WESTFIELD – A city man, found guilty of two of eight charges stemming from a fatal boating accident on Norwich Lake in 2010, saw his convictions reduced to one recently when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court considered his appeal and overturned his felony conviction for misleading police while affirming his conviction for misdemeanor homicide.
Steven J. Morse, 41, of 65 Deborah Lane, had faced eight charges after a collision between a power boat he was driving while pulling water skiers on the lake and a kayak in which a Ludlow man and his 10-year-old son were fishing.
The man, James Adamopoulos, survived his injuries but his son, Gus, perished.
Morse has contended that he was blinded by the glare of the setting sun on the lake while the prosecution maintained that he had been operating the boat while impaired by alcohol and marijuana.
State police investigating the crash determined that Morse had consumed two beers after work before he went to the lake and he told them that he had consumed two beers on the shore, after his initial recreational sortie on the water with his children and before he went back out to drive a friend’s water skiing boat.
His conviction on the charge of misleading police stems from his response when a trooper asked him whether he had “consume[d] any other, you know, substances that could’ve impaired [his] ability to, you know, be aware of what was going on around [him].”
Morse replied “no” and the prosecution maintains that because of his answer troopers did not seek a warrant to test for marijuana in his system or for other evidence that marijuana might have affected his operation of the boat.
He was later found to have smoked one “hit” of marijuana with his two beers after work and two more “hits” on the shore.
Immediately after the accident, the SJC report notes “Although a portable breathalyzer test detected the presence of alcohol in the defendant’s system, the officer did not smell an odor of alcohol, nor did he observe the defendant’s eyes to be red or bloodshot or his speech to be slurred.”
About three hours later, Morse submitted to a breathalyzer test which found no alcohol in his system.
The SJC found that the question Morse had replied “No” to “was not a model of clarity and, as phrased, required the defendant to assess the idiosyncratic effects of various substances on his own alertness and judgment.”
The report continues “Such a subjective assessment is not capable of being proven false. … We are hard pressed to say that a personal evaluation of bodily response to a particular intoxicating substance, like the one at issue here, can rise to the level of a knowingly false statement or an intentional omission of a material fact.”
Accordingly, the SJC ruled “Because there was insufficient evidence to sustain the defendant’s conviction, it cannot stand.”
Morse’s other conviction, for misdemeanor homicide by vessel, was upheld.
The prosecution introduced expert testimony from a drug recognition expert who testified to the typical physical and cognitive consequences of ingesting marijuana and alcohol but the expert did not testify to the manifestation of these symptoms in the defendant in particular.
The SJC report found “The question is a close one, but, construing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, we conclude that, quite apart from the expert’s testimony, sufficient evidence supported the defendant’s conviction.”
