Com. v. Ramos

• Decision Date: 06 October 1987
• Citation: 366 Pa.Super. 624,532 A.2d 22
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Aurelio RAMOS, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

Page 22

532 A.2d 22

366 Pa.Super. 624

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Aurelio RAMOS, Appellant.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted Aug. 3, 1987.

Filed Oct. 6, 1987.

Janis Smarro, Philadelphia, for appellant.

Donna G. Zucker, Asst. Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for Com., appellee.

Before CIRILLO, President Judge, and HOFFMAN and HESTER, JJ.

HESTER, Judge:

On October 18, 1986, appellant, Aurelio Ramos, was convicted by a jury of third degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime. Following denial of his motion for a new trial, he was sentenced, on February 2, 1987, to twelve and one-half to twenty-five years in prison, and he filed a timely appeal. As we conclude that his allegations of trial error are meritless, we affirm the judgment of sentence.

The evidence establishes that the murder victim, Frank Morales, was a drug dealer in the vicinity of Eighth and Butler Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the area upon which trial testimony centered. On June 27, 1985, at 5:30 in the evening, appellant approached Morales and shot at him four times with a revolver; three shots hit the victim.

Two eyewitnesses to the incident, George Garcia and Marcie Streger, identified appellant as the murderer. Garcia, a neighbor was conversing with Morales when both men saw appellant approach. Morales pulled Garcia in front of himself, and they went down together as the shooting occurred. Garcia was not harmed.

Streger, who knew appellant prior to the incident, witnessed the shooting from across the street. She observed appellant with three male companions walking along the street, when two of the men broke off and stood on a corner. Appellant and the older male continued down the street, passing directly in front of her. Streger watched appellant cross the street toward Morales, pull a gun from his trousers, and shoot Morales, once while Morales was standing next to Garcia and three times while Morales lay on the ground. When the police arrived, Streger told them that appellant, whom she knew by the nickname "June Bug," was the assailant. Later, she identified appellant's picture from a photographic array. Streger was positive in her identification of appellant as the murderer. N.T., 10/15/86, at 2.183-84.

At trial, the Commonwealth sought to establish that appellant was guilty of first degree murder for shooting Morales, an independent drug dealer, on the instructions of Hawk Pagan, a rival drug dealer in the Eighth and Butler Street area. The trial court permitted testimony on this subject by three witnesses. The witnesses were Adelita Gines, the victim's sister; Broderick Bass, a friend of the victim; and Philadelphia police officer William Bailey, who conducted narcotics investigations in the area during early 1985.

Gines testified that her brother sold drugs and that in September, 1984, she saw a physical confrontation between appellant and her brother. Pagan was present during the confrontation as were two other men. Pagan and accomplices shot at Morales, and Morales had a fist fight with appellant.

Bass testified that both Morales and Pagan sold drugs. N.T., 10/15/86, at 2.96-97. He described a June 24, 1985 incident during which Pagan, appellant and three other males shot at Morales. On another occasion, Bass heard Pagan threaten Morales, in appellant's presence, with death if Morales did not stop selling drugs in his area.

Officer Bailey described the movements of Pagan and appellant in the area around the time of the shooting, characterizing their activities as a drug operation. He testified that Morales was a small-time drug dealer in the same area.

Appellant's first objection to the proceeding relates to the testimony of Gines, Bass and Bailey. Their testimony, he alleges, was improperly admitted on two grounds. First, its introduction violated the general rule prohibiting introduction of prior criminal activities of the accused; second, the evidence of the criminal activity of Pagan, an unrelated third party, was irrelevant and prejudicial to his trial.

Regarding the first ground, the supreme court has recently restated the rule on this issue:

[T]he general rule prohibiting the admission of evidence of prior crimes [of the accused] nevertheless

allows evidence of other crimes to be introduced to prove (1) motive; (2) intent; (3) absence of mistake or accident; (4) a common scheme, plan or design embracing commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to prove the others; or (5) to establish the identity of the person charged with the commission of the crime on trial, in other words, where there is such a logical connection between the crimes that proof of one will naturally tend to show that the accused is the person who committed the other.

Commonwealth v. Banks, 513 Pa. 318, 350, 521 A.2d 1, 17 (1987).

In this case, the evidence of appellant's drug dealing activities directly established his motive for the murder. Similarly, the prior incidents of fighting and shooting established intent as well as motive. All of this evidence was properly introduced at trial. Commonwealth v. Sourbeer, 492 Pa. 17, 422 A.2d 116 (1980) (where defendant was on trial for shooting his mother, evidence that he forged checks on her bank account and previously attempted to kill her was admissible to show motive and intent); Commonwealth v. Glass, 486 Pa. 334, 405 A.2d 1236 (1979) (evidence that appellant fired a gun at deceased's home and beat her ten months prior to murder held admissible); Commonwealth v. Chism, 480 Pa. 233, 389 A.2d 1041 (1978) (evidence of defendant's threats to victim and that he had forged victim's signature on check admissible to show motive); Commonwealth v. Coyle, 415 Pa. 379, 203 A.2d 782 (1964) (where defendant murdered policeman to avoid apprehension for previously committed crimes, all crimes were interwoven and admissible); Commonwealth v. Murphy, 346 Pa.Super. 438, 499 A.2d 1080 (1985) (defendant's prior rape of murder victim's wife admissible to show motive and history of event).

Appellant's reliance upon Commonwealth v. Hoskins, 485 Pa. 542, 403 A.2d 521 (1979), Commonwealth v. Satzberg, 358 Pa.Super. 39, 516 A.2d 758 (1986); Commonwealth v. Bond, 261 Pa.Super. 311, 396 A.2d 414 (1978); and Commonwealth v. Hude, 256 Pa.Super. 439, 390 A.2d 183 (1978), is misplaced. In those cases, unlike the present one, the prior crimes had no connection to the crime for which the defendant was on trial.

Appellant's contention that the evidence of Pagan's criminal activities was irrelevant and inadmissible is addressed in Commonwealth v. Colson, 507 Pa. 440, 490 A.2d 811 (1985) and Commonwealth v. Gwaltney, 497 Pa. 505, 442 A.2d 236 (1982). Colson involved a murderer who had no apparent connection to his victim. At trial, however, it was established that the defendant was a drug dealer with the victim's brother, who had a strong motive for killing him. The defendant objected to the introduction of testimony concerning his and the brother's involvement in drug trafficking. The supreme court ruled that the testimony was admissible to show the relationships among the parties involved in the crime. Commonwealth v. Colson, supra, 507 Pa. at 464, 490 A.2d at 823.

In Gwaltney, evidence almost identical to that at issue here was ruled admissible. There, the evidence established motive by showing that the defendant and his victim were members of rival gangs in Philadelphia. The supreme court stated:

[E]vidence to prove motive, intent, plan, design, ill will or malice is relevant in a criminal case. Commonwealth v. Faison, 437 Pa. 432, 264 A.2d 394 (1970). The evidence presented concerning the relationship between appellant's gang and the deceased's gang, and the alleged stabbing of a member of appellant's gang by the deceased is certainly probative of appellant's possible motive.

Commonwealth v. Gwaltney, supra, 497 Pa. at 514, 442 A.2d at 241.

Cases relied upon by appellant in support of this claim are distinguishable. Here, unlike Commonwealth v. Krajci, 283 Pa.Super. 488, 424 A.2d 914 (1981), there was no danger that the jury would confuse the misdeeds of Pagan with those of appellant. Unlike the third party's criminal activities in Commonwealth...