Title: Commonwealth v. Lessieur
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SJC-13006
State: Massachusetts
Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court
Date: October 21, 2021

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revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound 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-13006 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  SHAWN LESSIEUR. 
 
 
 
Middlesex.     March 1, 2021. - October 21, 2021. 
 
Present:  Budd, C.J., Gaziano, Lowy, Cypher, Kafker, Wendlandt, 
& Georges, JJ. 
 
 
Homicide.  Deoxyribonucleic Acid.  Practice, Criminal, New 
trial, Witness, Affidavit, Assistance of counsel.  
Evidence, Scientific test.  Witness, Credibility.  
Constitutional Law, Assistance of counsel. 
 
 
 
 
Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court 
Department on May 8, 2008. 
 
 
Following review by this court, 472 Mass. 317 (2015), a 
motion for a new trial, filed on June 26, 2019, was considered 
by Elizabeth M. Fahey, J. 
 
 
A request for leave to appeal was allowed by Kafker, J., in 
the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk. 
 
 
 
Sharon Dehmand for the defendant. 
 
Hallie White Speight, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
 
2 
 
 
GAZIANO, J.  In 2009, the defendant was convicted of murder 
in the first degree in the 1994 shooting death of Mark Jones.1  
The primary evidence at trial was the testimony of a coventurer, 
who told the jury that he drove the victim and the defendant to 
an apartment complex in Lowell, using the defendant's vehicle, 
and parked there at the defendant's request; the defendant got 
out, purportedly looking for a place to urinate, and the victim 
followed.  They went around the side of the building, and he 
then heard two shots.  The convictions, and the denial of the 
defendant's first motion for a new trial, were affirmed on 
direct appeal.  See Commonwealth v. Lessieur, 472 Mass. 317, 
cert. denied, 577 U.S. 963 (2015).   
 
In 2018, the defendant's motion for postconviction forensic 
testing under G. L. c. 278A of blood found in the snow under the 
victim's head, was allowed, and the results of deoxyribonucleic 
acid (DNA) testing, of a type that had not been available at the 
time of trial, showed the presence of DNA that was neither the 
victim's nor the defendant's.  At issue here is the defendant's 
second motion for a new trial.  The motion stems from the new 
DNA results, as well as a new affidavit from a potential 
witness.   
 
1 The defendant also was convicted of carrying a firearm 
without a license.  That conviction is not before us. 
 
3 
 
 
A Superior Court judge denied the defendant's motion for a 
new trial without a hearing, and a single justice of this court 
then granted the defendant's petition under the gatekeeper 
provisions of G. L. c. 278, § 33E, and allowed the defendant's 
appeal from the denial of his motion for a new trial to proceed 
before the full court.  Having carefully reviewed the new DNA 
evidence, the statements by a witness who was not available at 
trial, and trial counsel's affidavit, we discern no error in the 
motion judge's decision to deny the motion for a new trial.  The 
motion does not raise any error that suggests a miscarriage of 
justice at the original trial, or that otherwise indicates a 
need for a new trial.  Accordingly, we affirm the Superior Court 
judge's order denying the defendant's motion for a new trial.  
 
1.  Evidence at trial.  The facts surrounding the victim's 
death and the resulting investigation are set forth in detail in 
our decision on the defendant's direct appeal.  See Lessieur, 
472 Mass. at 318-323.  We summarize those facts here and 
supplement them with other facts from the trial record relevant 
to the motion now before us.  See Commonwealth v. Sullivan, 469 
Mass. 340, 341 (2014). 
 
