NOTICE: Summary decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to M.A.C. Rule 

23.0, as appearing in 97 Mass. App. Ct. 1017 (2020) (formerly known as rule 1:28, 

as amended by 73 Mass. App. Ct. 1001 [2009]), are primarily directed to the parties 

and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's 

decisional rationale. Moreover, such decisions are not circulated to the entire 

court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case. 

A summary decision pursuant to rule 23.0 or rule 1:28 issued after February 25, 

2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted 

above, not as binding precedent. See Chace v. Curran, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 258, 260 

n.4 (2008).

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

APPEALS COURT

22-P-1099

COMMONWEALTH

vs.

LAMAAR MATTHEWS.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0

Following a bench trial in the Superior Court, the 

defendant was convicted of several charges stemming from a home 

invasion and armed robbery. On appeal from the judgments of 

conviction, he claims the evidence was insufficient. We affirm.

Background. The victims of the defendant's crimes were a 

father and son. On January 12, 2021, at approximately 1 A.M., 

the son went to sleep in his bedroom located downstairs in his 

family's home. He awoke when he heard his bedroom door creak 

open and then close. He turned on the flashlight on his red 

iPhone XR1 (phone), opened the door, and yelled "hello. Hello." 

The son heard footsteps and saw a "shadow" come toward him. He 

closed his door, stood against it, and yelled for help. The 

1 He kept the phone either on his person or in his bedroom when 

at home. He never let other people use his phone.
2

door was pushed open, causing the son to fall. A male intruder 

entered the bedroom, took the phone from the son's hand, turned 

off the flashlight, and put it in his pocket. In the darkened 

room the son felt the man press an object that the son believed 

to be a knife into his stomach while the man repeatedly asked,

"where the shit at."

The son heard the father running toward his bedroom. The 

intruder got off of the son and left the bedroom. When the 

father reached the bottom of the stairs, he encountered a male

intruder who was about the father's height; the man swung a 

knife at the father and told him to back up. The father yelled 

to his wife to "grab the gun." The intruder fled the house 

through the front door. The father then approached the son's 

bedroom where he encountered a second male intruder coming out 

of the room. The father described the second intruder as dark 

skinned and much shorter than the first intruder.2 The second 

man also swung a knife, and then he fled the house through the 

back door.

Several police officers were dispatched to the home, 

arriving at approximately 2:50 A.M. While in route, police were 

2 At trial, the father testified that both intruders wore "hoody" 

sweatshirts. Although he did not remember the color of the 

sweatshirts, the father acknowledged that he told police 

officers that the first man wore a gray one, and the second man

wore a green one.
3

told that the suspects were two Black men. On this "extremely 

cold" night, officers did not see any individuals or cars in the 

surrounding area. At approximately 2:55 A.M., police officer 

Colby Gallagher saw a man matching the suspect's description

about four tenths of one mile from the victims' home. Gallagher 

did not see anyone else or any cars in the area at that time. 

He stopped and spoke to the man, who was sweating and breathing 

heavily despite the cold temperature. The father was driven to 

the location and positively identified the man as the first of 

the two men he encountered in his home. The suspect, a 

juvenile,3 was arrested.

Police asked the son to use the "Find My iPhone"

application to track his stolen phone's location. The son did 

so; the phone appeared to be at a location within one mile from 

the home. At 3:47 A.M., police officer Christopher Davis

received a radio transmission about the potential location of 

the phone. He proceeded to a "heavily wooded" area where there 

were no streetlights or sidewalks. Davis did not see any 

pedestrians or cars in the area. He located the phone, with its

3 At booking, the juvenile's height was recorded as five feet ten 

inches, and his weight as 130 pounds. A search warrant executed 

on the juvenile's cell phone showed three incoming calls between 

3 A.M. and 3:20 A.M., but police were unable to identify the 

caller. The juvenile received three text messages from a 

different number during the same time frame. Police were unable 

to identify the sender.
4

flashlight on, twenty to thirty feet into the woods, in some 

thorns and brush. Davis did not touch the phone. The son had

not been in this area, did not know anyone that lived in this 

area, never met the defendant, and never left his phone 

unattended in a public place or allowed a stranger to use it.

Photographs of the phone and its location were taken by 

detective Daniel Barber. Barber could not walk a straight line 

from the road to the location of the phone due to thick brush 

and thorns. He found the phone, flashlight on, twenty-five to 

thirty feet into the woods, at the bottom of a thorn bush that

was undisturbed. Wearing gloves, Barber removed the phone from 

the brush, examined it, and noticed what appeared to be 

fingerprints. The son identified the phone as the one taken 

during the crimes. Subsequent testing revealed five latent 

fingerprints on the phone that matched the defendant's 

fingerprints.4 The defendant was arrested on April 28, 2021, at 

his home in the Dorchester section of Boston, approximately four 

months after the crimes.5

4 There were two left index fingerprints, a left little 

fingerprint, a right middle fingerprint, and a right little 

fingerprint. The defendant was excluded as the source of one 

fingerprint.

