COMMONWEALTH vs. JESUS GAMBORA
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
September 2, 2010
457 Mass. 715
Hampden. April 8, 2010. — September 2, 2010.
Present: MARSHALL, C.J., IRELAND, SPINA, CORDY, & BOTSFORD, JJ.
At a murder trial, error, if any, arising from the admission in evidence of expert testimony identifying or “individualizing” two latent fingerprints found on a door pull at the crime scene was harmless in the circumstances, where the defendant himself testified at trial that he put his hand on the door pull in question, and where substantial other evidence connected the defendant to the scene of the robbery and homicide. [724-729] SPINA, J., concurring, with whom IRELAND, J., joined.
At a criminal trial, the Commonwealth, in proffering the testimony of a police officer that a sneaker seized from the defendant‘s residence corresponded to a shoe print found at the crime scene, established the necessary prerequisite of relevance by showing that the sneaker belonged to the defendant. [730-731]
At a criminal trial, the judge committed no abuse of discretion or other error of law in dismissing, during jury empanelment, a seated but unsworn juror, where the judge properly was concerned, based on the information presented to him, about the possibility of a connection between the juror and the defendant or his family. [731-732]
Ample evidence at a murder trial supported the jury‘s determination that the defendant committed the crime with deliberate premeditation. [732-733]
There was no merit to a criminal defendant‘s argument that his convictions of armed robbery were duplicative of his conviction of murder in the first degree, where the jury specifically found the defendant guilty based on the separate theories of deliberate premeditation and felony-murder. [733-734]
This court declined to reach a claim brought by a criminal defendant convicted of murder in the first degree that an indictment alleging “intentional murder” gave him inadequate notice of the crime charged. [734-735]
INDICTMENTS found and returned in the Superior Court Department on June 26, 2003.
The cases were tried before Jeffrey A. Locke, J.
Stewart T. Graham, Jr., for the defendant.
Thomas H. Townsend, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
Background. The evidence would have warranted the jury in finding the following. Ray Desai and Jaya Desai, the victim, owned and operated two West Springfield hotels, the Rodeway Inn and the Ramada Limited. The Desais lived with their sons Ajay and Sandip1 in an apartment connected to the Rodeway Inn office. On April 18, 2003, Ajay was working in that office. Around 10 P.M., a Ramada Limited desk clerk, Robert Flaherty, delivered a bank bag containing the day‘s cash receipts and approximately $450 in cash. Ajay brought the bank bag through a door behind the front desk into his family‘s apartment and set it down on stairs that led from the living room to upstairs bedrooms where his wife and two children of family friends were sleeping.
Shortly thereafter, another family friend, Azam Rabbani, arrived to work the 10 P.M. to 5 A.M. shift at the Rodeway Inn front desk. Before starting work, Rabbani walked through the same door into the Desais’ living room and sat down on the couch to talk with Ajay. Suddenly, the two men heard a noise coming from the office. Ajay noticed motion on a security monitor and, when he gave a closer look, saw two men jumping over the front desk. Rabbani started toward the door to the office and one of the intruders came through the door into the living room,
Sandip, still upstairs in the family quarters but hearing the noise and commotion, ran to the top of the stairs on the second floor. He saw the gunman running toward him and retreated, directing his father to dial 911. When Sandip returned to the top of the stairs, he saw his mother, Jaya, at the bottom of the stairs, screaming, “Get out of the house.” Ajay and Sandip each heard two gunshots and saw Jaya fall. One bullet struck Jaya in the chest, penetrating her heart and left lung and causing the massive bleeding that led to her death. A second bullet struck an electrical box on the wall, knocking out some of the lights.
Ajay tried to go to his mother, but the gunman stopped him and again demanded, “Where is the money?” Ajay directed him to the bank bag on the stairs. Sandip heard the exchange and saw that the two intruders were confused. He, too, pointed them to the bank bag and said, “You just shot my mother, take whatever you want and leave now. Leave now. You shot my mother.” The gunman told Sandip to “shut up” or he would “cap his ass, too.”
