Commonwealth v. Santana

• Decision Date: 29 May 2013
• Docket Number: SJC–08782.
• Citation: 465 Mass. 270,988 N.E.2d 825
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Ramon SANTANA.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

465 Mass. 270

988 N.E.2d 825

COMMONWEALTH

v.Ramon SANTANA.

SJC–08782.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Hampden.

Argued Sept. 7, 2012.

Decided May 29, 2013.

David J. Nathanson, Boston, (Dan A. Horowitz with him) for the defendant.

Jane Davidson Montori, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: IRELAND, C.J., CORDY, GANTS, DUFFLY, & LENK, JJ.

LENK, J.

In February, 2001, a Superior Court jury convicted the defendant on two indictments charging murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and felony-murder. The jury also found the defendant guilty of armed assault with intent to murder, armed robbery, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, armed home invasion, and possession of a firearm without a license.¹ The defendant appeals from his convictions and from the denial of his motion for a new trial.

The defendant claims that the admission of his oral and written statements to police on January 12 and January 24, 2000, violated his rights under the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United State Constitution and art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and that the statements should have been suppressed; that the prosecutor's failure timely to disclose that a key witness had been unable to identify the defendant at voir dire violated his right to due process and mandates a new trial; and that the admission of evidence obtained by Massachusetts police based on a pawn ticket that had been seized by New Jersey police after the defendant's arrest in that State violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and requires a new trial.

We reject the defendant's claims, and, after review of the entire record pursuant to our responsibility under G.L. c. 278, § 33E, decline to exercise our power to reduce the defendant's murder convictions to a lesser degree of guilt or to order a new trial.

Facts. We summarize the facts the jury could have found, reserving some details for discussion in connection with the specific issues raised.

Gregory Cantela, Sr.,² and his friend, Abraham Candelario, were found shot to death in Gregory Sr.'s apartment in Holyoke on January 3, 2000. They had been sitting on sofas in the living room playing a PlayStation video game when they were shot in the head at close range; ³ the game controllers were still in their hands when they were found, but the cover of the game system connected to the television was open and the game was missing. The bodies were discovered by Gregory Sr.'s seven year old stepson, Edrike Roman, when he returned home from school. Edrike also found his four year old brother, Gregory Cantela, Jr., covered with blood, but conscious and crying, on the living room floor. Gregory Jr. had been in his bedroom watching a movie when he was shot in the neck and chest.⁴ He called out for his father, who did not respond, and then rolled and dragged himself to the living room, where he saw his father apparently asleep. Gregory Jr. told Edrike that his father's friend “Rev,” who had come over earlier and had been watching Gregory Sr. and Candelario play a video game, shot him.

Edrike picked up Gregory Jr. and carried him into the hallway, but could not carry him any further. He asked his friend Louie, who had been waiting to play with him after school and who was in the hallway outside the apartment, to get Louie's mother, Maritza Mattei. While Mattei was attempting to comfort Gregory Jr. until medical help arrived, Gregory Jr. told her, “My father's friend shot my father, and he shot my father's friend, and he hit me in the face with the gun;” Mattei said the friend's name sounded like “Riv.” ⁵ When paramedics arrived, within a few minutes of Mattei's 911 call, Gregory Jr. begged paramedics, “Don't let him shoot me again.” When asked, “Who did this to you?” he replied either that “Rev” or “Reb” had shot him.⁶

As Gregory Jr. was being transported to a hospital, the boys' mother, Elizabeth Garcia, telephoned from work; she had tried to reach Gregory Sr., whom she usually spoke with at lunchtime, several times that afternoon, but no one had answered. Edrike asked her to come home right away because Gregory Sr. and Candelario were dead and Gregory Jr. had been injured. He told Garcia that Gregory Jr. said that “Rev” shot him. When Garcia arrived home, she told police that “Rev” was a friend of her husband, and that she had known “Rev” for about five years. She went to the police station where she identified a photograph of the defendant as the person she knew as “Rev,” and drove with police to several locations where “Rev” might be found.

