State v. Lopez

• Decision Date: 22 June 2012
• Docket Number: No. 2009–280–C.A.,2009–280–C.A.
• Citation: 45 A.3d 1
• Parties: STATE v. Hamlet M. LOPEZ.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

45 A.3d 1

STATE

v.Hamlet M. LOPEZ.

No. 2009–280–C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

June 22, 2012.

Jane M. McSoley, Department of Attorney General, Providence, for State.

Janice M. Weisfeld, Office of the Public Defender, Providence, for Defendant.

Present: SUTTELL, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, and ROBINSON, JJ.

OPINION

Chief Justice SUTTELL, for the Court.

The defendant, Hamlet M. Lopez, appeals from a Superior Court judgment of conviction for first-degree murder, for which he received a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial justice erred by (1) allowing DNA evidence to be introduced against him through the testimony of a laboratory supervisorand the admission of an allele table documenting the DNA profiles of the defendant and the decedent; (2) admitting evidence of his prior instances of violence; (3) failing to instruct the jury adequately about prior inconsistent statements; and (4) imposing a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.

IFacts and Procedural History

On August 29, 2007, defendant was indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Miledis ¹ Hilario (Hilario or decedent), in violation of G.L.1956 § 11–23–1.² Thereafter, the state filed notice of its intention to seek a sentence of life without parole pursuant to § 11–23–2(4), which permits such a sentence for the commission of a murder involving torture or aggravated battery.³

The defendant made several pretrial motions, which were heard by the trial justice on September 8, 10, 15, and 16, 2008. Included among these motions was defendant's motion in limine to exclude, under Rules 403 and 404 of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence, evidence of defendant's prior acts of violence against Hilario and Ruth Estrella, a former girlfriend of defendant and mother of one of his sons.⁴ The state responded by stating that it did not intend to produce evidence regarding defendant's past instances of violence against Estrella. The state asserted, however, that it did intend to elicit testimony about three prior incidents between defendant and Hilario, occurring on November 11, 2006, in early May 2007, and on May 18, 2007, and it argued that those incidents were admissible to show defendant's motive and intent to murder Hilario on May 20, 2007. On September 8, 2008, the trial justice heard this motion and ruled that evidence of the November 11, 2006 event would be excluded, but that evidence of both May 2007 incidents would be admissible pursuant to Rule 404(b) of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence.

A jury trial then commenced in the Superior Court on September 17, 2008. The pertinent evidence adduced at trial is set forth below.

The defendant began dating Hilario toward the end of 2005. A few months later, defendant moved in with Hilario and began living with her and her youngest daughter, Miledy Urena, at 42 Courtland Street in the City of Providence. According to the testimony of Hilario's family, her relationship with defendant was “bad” and ultimately ended in May 2007,⁵ a short time before her murder.

Miledy ⁶ testified that her mother's relationship with defendant began to deteriorate in the summer of 2006. Miledy stated that this was a result of defendant's constant “lies” and his continued relationship with Estrella. As a result, Miledy advised her mother “[m]any times” to end her relationship with defendant. According to Miledy, Hilario finally took this advice in early May 2007, after a physical altercation with defendant. Miledy testified that during the altercation, she witnessed defendant being physically aggressive to her mother. Miledy explained that her mother and defendant were arriving home when she overheard them arguing outside, so she went to her bedroom window to see what was happening. There, she saw defendant push Hilario, causing her to fall to the ground and scrape her knee. After observing this, Miledy stated that she ran downstairs and then helped her mother upstairs, with defendant following behind. Miledy testified that, once upstairs, her mother took all of defendant's belongings, put them in garbage bags, and threw them out the window.⁷ The defendant then went outside to retrieve his belongings and, according to Miledy, Hilario “closed the door and * * * locked him out.” Miledy stated that it was at that time that her mother ended her relationship with defendant.

The next time Miledy recalled seeing defendant was on May 18, 2007. That afternoon, as Miledy and Hilario arrived home, defendant came by the house with a dozen roses for Hilario. According to Miledy, defendant apologized for “what happened” and tried to give Hilario the roses, but she refused to take them. Miledy eventually took the roses upstairs into the apartment. When Miledy came back downstairs, defendant was gone.