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1994, the victim's 
body was discovered next to a building at the University Heights 
apartment complex in Lowell.  The area was not readily 
accessible; indeed, after an initial report of shots fired, 
4 
 
Lowell police responded to the scene and did not see any signs 
of someone who had been injured or a body.  Several hours later, 
another individual, about whom little is apparent in the record, 
called 911 to report having found a body.  The body was located 
in an open area near woods.  The area was very dark, the ground 
was covered in snow, and it was difficult to see anything.  When 
emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and advanced life support 
(ALS) specialists arrived, they saw that a male was lying in the 
snow, with his face covered in blood and an apparent injury to 
the cheek.  When EMTs rolled the victim onto his side in their 
efforts to determine the source of the bleeding, they found a 
pool of blood in the snow under the victim's head.  The victim 
was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 
 
During the subsequent police investigation of the scene, 
evidence from the blood in the snow was collected, in addition 
to a cigarette butt, two discharged cartridge casings, and two 
live cartridges.  In the course of their initial investigation, 
police interviewed fifty to one hundred people but did not 
establish any concrete leads, and the case remained unsolved. 
Mark Beaulieu, a resident of the University Heights complex 
at the time of the shooting, witnessed some of the events that 
took place at the scene.  He was outside his apartment that 
night when he noticed a vehicle, parked near the Dumpster area 
for the complex, with its engine running.  He heard two gunshots 
5 
 
and then saw someone come out from the side of the building and 
get into the passenger seat of the vehicle.  Beaulieu estimated 
that, based upon the roof line of the vehicle, the passenger was 
"no taller than six feet" and had short hair, but Beaulieu was 
not able to provide any further description of the driver or the 
passenger.  After the vehicle left the apartment complex, 
Beaulieu and his wife got into their own vehicle and followed 
the departing vehicle, but they were unable to see the occupants 
clearly or to discern its license plate number.  Beaulieu 
described the vehicle as "Toyota[-]ish . . . Japanese make older 
boxy."  Beaulieu and his wife eventually turned around and 
returned to their apartment to call police. 
The officers who were dispatched in response to Beaulieu's 
call searched the area from which Beaulieu believed he had heard 
the gunshots but did not find anyone injured or a body; the area 
around the Dumpster was very dark and covered in snow.  Shortly 
after midnight, in response to a second emergency call, EMTs 
responded to the area and located the victim.  He had been shot 
once in the left cheek and once on the side of his head.  He was 
fully clothed, except that his penis was outside of his pants. 
 
Twelve years later, in April of 2006, police interviewed 
Nolyn Surprenant regarding the shooting for the first time.  
Surprenant told police that he and the defendant met in 1989 
when the defendant was placed in Surprenant's foster home; they 
6 
 
had been close friends in the years surrounding the victim's 
death, and Surprenant sold drugs for the defendant.  At the time 
of the victim's death, Surprenant had dropped out of high school 
and had moved out of his foster parents' home into an apartment 
that the defendant shared with his girlfriend.  Surprenant, who 
was generally perceived to be the defendant's bodyguard, often 
drove the defendant's vehicles. 
Surprenant explained that both he and the defendant had 
known the victim, and that the defendant had told Surprenant 
about two weeks prior to the shooting that the victim was 
planning to rob the defendant.  The defendant also told 
Surprenant that he wanted to kill the victim.  On the evening of 
the shooting, the defendant called Surprenant and asked him to 
retrieve a gun from the defendant's bedroom.  The defendant told 
Surprenant that he was with the victim at the Chelmsford Street 
Projects in Lowell.  Surprenant located the gun and drove the 
defendant's blue Toyota Corolla to meet him. 
When the two men reached each other at the Chelmsford 
Street apartment complex, the defendant explained to Surprenant 
that he had told the victim that the three were going to drive 
to meet the defendant's drug dealer, whom they were going to 
rob.  The victim then arrived to meet them, and the three men 
got into the defendant's vehicle.  Surprenant, following the 
defendant's directions, drove.  A few minutes later, Surprenant 
7 
 