Gregory Jr. suffered multiple wounds to his neck and chest as a result of a single gunshot. On the day after the shooting, a State trooper and a Holyoke police officer spoke with Gregory Jr. at the hospital; he told the officers that “Rev” shot him. The officers spoke with Gregory Jr. again on January 20, 2000, at another hospital where he had been transferred for rehabilitation. He identified a photograph of the defendant as the person who shot him, circled the photograph, and wrote his name on it.

The day after the shooting, Garcia asked police about a gold chain that she had given Gregory Sr. as a birthday gift and that he wore every day; he had been wearing it when she left for work on the morning of the shooting. The chain was missing from her apartment and had not been returned with Gregory Sr.'s effects. Garcia described its distinctive “Cuban link” style and, on January 20, drew a picture of the chain, which police were unable to locate.

On the afternoon of the shooting, the defendant had planned to meet his sister Angelica Cruz outside a restaurant, and then to go shopping at a local mall; they had agreed to meet at 1:30 p.m., but the defendant was twenty minutes late.⁷ When they met, the defendant asked Cruz, who was with her young son, if she knew anyone in the area because he needed to use a bathroom. Cruz brought him to a friend's house, where the defendant spent approximately fifteen minutes in the bathroom, then used it twice more before he and Cruz left. At the mall, the defendant bought Nike brand sneakers, put them on, and threw away the boots he had been wearing. He bought toys for Cruz's son, clothing for his daughter, picture frames for Cruz, and a black, “puffy” coat for himself, paying in cash. While they were in the toy store, the defendant gave Cruz two used PlayStation video games. The defendant, Cruz, and her son ate in the food court and took pictures of themselves in a photo booth. They then took a bus home, stopping en route to shop for groceries.

The defendant was unemployed at the time, had been using cocaine extensively in the previous weeks, and owed his drug connection several thousand dollars; because of the outstanding debt, the “connect” was refusing to supply the defendant with any more drugs. A few days before the shooting, the defendant had tried to sell a video game system to one of his friends for $500, saying he needed the money for a lawyer. In late December, the defendant and two acquaintances had seen Gregory Sr., who was believed by a number of his friends and acquaintances to be selling drugs, in his apartment with a large quantity of cash. Gregory Sr. was known generally to have cash readily available.

When Cruz and the defendant returned home, their mother told Cruz that the police had been looking for the defendant, and that he had to leave. Taking only the backpack that he had been carrying throughout the day, the defendant walked to a friend's house; she declined to allow him to spend the night, but permitted him to telephone for a taxicab. The defendant took the taxicab to the bus station in Springfield, where he took a bus to New York City. His sister Yvette Negron found him sleeping on the couch in her apartment on the morning of January 4. The defendant was wearing a large gold chain. When she told him that a warrant for his arrest had been issued, he said that he “didn't do it” and wanted to turn himself in to “clear ... up” the warrant. He left the next day.

On January 5, the defendant arrived at the home of a childhood friend, Daniel Cotto, in Jersey City, where he stayed until his arrest the following week. The two stayed up late, drinking beer, smoking marijuana, and playing video games. The defendant was wearing a gold chain, with a distinctive gold religious medallion, that Cotto had never seen before. The defendant later said that he needed money and planned to pawn the chain; the day after he said this, he stopped wearing the chain.

After he had been at Cotto's apartment for a few days, the defendant told Cotto that he had “shot two dudes” named “Abraham and Greg” in Massachusetts, and that he had to “get out.” He said that he had shot each at least twice in the head, and showed Cotto an ammunition clip to prove that he was not making it up. The defendant also said that he had to return to Massachusetts to kill the sole witness, “Joseph.” He asked Cotto if he could have Cotto's Social Security card as identification so that he could go to Puerto Rico. When Cotto declined, the defendant asked Cotto to take identification from Cotto's brother-in-law, who lived in the same building; Cotto again refused.

Postarrest statements. On January 12, 2000, after receiving information that the defendant might be at that address, Jersey City police officers arrested the defendant on a fugitive from justice warrant in the street outside Cotto's apartment. The defendant was taken into custody at approximately noon and brought to a police station, where officers contacted police in Massachusetts. Massachusetts State Troopers George Beaupre and Ronald Gibbons and Detective Emil Morales of the Holyoke police department left Massachusetts early that afternoon and arrived at Jersey City police...