The gunman then demanded the security surveillance tape. Sandip ran to the surveillance equipment and tried unsuccessfully to eject the tape. As Sandip was explaining that the machine would not work, he stood about five feet away from the gunman and got a “good look” at him. The gunman told Sandip, “[D]on‘t look at me or I‘ll kill you.” The gunman ripped the entire surveillance unit from the wall and the intruders fled with it. Ajay and Sandip ran to their mother, who was barely breathing. Ajay stayed with her until paramedics and police arrived. Sandip ran back upstairs and again telephoned 911.
External surveillance videotape obtained from a neighboring business showed a car with front quarter panels that differed in color from the rest of the automobile pull into the Rodeway Inn parking lot at 10:14 P.M.2 and leave at 10:18 P.M. Police
Police secured the scene. In addition to the bank bag and surveillance equipment that were taken, Rabbani was missing his wallet and three keys on a ring attached to an “Azam” nametag; Ajay was missing a computer bag containing a computer, a “Palm Pilot” device, and computer discs; and Sandip was missing his wallet. In searching the parking lot outside the Rodeway Inn that night, Officer Brian Duffy found the faceplate of the missing surveillance equipment and also observed a footprint in the dirt. Police photographed and made a stone casting of the footprint. State police Detective Lieutenant John Drawec noticed a “herringbone pattern type of impression commonly seen on the bottom of a shoe” on the front desk, which he tried to photograph and preserve, but was unable to do so successfully. Police “lifted” twenty-nine fingerprints from the interior of the Rodeway Inn, as well as prints from the door pull leading into the office.
Ajay described the gunman as wearing a hat backward and a gray “hoodie” sweatshirt, adding that he had a Spanish accent and distinctive eyes. Sandip described the gunman as a young, Hispanic male wearing a backward baseball cap with alternating red and white panels and a sweatshirt. Sandip, too, noted the gunman‘s distinctive, light-colored eyes. When police showed Ajay and Sandip a photographic array that included a photograph of the defendant, neither made a positive identification. Sandip did identify the defendant‘s photograph as having “similar eyes” to the gunman.
On April 20, two days after the murder, State Trooper Christopher Barons stopped a 1990 Acura automobile driven by the defendant. The front quarter panels differed in color from the rest of the car. Barons asked the defendant for his driver‘s license and registration. The defendant replied that he had no license, that the car was unregistered, and that he had purchased it a couple of days earlier. The defendant was arrested, and the Acura was towed. At the time he was stopped, the defendant wore a red and white paneled baseball cap. Police subsequently searched the Acura pursuant to a warrant and found five keys on an “Azam”
At the police station, the defendant stated that his address was 182 Nursery Street, unit 2L, in Springfield. The police obtained and executed a warrant to search that residence. In a bedroom closet where the officers conducting the search found health care membership cards and other papers bearing the defendant‘s name and photographs of him, they also located two pairs of sneakers, one size nine and one size nine and one-half.3 According to State police Detective Lieutenant Brian O‘Hara who testified as an expert witness on footwear impressions, the left shoe that was part of the pair of size nine sneakers corresponded in manufacturing design, shape, and size to the footprint found in the Rodeway Inn parking lot.
