Commonwealth v. Mattei (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-157-16)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 14-P-1004 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. ALEXANDER MATTEI. No. 14-P-1004. Essex. May 10, 2016. – October 27, 2016. Present: Cypher, Blake, & Henry, JJ. Assault with Intent to Rape. Assault and Battery. Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Evidence, Expert opinion, Cross-examination. Witness, Expert, Cross-examination. Practice, Criminal, Instructions to jury, Argument by prosecutor, Confrontation of witnesses. Constitutional Law, Confrontation of witnesses. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on May 22, 2002. Following review by the Supreme Judicial Court, 455 Mass. 840 (2010), the cases were tried before Timothy Q. Feeley, J. Karl R.D. Suchecki for the defendant. Catherine L. Semel, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. CYPHER, J. The defendant, Alexander Mattei, appeals from his convictions of assault with intent to rape and assault and battery. On appeal, the defendant challenges: (1) the admission of testimony of a substitute DNA analyst; (2) the judge’s ruling curtailing cumulative cross-examination regarding what effect information regarding the criminal histories of other workers at the victim’s residence might have had on the police investigation; (3) the judge’s failure to give a Bowden[1] instruction; and (4) statements by the prosecutor in closing argument. We affirm. Background. In April, 2002, the defendant and three other inmates were on work release from the Lawrence Correctional Alternative Center on the day of the incident. They were working at a housing complex for the elderly and disabled, which is run by the Andover Housing Authority. The victim, a resident of the housing complex, was attacked in her apartment and “sustained numerous trauma about her face.” She was taken by ambulance to the hospital for treatment. From there the victim was transferred to New England Medical Center, where she was treated by eye specialists. The substitute analyst. The defendant claims that admission of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) opinion testimony of crime laboratory analyst Brian Cunningham violated his confrontation rights because Cunningham: (1) did not conduct the DNA testing in this case; (2) was not employed by the crime lab at the time the testing was conducted by analyst Stacey Edward; and (3) reached a conclusion that “conflicted in significant part” with the conclusion of the analyst (Edward) who conducted the DNA testing concerning two key pieces of evidence (mixed sample DNA recovered from the defendant’s sweatpants and the […]