Commonwealth v. Gonzalez
| Citation | 56 N.E.3d 1271,475 Mass. 396 |
| Decision Date | 06 September 2016 |
| Docket Number | SJC–11731. |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Cauris GONZALEZ. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
Robert F. Shaw, Jr., Cambridge, for the defendant.
David F. O'Sullivan, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Present: GANTS, C.J., CORDY, BOTSFORD, LENK, & HINES, JJ.1
LENK
, J.
Shortly before 6 p.m. on January 10, 2009, Robert Gonzalez was shot and killed while sitting in his minivan near an intersection in Lawrence. The shooting was carried out by four people who, seconds before, had been dropped off across the intersection by someone driving a Dodge Caravan minivan. In June, 2011, the defendant was indicted by an Essex County grand jury on one count of murder in the first degree based on evidence that she had been the driver of the Caravan. After a jury trial in the Superior Court, the defendant was convicted as a joint venturer of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation.
On appeal, the defendant claims that the trial judge erred in denying her motion for a required finding of not guilty. In particular, the defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to allow a rational juror to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was the driver of the Dodge Caravan, or that she knew of and shared the coventurers' intent to kill the victim. The defendant also claims, among other things, that the judge erred by allowing the admission of (a) the opinion of one of the Commonwealth's witnesses interpreting cellular site location information (CSLI) generated by the defendant's cellular telephone, and (b) a video recording comparing still photographs from surveillance footage of the Dodge Caravan that had transported the four passengers involved in the shooting with the Dodge Caravan owned by the defendant's mother. The defendant contends also that her trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the admission of an audio recording of statements she made to police shortly after the killing.
We conclude that the motion for a required finding of not guilty should have been granted. While the jury could have concluded, on this evidence, that the defendant was in some way involved in the shooting, or that it was more likely than not that she was the driver, the evidence was insufficient to allow a jury to draw this conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt. Further, even if the jury could have found that the defendant transported the coventurers to the scene, the evidence did not allow the jury to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she knew of or shared the coventurers' lethal intent, as is required for a conviction of deliberately premeditated murder committed by way of joint venture. Because we reverse the conviction on this basis, we do not address the defendant's other claims.
1. Background. a. Background information. In late 2008, the defendant, then nineteen years old and living with her mother in Methuen, sold a Honda Civic automobile to the victim, Robert Gonzalez.2 The victim made a partial payment for the vehicle, but, as of January, 2009, there was an outstanding balance.3
On the evening of Friday, January 9, 2009, the defendant and her boy friend, Joel Javier, attended a party hosted by one of Javier's friends at an apartment on Essex Street in Lawrence. Also at the party was Yoshio Stackermann, a friend of Javier. The defendant had driven both Stackermann and Javier to the party in her mother's vehicle, a 2000 Dodge Caravan.4 The defendant, Javier, and Stackermann left the party together5 and drove away in the caravan at approximately 11 or 11:30 p.m. , with plans to get something to eat at a nearby fast food restaurant and then return to the party. They did not go directly to the restaurant, and they did not return to the party.6
A few hours later, at 2 a.m. on Saturday, January 10, 2009, the defendant and Javier (but not Stackermann) were in the Caravan near the same fast food restaurant they had planned to visit earlier. The defendant was driving. The defendant spotted the victim's vehicle, also a Dodge Caravan.7 She called the victim from her cellular telephone, apparently to ask about the money she was owed. The victim did not answer. The victim then called Javier's cellular telephone and ended up speaking to the defendant. The victim and the defendant had a “very loud” conversation.
A “couple of minutes” later, shortly after 2 a.m. , the defendant concluded the conversation with the victim and entered the drive-through lane at the fast food restaurant. As she and Javier waited for their food, the victim drove by in his Caravan and began “yelling” in the direction of the defendant's vehicle. Javier shouted back.
The victim drove around the corner and parked in a nearby parking lot. He got out of his minivan, along with three male passengers, and walked toward the restaurant. They saw Javier standing outside the vehicle and the defendant sitting inside it. The victim and Javier walked towards each other, shouting, until they were “[a]bout an arm length” apart. Javier pulled out a knife. He was “not waving it towards” the victim, but “just letting it [be] known that he had a knife on him.” The victim punched Javier in the face, knocking out one of his teeth and causing him to drop the knife. Javier spit out the tooth, and one of the three men with the victim picked it up.