The defendant testified to the following. On April 18, 2003, he went to a “strip club” with his friend, Willie Watkins, where he drank heavily and used heroin. He left the club and got in a car that Watkins was driving. They stopped to pick up another man, who the defendant knew as “Pistol Pete.” The defendant and Watkins had planned to go to a motel to have some drinks, but, “[d]runk and high,” the defendant passed out on the way. When he woke up, he was alone in the car. The defendant believed his companions had gone to rent a room, so he got out of the car and walked toward the lobby. As he opened the front door, Watkins and Pistol Pete ran out, so he ran with them back to the car. He had not known that Pistol Pete was armed, but once they were back in the car, he saw Pistol Pete waving a gun. Watkins told him that Pistol Pete had shot a woman. The defendant became angry and told his сompanions that he wanted to go his own way,
The defendant further testified that the pairs of size nine and size nine and one-half sneakers that the police found in the closet at 182 Nursery Street did not belong to him and would not fit him because he wore a size ten. He was not staying with his family at 182 Nursery Street at the time of the murder, but rather, was staying with his girl friend at her apartment. He admitted to wearing the red and white paneled baseball cap when police pulled him over on April 20, explaining that one of his companions must have left it in the car. According to the defendant, the Acura automobile previously had belonged to Watkins. The defendant acknowledged that it was the car depicted in the surveillance footage and that he bought the Acura even though he knew that it had been used in a murder. The defendant also stated that, in April, 2003, he was using approximately seven to ten bags of herоin a day. He was working for a contractor named “Jose” at the time, but had no pay stubs to support that assertion.4
Discussion. 1. Fingerprint evidence. The defendant first challenges the admission of testimony from two expert witnesses, both State police detective lieutenants, identifying or “individualiz[ing]”5 two latent fingerprints6 found on a door pull at the crime scene to the defendant. His claim is that the evidence of fingerprint identification, and particularly evidence that a latent print could be “individualized” to a particular person, was inadmissible under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993) (Daubert), and Commonwealth v. Lanigan, 419 Mass. 15 (1994) (Lanigan), because its underlying scientific or technical reliability had not been established, and indeed, has
a. Additional background. The defendant filed a motion in limine before trial in which he sought to exclude all fingerprint evidence on the grounds that the Commonwealth could not demonstrate its reliability or scientific validity pursuant to Daubert, supra, and Lanigan, supra. Arguing the motion the morning before jury empanelment began, the defendant‘s trial counsel took specific issue with the proposition that the Commonwealth‘s proffered exрerts could definitively individualize a latent print to one particular person. The judge characterized the motion as a general challenge to the reliability of a fingerprint individualization method known as ACE-V, an acronym that stands for the four steps in the method‘s process: analysis, comparison, evaluation, and verification. The judge denied the motion without a hearing, ruling that the ACE-V methodology was “generally accepted within the . . . fingerprint-examiner community,” and citing Commonwealth v. Patterson, 445 Mass. 626 (2005) (Patterson), a case in which this court concluded that “[c]onsistent with the decisions of other courts that have considered the issue since Daubert, . . . the underlying theory and process of latent fingerprint identification, and the ACE-V methodology in particular, are sufficiently reliable to admit expert opinion testimony regarding the matching of a latent impression with a full fingerprint.” Id. at 628.7
At trial, Detective Lieutenant Drawec — who the defendant
“Now when you testify and draw conclusions that there is an absolute certainty that there‘s a match, you never
testify to statistics, to odds, or to probabilities when, for example, when a DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] person makes a comparison they may say it‘s a one in one billion chance that it is that person, the odds are pretty great, but they say it‘s one in one billion.
“When you make an opinion, you don‘t talk in terms of probability, at all, you just say it is for sure, for certain, that‘s a print; correct?”
Drawec answered, “That‘s correct.” Defense counsel went on to question Drawec about errors that have been made in the field of fingerprint identification, and Drawec acknowledged that he was “aware of some errors being made.” See note 18, infra.
Detective Lieutenant O‘Hara8 then testified that he had “verified” Drawec‘s two individualizations by conducting his own comparison of the latent prints to the defendant‘s known prints. He, too, described the ACE-V methodology and testified that based on its application to the prints at issue and his education, training, and experience, his opinion was that the defendant‘s right index and middle fingers “made” two of the latent prints on the door pull. The defendant did not object to O‘Hara‘s testimony.
