Commonwealth v. Gonzalez (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-140-16)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11731 COMMONWEALTH vs. CAURIS GONZALEZ. Essex. December 11, 2015. – September 6, 2016. Present: Gants, C.J., Cordy, Botsford, Lenk, & Hines, JJ.[1] Homicide. Joint Enterprise. Evidence, Joint venturer, Intent. Intent. Practice, Criminal, Capital case. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on June 29, 2011. The case was tried before Mary K. Ames, J. Robert F. Shaw, Jr., for the defendant. David F. O’Sullivan, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. LENK, J. Shortly before 6 P.M. on January 10, 2009, Robert Gonzalez was shot and killed while sitting in his minivan near an intersection in Lawrence. The shooting was carried out by four people who, seconds before, had been dropped off across the intersection by someone driving a Dodge Caravan minivan. In June, 2011, the defendant was indicted by an Essex County grand jury on one count of murder in the first degree based on evidence that she had been the driver of the Caravan. After a jury trial in the Superior Court, the defendant was convicted as a joint venturer of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation. On appeal, the defendant claims that the trial judge erred in denying her motion for a required finding of not guilty. In particular, the defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to allow a rational juror to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was the driver of the Dodge Caravan, or that she knew of and shared the coventurers’ intent to kill the victim. The defendant also claims, among other things, that the judge erred by allowing the admission of (a) the opinion of one of the Commonwealth’s witnesses interpreting cellular site location information (CSLI) generated by the defendant’s cellular telephone, and (b) a video recording comparing still photographs from surveillance footage of the Dodge Caravan that had transported the four passengers involved in the shooting with the Dodge Caravan owned by the defendant’s mother. The defendant contends also that her trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the admission of an audio recording of statements she made to police shortly after the killing. We conclude that the motion for a required finding of not guilty should have been granted. While the jury could have concluded, on this evidence, […]