stopped at a convenience store, where he gave the defendant the 
gun while the victim was not looking.  All three then got back 
into the vehicle, and at the defendant's instruction, Surprenant 
drove to the University Heights complex.  The defendant asked 
Surprenant to park next to the Dumpster and got out of the 
vehicle.  The defendant said that he was going to "take a piss," 
and the victim responded that he would go with him.  Surprenant 
remained alone in the vehicle; he turned off the lights but left 
the engine running. 
Surprenant saw the defendant and the victim walk toward the 
side of one of the nearby apartment buildings, but eventually 
lost sight of them.  Approximately three to four minutes later, 
Surprenant heard two gunshots.  The defendant returned to the 
vehicle alone about thirty second later, and Surprenant drove 
out of the complex.  The defendant said that he had "shot [the 
victim] while we was taking a piss while he had his dick in his 
hand."  The defendant expounded that, although he had shot the 
victim in the head and the face, he wanted to go back to make 
sure the victim was dead.  Rather than returning to the scene, 
however, the two drove to their former foster home, where 
Surprenant recommended that they go to the nearby Tyngsboro 
bridge where they could dispose of the gun.  They drove to the 
bridge, and the defendant got out of the vehicle.  Surprenant 
saw the defendant walk partway across the bridge, but then lost 
8 
 
sight of him.  A few minutes later, the defendant returned to 
the vehicle and told Surprenant that he had thrown the gun off 
the side of the bridge.  The two then drove back to their 
apartment. 
Surprenant continued to sell drugs for the defendant until 
August 1994, when Surprenant was arrested.  Although Surprenant 
and the defendant remained friends, they only discussed the 
shooting fleetingly, when the defendant informed Surprenant a 
few weeks after the incident that he had told a couple of people 
that he had killed the victim.  Surprenant told his former 
girlfriend, Kristin Tatro, about the shooting in 1996 or 1997, 
and his brother, Jason, in 1999.  
Surprenant initially recounted the events surrounding the 
shooting in 2006, while sitting in a police cruiser, after 
police drove him to the University Heights apartment complex.  
He subsequently returned to the Lowell police station later that 
evening, where he made a video-recorded statement.  Surprenant 
also led police to the Tyngsboro bridge, where the defendant 
purportedly had disposed of the gun; police then took him home.  
The following month, Surprenant was arrested in conjunction with 
the shooting, and his attorney negotiated a deal whereby 
Surprenant would testify against the defendant in exchange for 
serving a term of five years of imprisonment on a manslaughter 
charge. 
9 
 
2.  Proceedings at trial.  As both parties acknowledge, the 
trial was largely a referendum on Surprenant's credibility.  His 
account was the only direct evidence linking the defendant to 
the crime.  The defense cross-examined Surprenant extensively.  
Defense counsel highlighted the inconsistencies between 
Surprenant's trial testimony and his prior statements to police, 
in addition to soliciting testimony from two men who reported 
that Surprenant had given them different accounts of the 
shooting.  The theory of defense, which the defendant sought to 
establish through cross-examination, was that either Surprenant 
himself, or a third-party culprit, had shot the victim.  In 
particular, defense counsel focused the jury's attention on the 
favorable terms of the plea agreement that Surprenant had 
reached with the Commonwealth.  The prosecutor sought to bolster 
Surprenant's credibility in part through the introduction of his 
prior consistent statements to his brother and Tatro, as well as 
to police.   
While physical evidence played a limited role in the 
proceedings, it served largely to buttress Surprenant's account 
of events.  The prosecutor solicited testimony from the medical 
examiner, who testified that stippling on the victim's skin 
indicated that he had been shot at close range.  The medical 
examiner also testified that the locations of the bullet wounds 
were consistent with the description that Surprenant provided as 
10 
 
to what the defendant had told him as they drove away from the 
scene.  A ballistics expert testified that the bullet casings 
recovered at the scene, and projectiles obtained during the 
victim's autopsy, showed to a reasonable degree of certainty 
that the casings and projectiles had been fired from the same 
weapon.   
Most significantly with respect to the defendant's present 
motion, a serologist also testified.  The serologist explained 
that DNA evidence on the cigarette butt recovered from the 
scene, as well as DNA evidence take from the blood under the 
victim's head, matched that of the victim.  The serologist 
explained further: 
"With the analysis from the blood in the snow, I obtained 
an indication of a DNA mixture, and what I mean by a 
mixture is that there's indication that there is more than 
one profile of DNA type present in that particular sample.  
However, with this sample I was able to see that there was 
a major profile or a more predominant profile than the 
other, and that major male profile that was obtained from 
the snow matched that of the DNA profile of Mark Jones." 
 