b. Standard of review. Because the defendant raised this claim before trial through a motion in limine and again at trial during the testimony of Detective Lieutenant Drawec, the asserted error is preserved.9 See Commonwealth v. Flebotte, 417 Mass. 348, 351, 353 (1994). Accordingly, we review to determine whether any error was nonprejudicial in the sense that we are sure “that the error did not influence the jury, or had but very
c. Discussion. The challenged fingerprint evidence in this case concerns the identification of single latent prints. In light of our decision in Patterson (see note 7, supra, and accompanying text) — a decision issued approximately three months before the trial in this case — the trial judge‘s denial of the defendant‘s motion in limine concerning the evidence, and his subsequent overruling of the defendant‘s objection to that evidence at trial, were to be expected. The defendant contends, however, that subsequent to the Patterson decision, a report published in 2009 by the National Research Council for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has called into more serious question the reliability of both the latent print identification theory and the ACE-V methodology.10 See National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States, A Path Forward 102-104, 136-145 (2009) (NAS Report). The defendant urges us to reexamine and to limit the scope of Patterson, arguing that general acceptance in the fingerprint examiner community cannot provide a basis for admissibility where the entire discipline of that community is challenged. He claims that admission of the fingerprint identification, or “individualization,” testimony was prejudicial error, and that his conviсtions should be reversed.
The NAS Report raises a number of questions about the reliability of certain aspects of the ACE-V methodology and expert testimony based on it. The report does not appear to question the underlying theory which grounds fingerprint identification evidence; as the report states, there is scientific evidence supporting the theory that fingerprints are unique to each person and do not change over a person‘s life. NAS Report at 143-144 & n.34. See Patterson, 445 Mass. at 629 (“underlying premise” of fingerprint individualization “is the uniqueness and permanence of human friction ridge arrangements“). However, the NAS report adds, “[u]niqueness and persistence are necessary conditions for friction ridge identification [i.e., fingerprint identification] to be feasible, but those conditions do not . . . guarantee that prints from two different people are always sufficiently different that they cannot be confused, or that two impressions made
The NAS Report dоes not conclude that fingerprint evidence is so unreliable that courts should no longer admit it. The report does, however, stress the subjective nature of the judgments that must be made by the fingerprint examiner at every step of the ACE-V process, including an examiner‘s ultimate conclusion that a latent print is “individualized” to a specific, identified, known print.12 NAS Report at 139, 141. One result of the subjectivity, according to the report, is that “the outcome of a friction ridge analysis is not necessarily repeatable from examiner to examiner.” NAS Report at 139. The report also points to the related issue of unintentional examiner bias.13 The report summarizes its views of the ACE-V methodology as follows:
“ACE-V provides a broadly stated framework for conducting friction ridge analyses. However, this framework is not
specific enough to qualify as a validated method for this type of analysis. ACE-V does not guard against bias; it is too broad to ensure repeatability and transparency; and does not guarantee that two analysts following it will obtain the same results. For these reasons, merely following the steps of ACE-V does not imply that one is proceeding in a scientific manner or producing reliable results.”
Id. at 142. At the same time, the report notes that “[h]istorically, friction ridge analysis has served as a valuable tool, both to identify the guilty and to exclude the innocent.” Id. Ultimately, the report focuses on the need to prevent overstatement of the accuracy of fingerprint comparisons,14 and for additional research.15
As this court did in Patterson, courts historically have found
First, and most significantly, the defendant himself testified at trial that he put his hand on the door pull in question as he approached and began to enter the Rodeway Inn after his friends had left him in the car; evidence of the fingerprints corrоborated this testimony.20 In addition, substantial other evidence connected the defendant to the scene of the robbery and homicide
Police seized the sneaker (along with its mate and another pair) from a closet in a bedroom at the defendant‘s mother‘s home — a room where the police also found personal papers bearing the defendant‘s name and photographs of him. This evidence warranted an inference that the sneaker belonged to the defendant, and therefore made it relevant. See Mass. G. Evid. §§ 401, 402 (2010). Cf. Commonwealth v. Boria, 440 Mass. 416, 420 (2003), quoting Commonwealth v. Pratt, 407 Mass. 647, 652 (1990) (“proximity to a defendant‘s personal effects may provide a link between a defendant and . . . contraband, if other evidence shows that ‘the defendant has a particular relationship’ to that location within the apartment” [emphasis in original]); Commonwealth v. Washington, 50 Mass. App. Ct. 167, 168-169 (2000) (“jury could have found . . . that the defendant constructively possessed the cocaine the police recovered from the third-floor bedroom. . . . [His] particular connection to the room where the cocaine was discovered may be inferred from the fact that his identification . . . card was
3. Dismissal of a juror. The defendant claims that the judge erred in dismissing, during jury empanelment, a seated but unsworn juror. In particular, he contends that the juror‘s dismissal violated the defendant‘s right to a representative jury under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
The background is the following. At a break during the first day of jury empanelment, a court officer reported to the judge that several court officers had seen the juror in question outside the court room talking to a woman who was not a juror. When the court officer asked the juror to step away and come with him, the woman with whom the juror had been talking walked over and joined a group of people that included members of the defendant‘s family. Based on his questioning of the juror and then the court officer, the judge found that the juror was not “as forthcoming as she should have been” and that the incident raised a “troubling connection” between the juror and the defendant‘s family.25 The judge dismissed the juror over the defendant‘s objection.
