State v. Reyes

• Decision Date: 11 December 2009
• Docket Number: No. 2002-456-C.A.,2002-456-C.A.
• Parties: STATE v. Pedro Muriel REYES.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

984 A.2d 606

STATE v. Pedro Muriel REYES.

No. 2002-456-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

December 11, 2009.

Lauren S. Zurier (Department of Attorney General), for Plaintiff.

Thomas Dickinson, Esq., for Defendant.

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

OPINION

Justice FLAHERTY, for the Court.

The defendant, Pedro Muriel Reyes, was convicted of second-degree murder, discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence resulting in the death of another, and the unlicensed possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to two consecutive life-sentence terms, as well as a concurrent ten-year sentence for the unlicensed possession of a firearm. On appeal, defendant advances several arguments why his convictions should be vacated. After careful consideration of the defendant's arguments and a thorough review of the record, we affirm the judgments of conviction.

I Facts

On November 26, 2000, around 2 a.m., several night clubs on Broad Street in Providence closed for the evening, causing a large number of patrons to spill out into the street. Because of the frequency of fights and disturbances as the clubs closed each night, officers from the Providence Police Department were on duty in the area. One of those officers was Scott McGregor. When a fight broke out at the corner of Broad and Lenox Streets, Officer McGregor responded. As soon as that disturbance was under control, Officer McGregor noticed another fight in progress, just outside Club Caribe, which was located at the corner of Broad and Sumter Streets.¹

As he walked toward Club Caribe, Officer McGregor observed a crowd of forty to fifty people. The officer then heard several gun shots. He looked toward the sound of the gun shots and saw, almost in silhouette an individual firing into the crowd. Officer McGregor saw a firearm in this person's hand, and so he drew his own weapon and cautiously approached the shooter. As he did so, he saw the shooter take two steps forward, bend down, and then turn around, making eye contact with McGregor.

The shooter then entered a red Lincoln Navigator through a passenger side door. The Navigator fled the scene, heading south on Broad Street, and then it turned right onto Gallatin Street. Officer McGregor identified the Navigator's license plate number and broadcasted it over the radio. He also broadcasted a description of the suspect as a Hispanic male, light-skinned, five-foot-seven inches tall, with a thin build, and wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and dark-colored pants.

After the Navigator drove out of view, Officer McGregor was approached by Angel Martinez. Mr. Martinez told McGregor that he had been shot, and he then collapsed onto the sidewalk. Emergency medical personnel transported Martinez to a hospital, but efforts there to save his life were not successful, and he died as a result of his wounds.

Within minutes of Officer McGregor's broadcast of the license plate number, a red Lincoln Navigator with the corresponding license plate number was pulled over by Patrolman Thomas Connetta on Gallatin Street. Connetta observed the operator exit the vehicle and run into a backyard; he was not able to apprehend him. No one else was inside the vehicle, nor was anyone else seen fleeing it. Officer McGregor drove to Gallatin Street, and he confirmed that the red Lincoln Navigator was the same car that he saw taking flight from the scene of the shooting.

Within hours of the shooting, Det. Stephen Springer showed Officer McGregor a photo-array to determine whether McGregor could identify who fired into the crowd. McGregor identified Pedro Muriel Reyes's photo, but he cautioned that he was not 100 percent sure that this was the same person he had seen discharging the handgun. This was so because McGregor believed that the individual in the picture appeared darker than the individual that he saw in person, possibly because the photo itself was dark.

Between 2 a.m. and sunrise, Det. Patricia Cornell of the Providence Police Department's Bureau of Criminal Identification responded to the intersection of Sumter and Broad Streets. Detective Cornell discovered two .380-caliber casings; one on the sidewalk near the corner of Sumter and Broad, and one on Sumter Street. She also retrieved a firearm, later identified as a Bryco .380-caliber handgun, on a sewer drain ledge at the corner of Sumter and Broad Streets. This weapon held a six-round magazine, and there were four rounds in the handgun when Det. Cornell found it. No fingerprints were found on the gun or on its magazine.

Detective Cornell also examined the red Lincoln Navigator after it had been towed from the scene. She located sixteen latent fingerprints on or inside the vehicle. She determined that two fingerprints, one on the rear driver's side door and one on the rear passenger's side door of the vehicle, belonged to Pedro Muriel Reyes. A black leather pouch was found inside the vehicle that included thirteen pieces of paperwork, all with Muriel Reyes's name on them, as well as a gold ring with "Pedro" spelled out in diamonds.