Neither the prosecutor nor defense counsel asked any questions 
to further clarify the content of what was described as the DNA 
mixture, or the possibility that the other DNA profiles present 
in the sample would be able to positively identify a third-party 
culprit. 
3.  Newly available evidence.  As stated, the defendant 
argues that two types of newly available evidence -- the DNA 
11 
 
evidence and a statement by a witness who was unavailable at 
trial -- undermine the justice of his conviction.   
a.  DNA evidence.  In 2012, a Superior Court judge allowed 
the defendant's motions under G. L. c. 278A, §§ 3 and 7, for 
postconviction DNA testing of both the blood evidence taken from 
underneath the victim's head and the live bullet cartridges.  
Because of advances in technology since the initial testing had 
been conducted in 2002,2 the testing of the blood evidence 
collected from the snow under the victim's head produced a more 
detailed analysis of the aforementioned "DNA mixture" that the 
serologist described at trial.  Specifically, testing revealed 
an allele3 from that mixture that matched neither the victim's 
nor the defendant's DNA.  The allele thus indicated an 
unexplained third contributor to the blood evidence taken from 
the snow. 
b.  Witness affidavit.  In the months following the 
victim's death, Gale Grzyb4 gave several inconsistent statements 
 
2 The 2018 testing was conducted using a PowerPlex Fusion 6C 
STR kit, a methodology that was not available when the DNA 
initially was examined.  The initial testing was conducted using 
a Profiler Plus/COfiler STR kit. 
 
3 "A DNA profile for an individual is that combination of 
alleles, or versions of genes, possessed by the individual at 
the loci tested."  Commonwealth v. Gaynor, 443 Mass. 245, 248 
n.1 (2005). 
 
4 At the time of the shooting, Grzyb was known as Gale 
Johnston. 
12 
 
to police regarding her interactions with the victim on the day 
of the shooting.  More than twelve years later, prior to trial, 
defense counsel assigned an investigator to locate and interview 
her, but the investigator was unable to find her, she was not 
subpoenaed, and she did not testify at trial.   
In a new affidavit, which repeats certain key elements of 
her earlier statements, Grzyb now asserts that, on the day of 
the killing, she had been released on a day pass from Lowell 
General Hospital, where she was committed for a period of 
observation.  While visiting her old neighborhood that day, 
Grzyb encountered the victim, with whom she was friendly, and 
gave him a ride to the University Heights apartment complex.  
According to Grzyb's averments in the affidavit, as the victim 
was getting out of her vehicle, another vehicle, with two male 
occupants, drove by.  Grzyb had drawn sketches of these two men 
in 1994.  In the drawing, one of the men arguably resembled an 
initial police sketch of one of the suspects in the case, who 
was never arrested.  Grzyb avers that, when he saw the two men, 
the victim looked nervous, got out of her vehicle, and walked 
away from her toward the side of an apartment building.  
Although her view was blocked by a snowbank, Grzyb avers that 
she heard two gunshots as she subsequently drove away.  Grzyb 
also concedes in the affidavit that she was a drug addict and 
active drug user during the relevant period in 1994. 
13 
 
4.  Discussion.  A motion for a new trial may be granted 
"at any time if it appears that justice may not have been done."  
Mass. R. Crim. P. 30 (b), as appearing in 435 Mass. 1501 (2001).  
In reviewing a decision on a motion for a new trial, we examine 
the motion judge's conclusions to determine whether there has 
been a "significant error of law or other abuse of discretion" 
(citation omitted), Commonwealth v. Brescia, 471 Mass. 381, 387 
(2015), or, otherwise put, whether the motion judge's conclusion 
was "manifestly unjust," Commonwealth v. Moore, 408 Mass. 117, 
125 (1990).  We will overturn the motion judge's decision only 
where "the decision falls outside the range of reasonable 
alternatives."  Commonwealth v. Kolenovic, 471 Mass. 664, 672 
(2015), S.C., 478 Mass. 189 (2017), quoting L.L. v. 
Commonwealth, 470 Mass. 169, 185 n.27 (2014).  Because the 
motion judge here was not the trial judge, and the motion 
judge's rulings did not rest upon credibility determinations 
following an evidentiary hearing, we regard ourselves in as good 
a position as the motion judge to assess the trial record.  See 
Commonwealth v. Raymond, 450 Mass. 729, 733 (2008). 
 
