Mastracchio v. Moran

• Citation: 698 A.2d 706
• Decision Date: 22 July 1997
• Docket Number: No. 95-360-C,95-360-C
• Parties: Gerald S. MASTRACCHIO v. John MORAN. A.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Rhode Island

Page 706

698 A.2d 706

Gerald S. MASTRACCHIO v. John MORAN.

No. 95-360-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 22, 1997.

Paula Lynch Hardiman, Asst. Public Defender, for Plaintiff.

Annie Goldberg, Aaron Weisman, Terrence P. Donnelly, Asst. Attys. General, for Defendant.

Before Weisberger, C.J., and Lederberg, Bourcier and Flanders, JJ.

OPINION

BOURCIER, Justice

This case is before us on the state's appeal from a final judgment of the Superior Court granting Gerald S. Mastracchio's application for postconviction relief, vacating his previous conviction, and ordering a new trial. The state's appeal is pursuant to Gen.Laws 1956, § 10-9.1-9.

I The Case Facts and Travel

On or about December 11 or 12, 1979, Richard Valente (Valente), a thirteen-year-old boy, was savagely beaten about his head and face, transported to the highest point on the old Jamestown Bridge, and tossed, while semiconscious, over the bridge railing and into the frigid waters of Narragansett Bay, some one hundred feet below. He drowned. Some two or three days later, on Sunday, December 15, 1979, his body washed up at the high-tide watermark on the west shore of the bay some three miles from the Jamestown Bridge. An autopsy established that although Valente had suffered severe facial and head injuries, he was alive when thrown from the Jamestown Bridge and that the cause of his death was homicide. That homicide or murder remained unsolved until some six years later. The events chronologically leading to the discovery of the murderer are pertinent to this appeal.

Sometime in 1978 Peter Gilbert (Gilbert), a local hoodlum and partner in various crimes with Gelardo Mastracchio (Gelardo), ¹ left Rhode Island to live in Florida. While there, he resorted to his criminal ways and ended up in a Florida prison. He escaped from that prison sometime in early 1983 and fled to Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the summer of 1983, needing assistance, he telephoned his former partner in crime, Gelardo. He was told that he could return to Rhode Island and work for Gelardo, who told Gilbert that he was then engaged in a new business venture, selling narcotics. Gilbert came back to Rhode Island and took up his nefarious employment with Gelardo. Initially, upon his return, he actually lived with Gelardo and his family in a housing complex on Cowesett Avenue in West Warwick.

Gilbert, it should be noted, was no stranger to Gelardo's family. Prior to his having left Rhode Island in 1978 to live in Florida, Gilbert had "watched out" for Gelardo's family and had looked after their needs and paid for Gelardo's legal fees while Gelardo was imprisoned at the Adult Correctional Institutions. Gilbert and Gelardo's then-minor son, Gerald S. Mastracchio (Gerald), the applicant herein, had during that time become very close friends, and Gerald admired and trusted Gilbert. As a result of that past relationship, when Gilbert returned to Rhode Island in the summer of 1983 to work with Gelardo in his narcotics enterprise, Gilbert and young Gerald renewed their friendly relationship and actually worked together in the sale and distribution of narcotics for Gelardo.

Young Gerald was no stranger to the drugs that he was then helping Gilbert to distribute. He had in fact been "hooked" on heroin. During the time they spent together working for Gelardo, young Gerald began to talk and apparently to boast about his own criminal endeavors and achievements. In particular he told Gilbert about a murder that he had committed some years earlier along with another juvenile named Steven Dionne (Dionne), a murder that involved a thirteen-year-old boy who they had beaten and tossed over the Jamestown Bridge, a factual situation identical to the Valente murder and which the police later concluded was the Valente murder. Gilbert became agitated upon hearing Gerald talk of the murder and the intimate details related to its commission. He warned Gerald never to talk about it to anyone else. That warning went unheeded, however, and Gerald continued to talk, almost boasting of what he had done and for what reason and for what purpose. That purpose had been to "silence" Valente who had earlier, in November 1979, told the West Warwick police about various crimes in which Gerald and Dionne had been involved in the West Warwick area.