“The court shall have the discretionary authority to dismiss a juror at any time in the best interests of justice.”
4. Sufficiency of the evidence. The defendant argues that the judge erred in denying his motion for a required finding of not guilty on the charge of murder in the first degree based on a theory of deliberate premeditation because the jury heard no evidence of the gunman‘s state of mind. As a corollary, the defendant argues that because the deliberately premeditated murder charge fails, the murder conviction rests solely on a theory of felony-murder, and we therefore must vacate the consecutive sentences imposed on the four underlying armed robbery convictions.
“Because the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence as to one element only — deliberate premeditation — we examine the sufficiency of evidence relevant to that element alone.” Commonwealth v. Coleman, 434 Mass. 165, 167 (2001). We thus assess whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, any rational jury could have found deliberate premeditation beyond a reasonable doubt. Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677-678 (1979). Deliberate premeditation means that “the defendant‘s decision to kill was the product of ‘cool reflection.’ ” Commonwealth v. Coleman, supra, quoting Commonwealth v. Davis, 403 Mass.
Turning to the defendant‘s separate argument that the robbery convictions must be vacated because they are duplicative of the felony-murder conviction, we acknowledge that “[w]hen the
5. Sufficiency of the indictment. The defendant‘s final claim is that the judge erred in denying his motion to dismiss the indictment for murder in the first degree on the ground that it did not specifically allege the elements of felony-murder, but rather, charged him simply with an “intentional murder.” He аrgues that the indictment gave him inadequate notice of the crime charged in violation of his rights protected by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution; in his view, this court‘s holding that an indictment alleging “the crime of murder in the first degree . . . encompasses all theories of murder in the first degree,” Commonwealth v. DePace, 442 Mass. 739, 743-744 (2004), cert. denied, 544 U.S. 980 (2005), is made untenable by the Supreme Court‘s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence. He reads
The defendant‘s claim lacks merit. He waived this argument by filing his motion only after the Commonwealth rested. See
6. G. L. c. 278, § 33E. After our review of the entire record pursuant
Judgments affirmed.
SPINA, J. (concurring, with whom Ireland, J., joins). I concur with the opinion of the court but write separately to address the question of the form of opinion testimony by a fingerprint expert, raised by the defendant‘s objection to the testimony of Detective Lieutenant John Drawec. Drawec testified that the latent prints had been “individualized” to the defendant, and that this meant to the exclusion of all others, and that the prints absolutely belonged to the defendant. His testimony was not presented as his opinion that the prints belonged to the defendant. Rather, he indicated that by applying the ACE-V process, the prints were “individualized” to the defendant. By contrast, Detective Lieutenant Brian O‘Hara properly testified that in his opinion they belonged to the defendant. The defendant did not object to the form of O‘Hara‘s testimony, presumably because the form of his testimony, i.e., his opinion, was properly expressed. The details are set forth in the court‘s opinion ante at 723.