To prevail on a motion for a new trial based on newly 
discovered evidence, a defendant must meet the two-prong test 
set forth in Commonwealth v. Grace, 397 Mass. 303, 305 (1986).  
The defendant must establish, first that the evidence is "newly 
available" or "newly discovered" and, second, that the evidence 
14 
 
"casts real doubt" on the justice of the conviction.  Sullivan, 
469 Mass. at 350.  See Commonwealth v. Cintron, 435 Mass. 509, 
516 (2001). 
a.  DNA evidence.  The Commonwealth does not dispute that 
the results of the scientific analysis at issue here constitute 
"newly available evidence" in the requisite sense.  It contends 
only that the defendant's motion for a new trial does not 
satisfy the second prong of the test articulated in Grace, 397 
Mass. at 305.  We therefore consider whether the motion judge 
abused her discretion in concluding that the test results did 
not "cast[] real doubt on the justice of the conviction."  Id.   
Seen in that light, the new DNA evidence at issue here is 
unlike that which we have determined necessitated a new trial in 
other cases.  In Commonwealth v. Cowels, 470 Mass. 607 (2015), 
for instance, new DNA evidence excluded both the victim and the 
defendants as sources of bloodstains that the prosecution's key 
witness stated at trial were proof that the defendants had used 
the witness's bathroom to wash up shortly after killing the 
victim.  See id. at 608.  Testing at the time of the defendants' 
trial in that case indicated that the stains did contain human 
blood, but could not identify or exclude the victim or the 
defendants as possible contributors.  Id.  Similarly, in 
Sullivan, 469 Mass. at 349-351, postconviction DNA testing found 
that purported bloodstains on the defendant's jacket that were 
15 
 
critical at trial in tipping the scales in favor of the 
Commonwealth contained neither blood nor the victim's DNA.  
Completing this recent trifecta is Commonwealth v. Cameron, 473 
Mass. 100 (2015), in which new DNA testing determined that DNA 
evidence, which had been introduced at trial as inconclusive, 
actually excluded the defendant as a possible contributor to 
seminal residue on the underwear of an alleged rape victim.  Id. 
at 101.    
By contrast to each of these circumstances, the discovery 
of the single nonmatching allele at issue here neither shows 
that evidence presented at trial was inaccurate, nor would have 
removed from the jury's consideration any evidence that was 
before them at trial.  Perhaps more importantly, unlike the DNA 
evidence introduced and relied upon in Cameron, Cowels, or 
Sullivan, the DNA evidence introduced at the defendant's initial 
trial was not used to bolster the Commonwealth's case.  The 
prosecutor did not attempt to prove that the "DNA mixture" 
described by the serologist demonstrated that the defendant was 
the perpetrator or confirmed Surprenant's narrative of events.  
See supra.  On the other hand, in each of the three prior cases, 
the physical evidence that subsequently was reexamined was 
critical to the Commonwealth's case because it buttressed key 
testimony.   
16 
 
Relatedly, unlike these prior cases, the new evidence at 
issue here lacks the required "measure of strength in support of 
the defendant's position" and, thus, does not create a 
"substantial risk that the jury would have reached a different 
conclusion had the evidence been admitted at trial."  See Grace, 
397 Mass. at 305-306.  The defendant maintains that the new 
evidence meaningfully contributes to his third-party culprit 
defense, because the allele necessarily was left at the time of 
the killing by the real perpetrator of the crime.  The source of 
this allele, however, in our view is far from obvious.  The 
victim's body apparently lay in a public location for hours 
before it was found.  Evidence introduced at trial established 
that at least one resident in the nearby apartment building 
encountered the body, and EMTs, as well as ALS and other first 
responders, spent significant time in the area where the body 
was found, attempting to assist the victim, before the sample 
was obtained.  Moreover, the area was near the Dumpsters that 
served the apartment complex, and where people could have 
walked, and deposited DNA, on the ground prior to the snowstorm 
that could have mixed with the blood, which one of the EMTs 
described as a "pool" underneath the victim's head.  Nor was the 
nature of the crime -- a shooting in the face while the victim 
apparently was occupied in smoking and urinating -- one in which 
the perpetrator would be expected to be injured in a 
17 
 
