State v. Torres

• Decision Date: 10 January 2002
• Docket Number: No. 2001-220-C.A.,2001-220-C.A.
• Citation: 787 A.2d 1214
• Parties: STATE v. Julio TORRES.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

787 A.2d 1214

STATE v. Julio TORRES.

No. 2001-220-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

January 10, 2002.

Present WILLIAMS, C.J., LEDERBERG, BOURCIER, FLANDERS, and GOLDBERG, JJ.

Jane M. Mcsoley, and Aaron Weisman, Providence, for plaintiff.

Damon D'Ambrosio, Pawtucket, for defendant.

OPINION

BOURCIER, Justice.

In the early morning hours of May 11, 1993, Amalie Santiago (Amalie) was shot in the head and left for dead in her apartment. Her three children, Liana Torres, aged six, Angelica Torres, aged five, and Julio Torres, Jr., aged four, were alone with their mother at the time. Fortunately, Amalie was rescued and survived her subsequent month-long coma; however, upon coming out of the coma, she was completely and permanently blind in both eyes.

On February 12, 2001, a Providence Superior Court jury convicted Julio Torres (Torres or the defendant) on the one count in the indictment; namely, assaulting Amalie with a dangerous weapon in her dwelling with intent to murder.¹ After denying the defendant's motion for a new trial, the trial justice sentenced Torres to fifty years imprisonment, with thirty years to serve, twenty years of which were suspended, and with probation. Judgment was entered, and Torres timely appealed.

I Facts/Procedural History

In May 1993, Amalie lived with her three children on the second floor of a three-level family tenement on Earle Street in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Her parents owned the building and lived in the first-floor apartment with their thirteen-year-old daughter. In April 1993, Torres, who was the father of Amalie's three children and her boyfriend at the time, also lived in Amalie's second-floor apartment. Amalie and her family knew Torres as "Angelo."² It appears that the relationship between Amalie and Torres was very tumultuous and fraught with problems. Indeed, Torres previously had been arrested for assaulting Amalie and pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of domestic assault on May 19, 1992, and was sentenced to probation for one year.

In late March/early April 1993, Amalie determined that her relationship with Torres should end. One night, while he was sleeping, Amalie removed his keys to the apartment from his key chain.³ The next day, after Torres went to work, she packed all his belongings into garbage bags and left them outside in the tenement hallway. Torres never took his belongings, which eventually were discarded.

Not long after terminating her relationship with Torres, Amalie began dating Valter Sousa (Valter). At the time, Valter was living only a few blocks from Amalie, at his parents' residence on Barber Street. One day in early May 1993, just as Amalie, Valter and Valter's sister Nellie were leaving a Burger King restaurant in Amalie's car, the defendant drove up in his car, a Z28 red Camaro. Visibly agitated, the defendant approached Amalie as she sat in the driver's seat of her car and threateningly demanded to know who Valter was and why he was with her. Not wanting to be the cause of a confrontation between Amalie and Torres, Valter got out of the car and began to walk away. Torres then turned towards Valter who, fearing that Torres was about to attack him, "got in his face" and pushed Torres away. Torres responded by threatening Valter, saying that Valter would pay for what he had done.

Thereafter, Torres began going to Amalie's apartment, ringing the doorbell and demanding that she come to the door so that they could talk. Amalie refused to respond to his antics. On May 9, 1993, two days before the shooting, Amalie went to visit her cousin, Brenda Carrasco (Brenda), with Valter. A furious Torres appeared and confronted Amalie in front of Brenda's house and demanded that Amalie reveal the nature of her relationship with Valter. Instead of answering, Amalie ignored Torres and proceeded upstairs to Brenda's apartment. Enraged at being snubbed by Amalie, Torres then called out to Brenda to:

"tell your cousin [Amalie] to tell me the truth. Tell her if she don't tell me that I'm going to do something big and no one will ever know. No one's going to be able to get me."

On May 10, 1993, Amalie left her children with Brenda at Brenda's home so that she could go to work at an Ames department store where she was employed part time. While she was at work, Torres drove to the store and informed Amalie's supervisor that he wished to speak with her. Amalie received the message, but refused to meet with him; instead, she continued working until her shift ended between 9:45 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thereafter Amalie went to pick up both Valter and her children and they went to a local Chinese restaurant to purchase a take-out order. They then rented a movie from Major Video and retrieved Amalie's VCR from Torres's mother.⁴ At Torres's mother's home, Valter and Amalie observed Torres lurking in a next-door neighbor's driveway, watching them. He did not approach them, however, and they managed to leave without incident and return to Amalie's apartment.

