Commonwealth v. Miranda (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-064-16)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC-12058 COMMONWEALTH vs. WAYNE MIRANDA. May 12, 2016. Practice, Criminal, Postconviction relief. Joint Enterprise. Evidence, Joint venturer. Wayne Miranda was convicted of murder in the second degree and other offenses in 2008, and this court affirmed the convictions. Commonwealth v. Miranda, 458 Mass. 100 (2010), cert. denied, 132 S. Ct. 548 (2011). Miranda has filed a petition in the Federal District Court for a writ of habeas corpus. A Federal judge stayed the petition and held it in abeyance to permit Miranda to exhaust State remedies. Miranda accordingly filed a motion for relief from unlawful restraint pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. 30 (a), as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001), and a judge in the Superior Court denied the motion. We granted Miranda’s application for direct appellate review. We affirm. At issue is whether, on direct appeal, we properly applied Commonwealth v. Zanetti, 454 Mass. 449 (2009), to determine that the evidence was sufficient to support his convictions. In Zanetti, we clarified the legal principles concerning joint venture liability. Id. at 461-468. In particular, we stated that, in an appeal following a conviction, we will “examine whether the evidence is sufficient to permit a rational juror to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly participated in the commission of the crime charged, with the intent required to commit the crime, rather than examine the sufficiency of the evidence separately as to principal and joint venture liability.” Id. at 468. Miranda argues that this reformulation applies only to cases tried after we decided Zanetti and that our application of it to his case violated ex post facto principles and his due process rights. Since deciding Zanetti, we have made it clear that “[w]e apply the principles clarified in [Zanetti] to claims concerning the sufficiency of the evidence of joint venture, even though the trial preceded that decision.” Commonwealth v. Benitez, 464 Mass. 686, 689 n.5 (2013). “[T]he only prospective application of the principles announced in our Zanetti decision pertains to our recommended jury instruction.” Commonwealth v. Jansen, 459 Mass. 21, 28 n.20 (2011). Moreover, our decision in Zanetti “d[id] not enlarge or diminish the scope of existing joint venture liability,” but was intended simply “to provide clearer guidance to jurors and diminish the risk of juror confusion in cases where two or […]