduct — firing a single shot into the victim’s back — was stupid, senseless, and cowardly. Indeed, where it tragically caused the death of a young man, it was atrocious and cruel,'' Gants wrote, but “nothing about the facts of this case suggests that the defendant’s conduct [is] ... an act that is extremely wicked or brutal, appalling, horrifying, or utterly revolting."
Which I found to be this ruling.
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Of course, there is always the "I was drunk" excuse:
"SJC expands insanity defense to include chronic alcohol or substance abuse" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, October 7, 2020
The state’s high court Wednesday expanded what is commonly known as the insanity defense to include people suffering from the psychological impacts of chronic abuse of alcohol or drugs.
The 5-0 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court overturned the first-degree murder conviction of Aldo W. Dolphe who beat a fellow patient to death in the UMass Memorial Medical Center psychiatric ward in Worcester in 2013.
Dolphe was a daily user of marijuana for several years. During his Worcester Superior Court trial, a prosecution expert testified his delusional behavior was a symptom of marijuana withdrawal, not a major mental illness, and he was in control of his thoughts when he murdered Ratna Bhattarai, according to the SJC.
A defense expert testified Dolphe was in the throes of psychotic delusions — believing wrongly Bhattarai was his biological father — from schizophrenia, a major mental illness. The jury believed the prosecution, convicting Dolphe of first-degree murder, triggering a life-without-parole sentence, but the late Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote that Dolphe’s chronic marijuana consumption could have negatively interacted with his mental illness — or, by itself, could have impacted his ability to think rationally.
Message: don't take a toke, it will LITERALLY drive you crazy.
Gants wrote that Dolphe’s trial was flawed because jurors were not allowed to take into account the possible connection between marijuana consumption and mental illness, which the judge noted is still not universally accepted by researchers and scientists.
The court concluded that jury instructions on the defense of “lack of criminal responsibility” for someone with a “mental disease or defect” — the insanity defense — used in Dolphe’s 2016 trial were outdated. New language will be included for judges to use when instructing jurors on the complex issue of a defendant’s mental status when they commit a murder or another crime.
“It does not matter whether the disease or defect arose from genetics, from a childhood disease or accident, from lead poisoning, from the use of prescription medication, or from the chronic use of alcohol or illegal drugs,” Gants wrote. “A drug-induced mental disease or defect still constitutes a mental disease or defect for purposes of a criminal responsibility defense.”
Gants died last month at 65. He wrote Wednesday’s decision - and another released on Tuesday that could help defendants charged with killing someone with a single shot - before his death.
In the ruling, Gants also made clear what the new change does not apply to: A person who robs a store to get money to buy drugs while already high on opioids does not qualify for the defense. That’s a voluntary decision to ingest the drugs, Gants wrote, and someone who knows that drinking alcohol or using drugs will worsen their mental health will not be able to use the defense.
“Where a person voluntarily chooses to become intoxicated from alcohol or high from drugs, that person is responsible for the decision to get drunk or high and therefore is criminally responsible for his or her subsequent conduct; that is why it is characterized as voluntary intoxication,” Gants wrote.
He added a person who knows “his or her use of alcohol or drugs will interact with his or her mental disease or defect and push the person over a psychological ‘edge’ into a loss of substantial capacity, that person is responsible for the decision to use drugs or alcohol in these circumstances and therefore criminally responsible for his or her subsequent conduct.”
Someone charged with murder but found not responsible due to lack of criminal responsibility is treated as a patient not a prisoner and won’t be sentenced to prison.
It's an innovative program, but the perp is screwed either way, but one can now see many offenders pleading insanity in this state when it is the state itself that is insane.
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