Miledy testified that her older sister, Keyla Urena, picked her up from work that evening around eleven o'clock. When they arrived home, Miledy knocked on the door, rang the doorbell, and called her mother multiple times, but received no response. Seeing that her mother's van was parked in the driveway and the lights in the apartment were on, she persisted in her efforts to receive entry. After approximately twenty minutes, Keyla called her mother and defendant answered. Miledy continued to knock on the door and ring the doorbell, and eventually, Hilario answered the door and let Miledy upstairs. Miledy testified that she did not see defendant upstairs at this time or at any time that evening, but she believed he had been “inside the house and [had] left [out] the back door” because that is what her mother had told her.

Miledy recalled that her mother's “face was red,” and that “she was nervous and * * * pacing everywhere,” while talking loudly on the telephone to defendant's sister. Miledy stated that she heard her mother say “[defendant] broke my bed” and “[defendant] was harassing me.” After hearing this, she went to see her mother's bed, took off the sheets, and discovered that “the mattress was stabbed up.” Miledy then called Keyla and asked her to come back to the house. Minutes later Keyla arrived and thereafter called the police.⁸ The police spoke to Hilario, Miledy, and Keyla, took photographs of the mattress, and took a statement from Hilario.⁹

Cesar Tineo, Hilario's son, testified that after speaking with one of his sisters on May 18, 2007, he called defendant and asked him “[h]ow he [c]ould do such a thing.” Tineo attested that defendant responded: “She's playing with my emotions and she's going to die in the hands of a man.” Thereafter, according to Tineo, he went to his mother's home and immediately changed all of her locks. This was not the only ominous threat that defendant allegedly made in the days leading up to Hilario's murder.

Jose Marte, a longtime friend of defendant's and boyfriend of Cruz Gonzalez, Hilario's sister, testified that on May 16, 2007, defendant called him and “was very angry and * * * sad” because “he was having problems with [Hilario] and he wanted [Marte] to help him get back [with] her.” Marte met with defendant later that night, and testified that defendant “was very angry” and told him he was “deeply in love” with Hilario and that “if she wasn't going to be his, she was not going to be anybody's.”

Miledy testified that on May 20, 2007, she worked from 2 to 9:30 p.m., and that her mother dropped her off at work and was supposed to pick her up that evening. While she was at work, Miledy received a total of five telephone calls from defendant; the earliest call being placed at 2:32 p.m. and the last one at 8:20 p.m. Miledy did not answer any of these calls. At the end of her shift, Miledy waited for her mother, and when she did not arrive on time, she called her multiple times to no avail.¹⁰ Miledy testified that she then called Keyla, who picked her up around 10:20 p.m. The sisters drove to 42 Courtland Street, where they observed the second-floor apartment's lights on, but did not see their mother's van. Because the van was not there, the girls started driving to their aunt Marisol's house. On the way, Miledy called defendant, and he informed her that Hilario was at Marisol's house.

Immediately after arriving at Marisol's house, but before getting out of the car, Miledy received an “anxious” telephone call from her other aunt, Cruz Gonzalez. Miledy testified that, after this five-minute conversation, she and her sister called the police while they hurriedly made their way back to 42 Courtland Street. Miledy urgently requested help from the police, exclaiming “[t]hey gonna kill her, please.” ¹¹ At approximately 11:30 p.m., Miledy, Keyla, and the police arrived at 42 Courtland Street. Miledy testified that she went inside the house and saw her mother lying “[f]ace up” on the floor, bleeding. According to Miledy, the police then quickly escorted her out of the apartment.

Officer Julie Pryde of the Providence Police Department was the first officer to arrive at the crime scene. She testified that once there, she observed that Keyla and Miledy were “hysterical,” and that Keyla came running to her and yelled, “[d]o you have your gun? * * * I think he's still up there with a knife.” Officer Pryde then went upstairs to the second-floor apartment and discovered a motionless Hilario lying on her back in the threshold between the living room and her bedroom, with blood on her clothing and chest. Officer Pryde further indicated that there “appeared * * * [to] have been a struggle” in the living room because a glass-top table was knocked over, papers were strewn about, and there were blood splatters on the living-room carpet. Immediately upon observing this scene, Officer Pryde called for rescue personnel. After the rescue crew arrived, Hilario was pronounced dead at the scene.

Testimony revealed that defendant made several...