Commonwealth v. Hayes
| Decision Date | 28 March 2023 |
| Docket Number | 20-P-110 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. TIMOTHY HAYES. |
| Court | Appeals Court of Massachusetts |
Heard: December 13, 2022
Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on June 29, July 13, and July 18 2017. The cases were tried before Janet L. Sanders, J.
Megan A. Siddall for the defendant.
Nicole M. Nixon, Assistant Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.
Present: Green, C.J., Meade, & Blake, JJ.
Following a jury trial in the Superior Court, the defendant and a codefendant, Pingxia Fan,[1] were convicted on various charges arising from their operation of a series of brothels in North Reading, Quincy, Boston, and Cambridge.[2] On appeal, the defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions, and that the information provided in support of a search warrant application was inadequate to establish a nexus between the alleged crimes and his home and cell phone.[3] Discerning no cause in the defendant's various claims to disturb the judgments, we affirm.
Background.
We summarize the facts the jury could have found, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. See Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 676677 (1979). In January 2017, law enforcement began to investigate five different residences[4] located in North Reading, Boston, Quincy, and Cambridge where they believed illegal sexual services were being provided. Police found the apartments through advertisements for massage services on the website Backpage.com (Backpage),[5] and then contacted the leasing offices for those apartments. The defendant's name was on the rental agreements for the North Reading and Cambridge apartments and one of the Quincy apartments, and the defendant signed as a witness to Fan's signature on the rental agreement at the other Quincy apartment.[6] The defendant also paid monthly rent for each of those apartments, using checks that included his name and home address.[7]
On January 2, 2017, police stopped the defendant after observing him make an illegal U-turn outside the North Reading apartment. The defendant told the officers that he was coming from his home in Gloucester to his secondary residence at the North Reading apartment to check the mail and empty the trash in the Dumpster by the apartment building. In the Dumpster where the defendant said he had left trash from the apartment, officers found one black trash bag on top of a pile of cardboard boxes. The officers opened the trash bag and found used condoms, condom packaging with the brand name "Kimono," and small cards explaining "How to use a condom" in multiple languages.
For the next three months, police surveilled each apartment location. They observed the defendant at the locations in North Reading, Boston, North Quincy, and Cambridge regularly taking out the trash from the apartments and bringing groceries and other supplies into each. Police frequently observed the defendant visit each location, where upon arrival he brought bags of supplies inside, stayed for a brief time, and then left with bags of trash. Police also frequently observed men visit the apartments, enter when young Asian women answered the door, and leave within an hour thereafter. Police interviewed several of the men after they left the apartments. The men admitted that they had gone to the apartments in response to an advertisement for massage services on Backpage, that they had given money to the women in the apartments, and that after a brief massage they received sexual services. The men also explained that, though the advertisements were for massage services, they understood and expected that they would receive sexual services.
Officers obtained and simultaneously executed a warrant to search the five locations, the defendant's home in Gloucester, the defendant's vehicle, various bank accounts and safe deposit boxes belonging to the defendant and Fan,[8] and the defendant's cell phone. In each of the apartment locations, officers found similar scenes: sparse furnishings, mattresses on the floor, supplies of Kimono-brand condoms and paper towels, and cash. At several of the apartments, officers found papers, including utility bills with the defendant's name, ledgers with the names
"Kiki" and "AA" and a list of numbers that corresponded to the prices the massage customers testified to having paid, and, at the Boston location, a bank statement bearing the defendant's name and a printout of a Backpage advertisement. In the defendant's Gloucester home, officers found cash, ledgers with the names "Kiki," "Angel," and "EE" alongside columns of numbers, and a cardboard box full of condoms. A safe in the defendant's bedroom contained bank statements with the defendant's name that listed checks paid for the North Reading and Quincy apartments, utility bills with the defendant's name, and documents (including bank statements and utility bills) and a driver's license with Fan's name. The defendant was arrested and his cell phone seized from his person. A digital evidence analyst extracted data from the defendant's cell phone, including numerous text messages and telephone calls between the defendant and an "Amy E";[9] e-mail messages regarding the rental of the apartments in North Reading and Quincy; a saved password for a Backpage account; and an Internet history including searches for apartment rental websites and Backpage. The cell phone also contained a video of two women in bathrobes speaking to each other in Chinese that was recorded near one of the Quincy apartments, and a video of an Asian woman in lingerie that was recorded near the Boston apartment.
Additionally, a search of the defendant's financial records obtained by subpoena revealed purchases of mattresses, a charge from Backpage, utility payments for the North Reading apartment, and twenty-seven cash deposits totaling $48,110 from 2016 to 2017 with no indication of payments to the defendant from an employer or payroll account.
Discussion.
The defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence in two respects.[10] First, he contends that the evidence did not establish that he knew of the criminal enterprise. He also contends that the evidence did not establish that he derived support from it. In evaluating a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we consider whether, "after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt" (citation omitted). Latimore, 378 Mass. at 677. A fact finder may make reasonable inferences from the evidence, but a conviction "may not rest on the piling of inference upon inference or on conjecture and speculation" (citation omitted). Commonwealth v. Colas, 486 Mass. 831, 836 (2021).
The Commonwealth presented evidence supporting a conclusion that the defendant had worked together with Fan in a human trafficking scheme since 2016, when a Backpage advertisement invited women interested in working as "female companions" to call the defendant's cell phone number.[11] The defendant also made at least one payment to Backpage, and saved a Backpage account password on his cell phone. The defendant's repeated engagement with Backpage casts substantial doubt on his claim that he was unaware of the advertisements posted there. There was also evidence that those advertisements included photographs of scantily clad or topless young Asian women, and offered "NURU [m]assage," "SHOWER TOGETHER," "KISSING [g]irlfriend package," "[s]exy [l]ingerie," and "[e]verything . . . naked." A rational person viewing the advertisements would infer that services other than ordinary massage were being offered. Indeed, the customers who spoke to the police after leaving the apartments testified at trial that, though the advertisements did not explicitly promise sexual activity, they expected to receive sexual services during their visits.
Surveillance showed that the defendant frequently visited the apartments that he rented, both alone and accompanied by Fan, to bring in supplies and take out trash. When the defendant told the police he had dropped trash in a Dumpster, the police opened the only trash bag in that Dumpster and found Kimono-brand condoms and packaging and other evidence of sexual trafficking. Kimono-brand condoms were also found inside the apartments and a cardboard box full of condoms was found at the defendant's home in Gloucester. Each apartment was sparsely furnished, except for mattresses on the floor, and held few indicia of residential life; the supplies stocked in each consisted mainly of condoms and similar items indicating sexual activity, and cash. The defendant would have seen these items and observed the condition of each apartment, which are far more consistent with sexual activity than with ordinary apartment living or massage services, every time he visited them.
The inference that the defendant knew of the sexual services operation is bolstered by the evidence found at his
Gloucester home and on his cell phone. The defendant kept customer ledgers similar to those found in the apartments, condoms, and quantities of cash at his home. His cell phone contained videos of scantily clad Asian women at multiple locations coinciding with the apartment locations. Finally, the large amounts of cash deposited into the defendant's bank account beginning in 2016, with no indication of employment or any other source of income, supported the inference that the defendant was profiting from the sexual services operation.
Neither mere presence at the scene of a crime nor association with a person involved in the crime is sufficient to convict a...
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