Once they arrived at the apartment, Amalie fed the children and put them to bed. Although Valter and Amalie had intended to eat after the children had settled, instead, Valter left and went to Attleboro with his brother and brother-in-law, leaving Amalie alone with her sleeping children. After Valter left, Amalie ate her take-out dinner and then watched part of the rented movie.

Later, at approximately 1:30 a.m. on the morning of May 11, 1993, Amalie's mother, Ursula Santiago (Ursula), arrived home after working the evening shift at the nearby Texas Instruments plant. She entered the apartment building, locked the door from the inside and called out to see if Amalie was still awake. She was, and mother and daughter then conversed for several minutes at the door to Amalie's apartment. After bidding good night to her daughter, Ursula left and went downstairs to her own first-floor apartment. Amalie then checked the doors to her apartment to make certain they were locked and she went to bed.

Shortly thereafter, while Ursula and her husband, Adrian Santiago (Adrian), were asleep in their downstairs apartment, Ursula was awakened by a loud noise. She immediately awakened her husband and they both jumped out of bed. Thinking that the noise had come from inside their apartment, Ursula rushed into the kitchen and, after observing nothing unusual, she went to look out the kitchen window. As she was going toward the window, she noticed that the L.E.D. display on the kitchen's microwave clock showed exactly 3:32 a.m. When she looked out the window, Ursula saw Torres, whose face was illuminated by the light of a nearby streetlight, quickly walk by her and down the driveway. Fearing the worst, she told Adrian to go upstairs to check on Amalie and the children.

Adrian, who also saw and recognized Torres walking in the driveway, rushed upstairs and knocked on the back door to Amalie's apartment. No one responded to his knocking. When Adrian returned downstairs he told Ursula that no one was at home. Ursula told him that she was positive that Amalie was there and to go back and check again. This time, although Adrian could not enter the locked back door entrance, he heard what seemed to be labored breathing. Panicked, he ran back downstairs and retrieved the only key to Amalie's front door. His worst fears were realized. He found his daughter lying in a pool of blood on her apartment floor while his distraught five-year old granddaughter, Angelica, stood over her mother, weeping. He asked the child what had happened, whereupon she said "Papa lo hiso."⁵ Angelica's older sister, six-year old Liana, then came out of her bedroom and told him that: "Daddy did it." Adrian screamed downstairs for Ursula to call for an ambulance. She did.

Shortly thereafter, police and rescue arrived. The rescue personnel treated and then removed Amalie. Meanwhile, a police officer went into in an adjoining bedroom, where he found the three children. They were huddled together, and Angelica and Liana were "both crying, very upset" and had "tears running down their eyes — gasping, trying to catch their breath." After the officer had calmed the children down somewhat, he asked them what had happened. Angelica told him that her father had come to their home, that he had argued with her mother and he had accused her of kissing Valter. She said that as she "peeked" out the bedroom door, she saw him take a gun and "[h]e killed my mommy[.]" Liana, who did not actually witness the shooting, also overheard the altercation. She reiterated Angelica's account of the argument between their parents. Based upon these statements, as well as the statements given by Amalie's parents and other investigative evidence, the police issued an arrest warrant for Torres. He was nowhere to be found, but his treasured Z28 Camaro was found just a few blocks away from the scene of the crime.

Seven years later, on April 20, 2000, Torres was apprehended and arrested in Ponce, Puerto Rico, by U. S. Marshals from the Federal Fugitive Task Force. As the U.S. Marshals were escorting Torres back to a local Puerto Rican police station, U. S. Deputy Marshal Andres Jiminez (Deputy Marshal Jiminez) initiated a conversation with the defendant. During the course of that conversation, Torres confessed to Deputy Marshal Jiminez that he had "shot his wife" and that the reason he had done so was "because she was cheating on him; that he was all messed up back then."

Before trial, Torres filed several motions in limine to exclude certain testimony that the state proposed to introduce at trial, as well as a motion to suppress the statements that he allegedly made to Deputy Marshal Jiminez. In denying the motions in limine, the trial justice noted that his denials were subject to later redetermination at trial when the challenged evidence referred to in the motions would be offered into evidence. At the hearing on Torres's motion to suppress the incriminating statements he allegedly...