Gilbert was upset by Gerald's braggadocio but feared telling Gelardo of what his son was talking about. Gilbert soon learned, however, from Gelardo that Gelardo was already fully aware of his son's loquaciousness and was furious over it. Gelardo on one occasion was so upset by his son's continuous talk about the murder and over his own suspicions that his son was stealing heroin from him that one day he asked Gilbert to accompany him to Scarborough Beach where young Gerald was attending a house party and where Gelardo was going to lure his son away from the party and shoot him. Unbeknownst to Gelardo, Gilbert had removed the bullets from Gelardo's .38-caliber gun when Gelardo left the car to telephone Gerald and lure him from the house party. When Gerald responded to his father's phone call and was taken to the car, Gilbert immediately intervened and began talking to Gerald, cautioning him about the danger that he was creating for himself by his heroin habit and by his open conversations about the murder. In response Gerald attributed his conduct to his heroin habit and repentingly agreed to go for a heroin "cure." As a result the near-fatal confrontation between father and son never materialized and Gerald's near demise was avoided because of Gilbert's intervention. Little more was ever said thereafter of the Valente murder by Gerald. Later, Gelardo, in hopes of ensuring that his son would never be implicated by Dionne in the Valente murder, wanted Gilbert to kill Dionne who had participated in that murder with his son, but Gilbert declined to do so, citing a self-pronounced noble reluctance to kill "young kids."

Gilbert's employment and friendly relationship with Gelardo continued for some time thereafter at which time the relationship began to fall apart over noted shortages in Gelardo's narcotic-business inventories. Gilbert denied any responsibility for those shortages and blamed them instead on Gerald. Nonetheless, Gilbert remained the prime suspect. Gilbert, sensing Gelardo's growing mistrust and believing that Gelardo had recently orchestrated at least three attempts on his life, began to distance himself from Gelardo.

On February 28, 1985, the Gilbert and Gelardo union unraveled. On that day a confidential informant for the police relayed information to the Providence police that Gilbert was an escapee from a Florida prison and that he had a sawed-off shotgun in his home. An arrest and search warrant followed, and Gilbert's home was searched. No sawed-off shotgun was found, but the cache of narcotics that Gilbert was dealing for Gelardo was discovered in Gilbert's home, and Gilbert was arrested and charged with that possession. While being held at the Providence police station, Gilbert, true to what he referred to as the "code," refused to "turn over." In street parlance, that meant that he would not divulge the source of the narcotics, nor would he divulge whoever was involved with him concerning the narcotics but would instead "keep quiet," take all the blame, and do the time for the crime.

While being held at the police station, Gilbert asked to make a telephone call. He was permitted to do so, and sometime between 4 and 5 p.m., he telephoned his wife, who was at home. When he did, he learned from her that shortly after his arrest Gerald came to Gilbert's home and had requested that she and Gilbert's two daughters, aged three and six years old, come with him to an undisclosed location. Gilbert's wife told him that she was frightened by Gerald and suspected that something was amiss. She told Gerald that she would follow him along with one of her daughters in her own car. Gerald then proceeded to put Gilbert's six-year-old daughter into his car and drove away. Gilbert's wife followed in her car. She told Gilbert that while following Gerald her suspicions about Gerald's motives mounted, and upon observing a police car drive by, she signaled Gerald to pull over and stop by blinking her car's headlights. When Gerald did pull over, she went over to his car, pulled her daughter out of the car, and told Gerald that she believed the police were going to her home and that she wanted to return there to see what was happening.

When Gilbert learned of what Gerald had done, he immediately surmised that it was Gerald's father, Gelardo, who had "dropped the dime on him." Again, in street parlance this meant that Gelardo had given the Florida-prison-escape and the sawed-off-shotgun information to a known police informant, knowing that the informant would then carry the intentionally-planted information to the Providence police, who would then use the planted information to obtain an arrest warrant for Gilbert and a search warrant to search his home for the sawed-off shotgun. Failing to find any gun, the searchers would then of course find the cache of narcotics that Gilbert was dealing for Gelardo, and the "dime dropper's" mission would then be successfully accomplished. The so-called code apparently has its exceptions, and Gilbert was beginning to realize that not all of the code's advocates were loyal to it. He decided at that point to join the "unloyals." As he later told a grand jury panel, "I didn't owe any allegiance to those people, any loyalty. And I agreed for protection for my family and myself" to talk to the police. He was prepared now to "sing," and the police were eager to listen to the lyrics of the songs in his repertoire. A mutual chord was struck, and the police immediately dispatched a police guard to Gilbert's home to protect his family. The following day his wife and two children were taken into police custody, and Gilbert began talking to the...