Courts

Massachusetts Rules That Being Told Of Infidelity No Longer (Partially) Excuses Being A Murderer

It is thou shalt not kill, not thou shalt not kill unless, like, you are super-duper mad about it.

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Cheating in lawThe “reasonable person” is kind of like B=PL — it is a seemingly objective variable meant to make sense of wildly disparate fact patterns. But like most common-sense notions, it is anything but; reasonability is a contingent notion based on a given time’s social mores. Most people would generally agree that killing someone because you are angry is not a reason to reduce your murder charge to manslaughter. After all, unless the killing happened after a cold and calculated stakeout, it is generally assumed that anger played a major role — it isn’t like people are killing each other from rabid spouts of joy.  That said, there has been a long-held understanding that some occasions for anger, one of them being infidelity, warp the mind in such a way that mere anger mutates into a blinding rage that reduces the culpability of one’s actions. Under this rubric, said rage could make even a reasonable person act in ways that would otherwise not be fitting of a, you know, reasonable person. That may no longer be the case. Put simply, your grand-dad’s reasonable person isn’t always today’s. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just made a powerful development of the concept. From the ABA Journal:

The top court in Massachusetts has ruled that a murder defendant who kills a partner after being told of infidelity can’t use a heat-of-passion defense to lower the charge to voluntary manslaughter.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Peter Ronchi in a Feb. 14 opinion that upheld his convictions on two murder counts for the May 2009 stabbing death of his girlfriend[.]

Via Galperina had falsely told Ronchi during an argument that he was not the father. He argued that this was enough provocation to lower his liability for the slaying to manslaughter.

The “she brought it on herself” dimension inherent to infidelity panic defenses, absurd as it is, has long held sway.

Now, no longer.

The court rejected that assertion in an opinion by Justice Frank M. Gaziano. The justices “take this opportunity to disavow our precedent on reasonable provocation based on sudden oral revelations of infidelity, and, relatedly, lack of paternity,” Gaziano wrote for the court. The disavowed precedent “rests upon a shaky, misogynistic foundation and has no place in our modern jurisprudence,” the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said. “Going forward, we no longer will recognize that an oral discovery of infidelity satisfies the objective element of something that would provoke a reasonable person to kill his or her spouse.”

If you read this and thought “What other revelations of infidelity are there?” — know that you aren’t alone. The majority decision decided to skip over the viability of a murderer claiming heat-of-passion after walking in on and discovering infidelity in real time. Not all of the judges remained silent on this thought.

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A concurring justice, Justice Elspeth B. Cypher, said the court had taken an important first step by finding that oral revelations of adultery, on their own, can’t induce a reasonable person to kill their pregnant partner. Cypher said she would go one step further to hold that discovery of adultery, whether from oral or personal observation, doesn’t amount to adequate provocation to kill a partner.

This decision holds more weight than being a reason for Harvard students to change their Crim Law outlines. This case could set precedent for other variants of heat-of-passion defenses like Gay/Trans panic and, while rarely explicitly stated as such, Black panic. Completing the circle and eliminating carve-outs that turn justice into a slap on the wrist would be the reasonable thing to do — in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

The Gay/Trans Panic Defense: What It is, and How to End It [ABA Journal]
We Are Living in the Age of the Black-Panic Defense [The New Yorker]
Heat-Of-Passion Defense No Longer Available In Slayings After Infidelity Disclosure, Top State Court Says [ABA Journal]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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