Infidelity no longer a valid defense for killing spouse in Massachusetts, court rules

Finding out about a spouse or partner’s infidelity and killing them in a heat of passion is no longer a valid legal defense in Massachusetts, the state’s supreme court ruled on Valentine’s Day.

The ruling affirms the murder convictions of Peter Ronchi, who authorities said stabbed his pregnant girlfriend 15 times when she was nine months pregnant, killing her and the fetus the evening of May 16, 2009, in Salem, according to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Ronchi testified he flew into a fit of rage and blacked out upon hearing Yuliya Galperina falsely say he wasn’t the father of their baby during a fight, the court wrote. Afterward, he found himself covered in blood and placed a sheet over her body before turning himself into police the next day.

“At trial, there was no dispute that” he killed Galperina, the court said, but Ronchi argued that his murder charge should be reduced to manslaughter and said the killing was the result of a “heat of passion upon reasonable provocation” — the provocation being he was told she was unfaithful to him, according to the court.

The state’s high court disagreed with Ronchi’s argument, tossed out his appeal for a lesser charge and used the opportunity to get rid of the state’s “misogynistic” legal precedent in place, the Feb. 14, 46-page ruling shows.

“Words alone are not sufficient provocation to reduce the crime of murder to manslaughter,” the court wrote.

The now tossed-out legal precedent “rests upon a shaky, misogynistic foundation and has no place in our modern jurisprudence,” the court also wrote. “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.”

Justice Elspeth B. Cypher, while agreeing with the court’s opinion, wrote separately to emphasize the fact that there are higher chances for pregnant women to die of homicide, or soon after giving birth, than from the top three leading causes of maternal mortality in the U.S. She cited a study on the issue published in the journal The BMJ in October.

“The brutal facts of this case are not an anomaly,” Cypher wrote. “The disconcerting frequency of lethal violence against pregnant women warrants concomitant response from our justice system.”

After fully reviewing the facts of Ronchi’s case, the court ultimately decided there’s no need for a new trial to reduce his earlier convictions.

Laws between states vary when it comes to a crime, such as murder, carried out during a “heat of passion” in response to being provoked, according to Cornell Law School. Traditionally, words, such as being verbally told a partner had cheated, are not sufficient enough for this defense.

This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 3:10 PM with the headline "Infidelity no longer a valid defense for killing spouse in Massachusetts, court rules."

Julia Marnin

McClatchy DC

Julia Marnin covers courts for McClatchy News, writing about criminal and civil affairs, including cases involving policing, corrections, civil liberties, fraud, and abuses of power. As a reporter on McClatchy’s National Real-Time Team, she’s also covered the COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other topics since joining in 2021, following a fellowship with Newsweek. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was raised in South Jersey and is now based in New York State.