Commonwealth v. Arriaga

• Decision Date: 27 January 2003
• Citation: 781 NE 2d 1253,438 Mass. 556
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. HECTOR ARRIAGA (and a companion case).
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

438 Mass. 556

781 NE 2d 1253

COMMONWEALTH v. HECTOR ARRIAGA (and a companion case¹).

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Hampden.

May 10, 2002.

January 27, 2003.

Present: MARSHALL, C.J., IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, SOSMAN, & CORDY, JJ.

John M. Thompson for Alex Delgado.

Charles K. Stephenson for Hector Arriaga.

Thomas H. Townsend, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

IRELAND, J.

The defendant Hector Arriaga was convicted of murder in the first degree based on deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. His codefendant, Alex Delgado, was convicted of being an accessory before the fact to that murder. The defendants filed several posttrial motions, including motions for a new trial. They have appealed from the denial of these motions. On appeal, the defendants also raise a number of issues that they argue entitle them to a new trial: the trial judge's instructions to the jury; the improper admission of witness testimony; and the ineffective assistance of their respective trial counsel. The defendants' primary claim of error, however, is that the jury trial venire unconstitutionally underrepresented Hispanic citizens. Applying the "absolute disparity" test, we conclude that the defendants have not demonstrated a significant disparity between Hispanics and other persons serving as jurors. They have also failed to demonstrate that any disparity resulted from the systematic exclusion of Hispanic citizens in the jury selection. In reaching our conclusions we note the difficulties defendants face in obtaining evidence of underrepresentation. We recognize that obtaining reliable, statistically valid information concerning the race and ethnicity of persons summonsed to jury duty may be difficult. At the present time, the jury commissioner calls for the voluntary disclosure of racial background information from potential jurors. The United States government, on the other hand, requires that potential jurors in Federal courts must disclose information concerning their race. See 28 U.S.C. § 1869(h) (2000). Pursuant to our supervisory powers under G. L. c. 234A, § 5, we direct the commissioner to amend the juror confirmation forms as soon as practicable to require the submission of such information. Our change in the gathering of juror racial background information, however, has no impact on the present case. Because their claims lack merit, and because our review of the record under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, reveals no reason that justice would require our intervention, we affirm the defendants' convictions and the denials of their posttrial motions.

I. Facts.

We recite the facts in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. The victim (Arnaldo Esteras), Carlos Rodriguez, and Carlos Cruz were standing on the corner of Main and Sheldon Streets in Springfield on the early afternoon of September 13, 1992, when Ismael Cintron walked by on his way to a grocery store. Cintron was wearing his "Latin Kings" beads and the victim told him to "[t]ake off the mother fucking beads or tuck them in your jacket." Rodriguez threatened to give Cintron an "ass whipping" if he did not remove the beads. When Cintron emerged from the market his beads were no longer visible.

Cintron viewed the insult to his beads as publicly humiliating and requiring retaliation to "regain respect" on the street. He went to the local Latin Kings headquarters and "reported the incident." Members of the gang (including Delgado, the vice-president) decided that, in response, Esteras should be "terminated." They armed Cintron with a gun and Arriaga with a folding knife, and dispatched them on their "mission," clad in dark hooded sweatshirts. As they approached Esteras, still in the company of friends on Main Street, Cintron decided he could not shoot the victim. Arriaga took the gun from him and gave him the knife. At approximately 9:15 P.M., Arriaga shot Esteras in the chest from a distance of about four feet. Esteras, who had been sitting on the hood of a car, rolled off and began to run, but tripped and fell. Arriaga pursued him, still firing. The victim suffered two gunshot wounds to the head and one to his chest; he died in the emergency room of a Springfield hospital at about 9:30 P.M.

As Cintron and Arriaga returned to the getaway car, Arriaga handed the gun back to Cintron. Cintron emptied the spent shells and wiped the gun clean of fingerprints while Cruz Gonzalez, the driver, headed toward Connecticut. In Hartford, Arriaga and Cintron cleaned any fingerprints from the car and removed a stolen registration plate that they discarded with their hooded sweatshirts. They buried the gun in a Hartford park.