The victim and his companions turned and walked back toward the victim's minivan. Javier followed behind saying, “[O]h, you knocked my fucking tooth out, you fucking really going to knock—you're really going to do that shit?” When the victim and his companions reached their vehicle, Javier, still following behind, “threw his phone, trying to hit” the victim with it. The device broke and was left on the ground.8
The defendant, who had remained in the driver's seat of her mother's Caravan, drove to Javier and told him to get in. Javier refused. The defendant stepped out of the Caravan. Javier then said that the victim was “not going to stay like that,” and entered the vehicle on the driver's side. The defendant got in on the passenger's side, and the two drove off. The defendant “dropped off” Javier at his house in Lawrence, where he lived with his parents, and the defendant returned to her house. The two talked on the telephone throughout the night until about “[six] something in the morning.”
At approximately 6:45 a.m. , the defendant drove her mother to work. The defendant then went to Javier's house, where the two slept until noon. They drove in the Caravan to a pharmacy, where they bought ointment for Javier's swollen mouth. On their return, as the defendant was driving and Javier was sitting in the rear passenger seat, the defendant saw the victim's Caravan. According to the defendant's statement to police, which was in evidence at trial, the victim “came ... to hit [her] head on,” she swerved to avoid him, and the victim was “saying ... a whole bunch of stuff.”9
The defendant and Javier drove back to Javier's house “between one or two” p.m. As the two got out of the Caravan, they saw the victim's vehicle approaching. The defendant told Javier to drive off in the Caravan, which Javier did. After Javier left, the defendant knocked on the front door, and Javier's mother answered. The defendant told her that “there was a man outside who wanted to beat up Joel.” Javier's mother stepped outside and saw the victim across the street standing near his vehicle. He was laughing, saying that “he was carrying [Javier's] tooth” and that he would sell it back “for a hundred bucks.” The victim left a few minutes later, and Javier, driving the Caravan, returned sometime thereafter.10
At approximately 1:40 p.m. , the defendant called her brother's girl friend, Ashley Calixto, to say that she would come by later to visit Calixto at her house in Methuen.
The evidence of what occurred between that point and 6 p.m. , the approximate time of the shooting, consists primarily of cellular telephone records and accompanying CSLI.11 ,12 We turn first to the period between 2 p.m. and approximately 5:30 p.m. In that interval, eight calls were made between cellular telephone numbers belonging to three of Javier's friends—Stackermann, Thomas Castro, and Francis Wyatt—all of whom worked with Javier at a local snow-shoveling business.13 The telephone records also show that, during this period, six calls were made between the defendant's number and Stackermann's number, and two between her number and Castro's number.14
We turn next to the interval between shortly after 5:30 p.m. and the shooting. At 5:41 p.m. , a call was made from Castro's number to Stackermann's number. The call was transmitted, on both the sending and receiving ends, through wireless telephone company T–Mobile cellular site 4160, located approximately nine-tenths of a mile from the intersection in Lawrence where the shooting took place. At 5:45 p.m. , a call was made from Stackermann's number to Wyatt's number; it was transmitted through T–Mobile cellular site 4422, located approximately eight-tenths of a mile from that intersection.15 At 5:51 p.m. , a call to the defendant's number was transmitted from T–Mobile cellular site 4422.16 Between 5:45 p.m. and 6:01 p.m. , there were no outgoing calls from the numbers belonging to the defendant, Castro, Stackermann, and Wyatt.
b. The shooting. The events immediately surrounding the shooting, between 5:57 p.m. and 5:58 p.m. , were recorded by four surveillance cameras17 mounted on a house near the intersection of Haverhill Street and Hampton Street in Lawrence.18 The cameras were on the northern side of the intersection, while the shooting took place on the southern side. The intersection itself was less than two miles from the defendant's house, about one and one-half miles from Javier's house, and approximately one mile from the automobile dealership owned by the defendant's father.
At 5:57 p.m. , the victim's Dodge Caravan drove north...
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