Commonwealth v. Moscaritolo

Summary

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirms Michael Moscaritolo’s convictions for murder in the first degree, burglary with assault on an occupant, unarmed robbery, and larceny of firearms. The court rejects his challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, the denial of an involuntary manslaughter instruction, the admission of multilevel hearsay, and the asserted duplicative nature of the burglary conviction, and declines to grant relief under G. L. c. 278, § 33E.

Holdings

1. The court declined to reach the defendant's sufficiency challenge to deliberate premeditation because the jury also convicted him on the independently sufficient theories of extreme atrocity or cruelty and felony-murder, neither of which he challenged.
2. The trial judge properly refused to instruct on involuntary manslaughter because no view of the evidence supported wanton or reckless conduct causing death without malice.
3. The admission of Romani's testimony about Ferguson's statements was an abuse of discretion because Ferguson's statements to his girlfriend were not shown to have been made during the joint venture and in furtherance of it, but the error was harmless and did not warrant reversal.
4. The burglary-with-assault-on-an-occupant conviction was not duplicative of the first-degree murder conviction because the murder conviction rested on both felony-murder and other theories; the predicate felony therefore stood.
5. Independent review of the entire record disclosed no basis to order a new trial or reduce the first-degree murder conviction.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support first-degree murder on the theory of deliberate premeditation.
2. Whether the trial judge erred by refusing to instruct the jury on involuntary manslaughter.
3. Whether testimony recounting Ferguson's statements about Moscaritolo's robbery plan constituted inadmissible multilevel hearsay.
4. Whether the conviction for burglary with assault on an occupant was duplicative of the first-degree felony-murder conviction.
5. Whether extraordinary relief under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, warranted a new trial or reduction of the murder conviction.

Disposition

affirmed