Fingerprint experts should not be permitted to testify in the manner of Detective Lieutenant Drawec because it is not opinion testimony. He implied that the output of the ACE-V process here was an аbsolutely certain identification. No discipline, much less fingerprint analysis, has ever been shown to produce
While we normally leave the humbling of inflated opinions to cross-examination, there is a danger that the mystique of fingerprint identification, which has had a captivating hold on the criminal justice system and society at large for more than one hundred years, is such that cross-examination may not be enough to rectify the effect of a fingerprint expert‘s use of such terms as “individualized,” “absolute,” and “match” when testifying, as opposed to presenting the testimony as his or her “opinion” that the latent fingerprints are the defendant‘s. See Commonwealth v. Banville, ante 530, 540-541 & n.3 (2010).
While the “science” of fingerprint analysis may be valid, claims by its practitioners that the process can establish identity with absolute certainty are not. Each stаge of the ACE-V analysis depends on the judgment of a human being to make “somewhat objective” or subjective determinations. Commonwealth v. Patterson, 445 Mass. 626, 630 (2005). See ante at 725-726 nn. 13, 14. Claims of absolute certainty are particularly irresponsible by a science based in large part on human judgment. In the context of a criminal trial, I would hold that, in the interest of maintaining the integrity of the fact-finding process, in the interests of justice and fair play, fingerprint experts be prohibited from expressing the results of their analysis as absolutely establishing identity, or individualizing fingerprints to a particular individual to the exclusion of all others. They should be confined to an expression of personal opinion that the latent print belongs to the defendant.
Notes
NAS Report at 142, quoting Mnookin, The Validity of Latent Fingerprint Identification: Confessions of a Fingerprinting Moderate, 7 Law, Probability & Risk 127, 139 (2008).“At present, fingerprint examiners typically testify in the language of absolute certainty. Both the conceptual foundations and the professional norms of latent fingerprinting prohibit experts from testifying to identification unless they believe themselves certain that they have made a correct match. . . . Given the general lack of validity testing for fingerprinting; the relative dearth of difficult proficiency tests; the lack of a statistically valid model of fingerprinting; and the lack of validated standards for declaring a match, such сlaims of absolute, certain confidence in identification are unjustified. . . .”
NAS Report at 143.“Error rate is a much more difficult challenge [than documentation]. Errors can occur with any judgment-based method, especially when the factors that lead to the ultimate judgment are not documented. Some in the latent print community argue that the [ACE-V] method itself, if followed correctly (i.e., by well-trained examiners properly using the method), has a zero error rate. Clearly, this assertion is unrealistic, and, moreover, it does not lead to a process of method improvement. The method, and the performance of those who use it, are inextricably linked, and both involve multiple sources of error (e.g., errors in executing the process steps, as well as errors in human judgment).”
Some recent cases have cited and discussed the NAS Report, and have continued to find fingerprint evidence admissible. See Johnston v. State, 27 So. 3d 11, 21 (Fla. 2010) (NAS Report “lacks the specificity that would justify a conclusion thаt it provides a basis to find the forensic evidence admitted at trial to be infirm“). See also United States v. Rose, 672 F. Supp. 2d 723, 726 (D. Md. 2009) (despite NAS Report, “fingerprint identification evidence based on the ACE-V methodology is generally accepted in the relevant scientific community, has a very low incidence of erroneous misidentifications, and is sufficiently reliable to be admissible under [Fed. R. Evid.] 702“).
Q.: “You are aware of mistakes being made?”
A.: “Yes, I am.”
Q.: “The wrong people being charged?”
A.: “Yes, I am.”
Q.: “Being held?”
A.: “Yes, sir.”
Q.: “So your field is not perfect?”
A.: “Humans are not perfect, sir.”
Q.: “Thank you. In reality, your discipline is actually very subjective in the sense that it is up to the individual examiner to sort of say, ‘yeah, it is, or it isn‘t correct?’ ”
A.: “Yes.”