The Bryco, the four remaining rounds in the magazine, the two .380-caliber casings found at the scene, and the two bullets removed from Angel Martinez's body were sent to the state crime lab for testing. There they were examined by Robert Hathaway, a firearms expert. Hathaway determined that the Bryco was operational, it could fire .380-caliber bullets, and that the bullets that killed Martinez were also .380 caliber. Further, his testing revealed that the Bryco could have discharged the casings found at the crime scene, but the test results were inconclusive about whether the Bryco ejected these particular casings or whether the two bullets recovered from Angel Martinez had been fired from this particular weapon.² Hathaway concluded that the Bryco could not be excluded as the murder weapon, but neither could his testing confirm that it was the murder weapon.

On November 27, 2000, a medical examiner conducted an autopsy on Angel Martinez; it revealed that Mr. Martinez had suffered two gunshot wounds. One bullet entered Martinez's body under the left collarbone on a front to back and slightly downward trajectory and buried itself under the skin near the left shoulder. This wound was not fatal. The other bullet, which was fatal, entered the left side of the victim's chest on a left to right, slightly downward trajectory, punctured the victim's lung and vena cava, a major blood vessel, and liver, and finally came to rest in one of the victim's right ribs. Rhode Island's chief medical examiner, Elizabeth Laposata, M.D., concluded that the death of Mr. Martinez was caused by homicide.

In early January 2001, Joseph Parra was arrested by federal authorities for violating his probation. On January 9, 2001, Parra spoke with Det. Springer and he gave the detective a statement about Angel Martinez's murder in an effort to obtain police protection for his girlfriend. In his statement, Parra said that as he was standing at the corner of Sumter and Broad Streets at 2 a.m. on November 26, 2000, he heard gun shots and he briefly entered a nearby restaurant. When he came out of the restaurant, he said he saw Pedro Muriel Reyes enter the passenger door of a burgundy Lincoln Navigator. Parra said he could identify Reyes because Reyes was his former brother-in-law.

On October 17, 2001, a grand jury returned a three count indictment against defendant. Count 1 alleged that defendant murdered Angel Martinez in violation of G.L. 1956 § 11-23-1 and § 11-23-2.³ Count 2 alleged that defendant violated G.L. 1956 § 11-47-8⁴ when he carried a Bryco handgun without a license. Count 3 alleged that defendant violated § 11-47-3.2(b)(3)⁵ when he discharged a firearm during the commission of a violent crime that resulted in the death of another.

Trial commenced in the Superior Court on January 22, 2002. At trial, the state offered testimony from Officer Scott McGregor, Patrolman Thomas Connetta, and Det. Patricia Cornell of the Providence Police Department, Roberto Rodrigues (a friend of the victim, Angel Martinez), Joseph Parra, firearms expert Robert Hathaway, and Elizabeth Laposata, M.D. (chief medical examiner). The defense offered testimony from Eric Matos, a coworker of Joseph Parra; Maria Lopez, defendant's girlfriend; Jessica Lopez, Maria Lopez's sister; and defendant's sister, Maria Munez.

Officer McGregor testified that although he was not 100 percent certain that Reyes was the same person that he saw firing a weapon on November 26, 2000, he believed that he was the same person.

Joseph Parra testified that he fabricated his statement to Det. Springer, in which he identified Pedro Muriel Reyes as the individual jumping into the passenger door of the Lincoln Navigator. He testified that he gave that statement to Det. Springer only because a man named Carlos, whose last name Parra did not know, told him to blame Angel Martinez's murder on Reyes, or else Parra's girlfriend would get hurt. Parra testified at trial that, contrary to his statement to Det. Springer, he was standing outside on the corner of Sumter and Broad Streets, across the street from where the shooting took place. He said that he heard the gunshots and fled into the restaurant. He asserted that he did not come back outside; and, consequently, he did not see who got into the Lincoln Navigator.

On January 29, 2002, the jury returned a verdict of guilty for second-degree murder. The jury also found defendant guilty of unlawfully carrying a pistol without a license and of discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence that resulted in the death of Angel Martinez. The trial justice sentenced Reyes to consecutive life sentences for murder in the second degree and for discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence that resulted in the death of another, and a ten-year prison sentence for unlicensed possession of a firearm...