Summary
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Demery Williams's convictions for murder in the first degree, armed robbery, and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon arising from the death of William Jones. The court rejected challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, speedy-trial ruling, admission of recorded statements and other evidence, and denied relief under G. L. c. 278, § 33E. The opinion addressed joint venture liability, felony murder, extreme atrocity or cruelty, wiretap law, cellular telephone records, DNA evidence, and other evidentiary issues.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's convictions as a joint venturer in armed robbery, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, and murder in the first degree under felony-murder and extreme-atrocity-or-cruelty theories.
- Whether the defendant's trial was untimely under Mass. R. Crim. P. 36 and required dismissal.
- Whether the defendant's secretly recorded statements to Connecticut police and the manner in which the recordings and transcripts were admitted required exclusion.
- Whether testimony from a substitute medical examiner violated the defendant's confrontation rights or lacked scientific reliability, and whether the defendant was entitled to a missing-witness instruction.
- Whether cellular telephone records and cellular-site location information were unlawfully obtained or improperly authenticated.
- Whether the Commonwealth violated its duty to preserve potentially exculpatory DNA evidence.
- Whether relief was warranted under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, § 33E.
Holdings
- The evidence was sufficient for a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly participated in an armed robbery, knew that his coventurer was armed, and that Jones's death occurred during or shortly after the robbery.
- The evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's conviction as a joint venturer of murder in the first degree on the theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty.
- The defendant was not entitled to dismissal because, although more than twelve months elapsed after arraignment, he acquiesced in or jointly requested enough delay to make the trial timely under Rule 36.
- The defendant's statements were properly admitted; incomplete recording and secret recording did not require exclusion, and Massachusetts's wiretap suppression remedy did not apply to recordings lawfully made by Connecticut police in Connecticut.
- The substitute medical examiner could testify to her independent opinion about the cause of death based on the autopsy report and photographs, without violating confrontation rights or scientific-reliability requirements.
- Admission of the cellular telephone records and CSLI did not violate constitutional or statutory search requirements, and the testimony interpreting the records was properly admitted.
- The Commonwealth did not violate its preservation duty, and exclusion of the DNA evidence was not warranted because the prosecutor did not control the testing when the raw DNA was consumed and the defendant was not prevented from testing the remaining extracted DNA.
Key quotations
“whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt” (475 Mass. 705, 8)
“a defendant whose interrogation has not been reliably preserved by means of a complete electronic recording should be entitled, on request, to a cautionary instruction concerning the use of such evidence.” (475 Mass. 705, 20)
“A substitute medical examiner may, however, "offer an opinion on the cause of death, based on his [or her] review of an autopsy report by the medical examiner who performed the autopsy and his review of the autopsy photographs, as these are documents upon which experts are accustomed to rely, and which are potentially independently admissible through appropriate witnesses."” (475 Mass. 705, 25)
Factual background
The defendant accompanied William Jones, a drug dealer, to a Springfield house where Jones had been lured for an armed robbery. The defendant acted as a lookout, knew Jones would be robbed, observed Curtis Combs use a stun gun on Jones, and drove Jones in a vehicle to a Connecticut grocery-store parking lot. Jones was later found dead in the vehicle from ligature strangulation, and evidence included the defendant's changing statements to police, cellular-site and call records, and DNA linking the defendant and Jones to a latex-glove fingertip found in the vehicle.
Procedural history
A Hampden County grand jury returned indictments on September 26, 2011, and the defendant was arraigned on October 4, 2011. The kidnapping charge was dismissed by nolle prosequi. The Superior Court denied the defendant's Mass. R. Crim. P. 36 motion to dismiss and his motions for required findings of not guilty. A jury convicted him of murder in the first degree, armed robbery, and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the judgments and declined to grant extraordinary relief under § 33E.