Commonwealth v. Paquette

Summary

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court considered whether the defendant's statements during two police interviews constituted misleading a police officer under G. L. c. 268, § 13B. The court held that the jury instruction defining misleading conduct was incorrect because the conduct must reasonably be capable of leading investigators to pursue a materially different course of investigation. It vacated the judgment, ordered a required finding of not guilty on the second indictment, and permitted retrial on the first indictment.

Holdings

1. A statement is misleading under § 13B only if, given the information known to police when the statement was made, it reasonably could lead investigators to pursue a materially different course of investigation from the course they otherwise would have pursued. A knowingly false statement is not automatically misleading merely because it is false.
2. The instruction created a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice because it allowed the jury to find that the defendant misled police based on any knowingly false or incomplete statement, without requiring that the statement reasonably could have led police to pursue a materially different investigative course.
3. The trial judge did not commit prejudicial error by declining to give a more specific instruction concerning the possible exculpatory purpose of a defendant's denials. It was sufficient to instruct that objectively misleading conduct alone was insufficient and that specific intent could be inferred from the defendant's words, actions, and surrounding circumstances.
4. If correctly instructed, a jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant violated § 13B during the first interview.
5. The evidence was insufficient to support a conviction under § 13B for the second interview because no view of the evidence showed that the defendant's statements reasonably could have led police to pursue a materially different course of investigation.

Questions Presented

1. What conduct constitutes misleading a police officer under G. L. c. 268, § 13B?
2. Whether the jury were properly instructed on the misleading and impeding elements of G. L. c. 268, § 13B.
3. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's convictions for misleading police during either interview.

Disposition

vacated