5 The defendant's home was approximately twenty miles from the 

victims' home. At booking, the defendant's height was recorded 

as five feet ten inches, and his weight as 160 pounds.
5

Discussion. As he did at trial, on appeal, the defendant 

does not contest that his fingerprints were on the phone. 

Rather, he claims that the evidence was insufficient to prove 

that his fingerprints were placed on the phone during the 

commission of the crimes. We are not persuaded.

"In determining whether the Commonwealth met its burden to 

establish each element of the offense charged, we apply the 

familiar Latimore standard. . . . '[The] question is whether, 

after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the 

[Commonwealth], any rational trier of fact could have found the 

essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.'" 

Commonwealth v. Colas, 486 Mass. 831, 836 (2021), quoting 

Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677 (1979). Inferences 

may be drawn from the evidence, but they "need not be necessary 

or inescapable, only reasonable and possible" (quotation and 

citation omitted). Commonwealth v. Schoener, 491 Mass. 706, 714 

(2023). In a jury-waived trial, it is presumed that the judge 

correctly instructed herself on the law. See Commonwealth v. 

Qasim Q., 491 Mass. 650, 664 (2023).

Here, there was direct evidence that one of the intruders 

handled the son's phone during the crimes. The son saw the man

take the phone from his hands, turn off the flashlight, and put 

the phone in his pocket. In addition, there was direct and 

circumstantial evidence that neither the son nor the father met 
6

or knew the defendant, and that the son never left his phone 

unattended in a public place or allowed anyone to use it. This 

evidence, in combination with the defendant's fingerprints on 

the phone, sufficed to support a conclusion that the defendant 

was one of the intruders and that his fingerprints were 

impressed on the phone when he handled it during the crimes. 

See Commonwealth v. Morris, 422 Mass. 254, 257 (1996) ("Where, 

for example, there is evidence that a person touched an object, 

and it is later proved that the defendant's fingerprints were on 

that object, an inference that the defendant was present at the 

time of the touching is warranted").

As in this case, when "the only identification evidence is 

the defendant's fingerprint at the crime scene, the prosecution 

must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the fingerprint was 

placed there during the crime." Morris, 422 Mass. at 257. 

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the 

Commonwealth, we also conclude that the Commonwealth met its 

burden to exclude the hypothesis that the defendant's 

fingerprints were impressed under innocent circumstances after 

the crimes. Police located the phone within one hour of the 

crimes, and within one mile of the victims' home. The phone was 

found at the bottom of undisturbed brush with thorns, more than 

twenty feet from the side of the road. It was a heavily wooded 

area that was difficult to navigate, had no streetlights or 
7

sidewalks, and there was little to no foot or vehicle traffic in 

that area from the time of the crimes to the discovery of the 

phone. Cf. Commonwealth v. Palmer, 59 Mass. App. Ct. 415, 419-

420 (2003) (sufficient circumstantial evidence where truck with 

defendant's fingerprints that was used to flee crime scene was 

found in area "not readily visible from the street, thereby 

making it unlikely someone would see it, approach it, and touch 

it during the three hours before it was found"). Contrast 

Commonwealth v. French, 476 Mass. 1023, 1025 (2017) 

(insufficient circumstantial evidence where windowpane with 

defendant's fingerprint, removed during break-in and set in 

front of store, "could have been readily accessible to any 

passerby for several hours or more"). Here, the circumstantial 

evidence, in combination with the son's testimony that he saw 

one of the intruders handle his phone during the crimes, 

sufficed to reasonably exclude the hypothesis that the 

defendant's fingerprint was impressed at a time other than when 

the crimes were being committed. 

The defendant also argues that the Commonwealth did not 

exclude the possibility that the defendant may have touched the 

phone before it was found in the woods as a driver or passenger 

in a car fleeing the crimes. Because we evaluate the evidence 

in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, this argument 

fails. See Latimore, 378 Mass. at 676-677. Officers patrolling 
8

the area shortly after the crimes did not see any people or cars 

in the area where the phone was found until the juvenile was 

located walking alone around 2:55 A.M. Although not the only 

possible scenario, it is reasonable and possible to conclude 

that the defendant was not a getaway driver or car passenger, 

and therefore, that the Commonwealth met its burden to 

reasonably exclude this hypothesis. Schoener, 491 Mass. at 714. 

Finally, to the extent that the defendant argues that the 

evidence was insufficient because there were discrepancies in 

the father's testimony concerning the height of the defendant, 

this was an issue for the fact finder to resolve, and it does 

not affect the sufficiency analysis. See Commonwealth v. 

Duncan, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 150, 153 n.5 (2008), quoting Jackson

v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979) (it is "the responsibility 

of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the 

testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable 

inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts").

Judgments affirmed.

By the Court (Meade, Blake & 

Desmond, JJ.6),

Assistant Clerk

Entered: February 8, 2024.

6 The panelists are listed in order of seniority.