Shortly after the shooting, Sergeant Kevin Devine of the Springfield police department interviewed several witnesses. He took them to the detective bureau and showed them mugshots to see if they could identify "Quest" (Cintron's street name). When Cintron was identified in the early hours of September 14, the police set out for three locations, including the Latin Kings headquarters (an apartment at 95 Bancroft Street), where they found a black jacket bearing the name "Quest" and Arriaga's wallet.

Within several hours of their return to Springfield both Gonzalez and Cintron were arrested. Delgado was taken into custody by Amherst police on September 14. On September 15, Gonzalez accompanied Springfield police to Hartford and assisted in the recovery of the stolen registration plate, the sweatshirts, and the gun. Delgado's fingerprint was found on the registration plate. Arriaga voluntarily surrendered to police on September 25 and was interrogated by Sergeant Devine. He initially denied any involvement in the victim's death or any affiliation with the Latin Kings. After Devine read from statements obtained from Cintron and Gonzalez, Arriaga admitted that he had lied. He then described what he characterized as his and Cintron's attempted robbery of the victim to obtain marijuana. When gunfire erupted, he ran from the scene and persuaded Gonzalez to drive to Hartford, where he helped in hiding the registration plate and the sweatshirts.

II. Jury Composition.

The defendants argue that they were not afforded a fair trial because the jury venire did not adequately represent a fair cross section of the Essex County community.² Specifically, the defendants complain that the jury venire underrepresented the Hispanic population of Essex County. We conclude that the defendants have not met their burden of making a prima facie case of jury underrepresentation.

We have delineated the characteristics of the jury contemplated by art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, remarking that "a fair jury is one that represents a cross section of community concepts." Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 478, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881 (1979), quoting Commonwealth v. Ricard, 355 Mass. 509, 512 (1969). A defendant is entitled to a jury selection process free from discrimination against groups in the community. Commonwealth v. Soares, supra, quoting Commonwealth v. Rodriquez, 364 Mass. 87, 92 (1973).

The Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed the requirement that a jury fairly represent a cross section of the community. In Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528 (1975), the Court held that "the selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial." The Taylor Court recognized that "excluding identifiable segments playing major roles in the community cannot be squared with the constitutional concept of jury trial." Id., quoting Thiel v. Southern Pac. Co., 328 U.S. 217, 227 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). The right to trial by a jury drawn fairly from a representative cross section of the community serves the critical purposes of guarding against the exercise of arbitrary power and making available the commonsense judgment of the community. Commonwealth v. Soares, supra at 479-480. A jury cannot be an effective safeguard if it represents only special segments of the population, excluding distinctive groups from the pool. Id. at 480, quoting Taylor v. Louisiana, supra at 530. The "broad representative character of the jury should be maintained, partly as assurance of a diffused impartiality and partly because sharing in the administration of justice is a phase of civic responsibility." Commonwealth v. Soares, supra, quoting Taylor v. Louisiana, supra at 530-531.

The requirement that a jury comprise a representative cross section of the community simultaneously ensures that the jury will contribute the community's commonsense judgment to the proceedings. Commonwealth v. Soares, supra at 479-480. "When any large and identifiable segment of the community is excluded from jury service, the effect is to remove from the jury room qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It is not necessary to assume that the excluded group will consistently vote as a class in order to conclude, as we do, that its exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance in any case that may be presented." Commonwealth v. Soares, supra at 480-481, quoting Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 503-504 (1972).

Despite these principles, we have recognized that a requirement that each jury include members of every group in the community is impracticable. See Commonwealth v. Soares, supra at 481-482 (requiring mathematically representative venire would be impossible due to random nature of juror selection). Furthermore, removal of jurors from a panel because of expressed bias impedes the ability to formulate a panel mathematically representative of all groups, yet removal of such persons is necessary to a fair trial. Id. at 482. We have therefore refrained from imposing a requirement that petit juries actually chosen must precisely mirror...