confrontation with the victim.  This was no knife fight where 
the individual wielding the knife might have been sliced as the 
victim fought for his life, nor barroom brawl.  There was no 
testimony concerning hand-to-hand combat, and the area at the 
scene did not suggest any form of disturbance that would 
indicate a struggle had taken place in which the perpetrator 
also had been injured.  Nor was any kind of struggle likely, 
given the evidence that both of the victim's hands had been 
occupied, and the almost certain immediate incapacitation of 
someone who has been shot twice in the face and is bleeding from 
those injuries. 
On this record, the stray allele thus is not necessarily 
linked to the perpetrator, regardless of the perpetrator's 
identity.  The new DNA evidence therefore lacks "the 
materiality, weight, and significance" to necessitate a new 
trial.  See Grace, 397 Mass. at 306.   
b.  Witness affidavit.  The defendant also argues that 
Grzyb's affidavit, alone or in conjunction with the new DNA 
evidence, requires a new trial.  To meet the first prong of the 
test set forth in Grace, 397 Mass. at 305, the defendant relies 
on an affidavit by his trial counsel to the effect that Grzyb 
was "unavailable at the time of trial, or that the evidence 
could not have been procured by due diligence."  Commonwealth v. 
Toney, 385 Mass. 575, 581 (1982).  In that affidavit, trial 
18 
 
counsel asserts that, at the time of trial, he was aware of 
Grzyb's interviews with police and the statements she had made.  
He hired a private investigator who attempted to locate her, 
but, "despite our best efforts, she was not to be found."  The 
defendant therefore maintains that Grzyb's affidavit became 
available only after a subsequent private investigator was able 
to locate and interview Grzyb, in another jurisdiction, in 2017. 
Setting aside whether trial counsel's original efforts and 
the evidence of these efforts are sufficient to prove Grzyb's 
unavailability at the time of trial, in our view her current 
affidavit "inherently lack[s] persuasive force," such that it 
does not "cast real doubt on the conviction" as required under 
Grace, and, therefore, does not "require allowance of the new 
trial motion."  Commonwealth v. Stewart, 422 Mass. 385, 389 
(1996).  See Commonwealth v. Sparks, 433 Mass. 654, 661 (2001).  
As articulated by the defense's own trial counsel in his 
affidavit, based on Grzyb's multiple interviews with officers 
and her varying statements to them in the months following the 
victim's death, he "believed that [Grzyb's] statements to the 
police were not credible and made little sense."  We cannot 
fault this view of the evidence and conclude that a similar 
understanding applies equally well to Grzyb's most recent 
affidavit.   
19 
 
As set forth in that affidavit, Grzyb's new account of her 
interactions with the victim on the day of his death, and what 
she saw that day, is meaningfully inconsistent with her prior 
statements and the trial testimony of multiple disinterested 
witnesses.  For example, Grzyb asserts in her affidavit that she 
did not see the victim being shot, whereas she repeatedly has 
said in the past that she did see the shooting.  Additionally, 
Grzyb's testimony that there were two running vehicles parked in 
the parking lot of the complex, near the Dumpsters, moments 
before the gunshots were heard is inconsistent with Beaulieu's 
testimony that just one vehicle was parked with its engine 
running.   
While a new trial may be warranted where the Commonwealth's 
case relies heavily upon the testimony of a single witness, such 
as Surprenant, and the newly discovered evidence contradicts or 
strongly undermines that testimony, such as Grzyb's does, see 
Commonwealth v. Drayton, 479 Mass. 479, 490 (2018), the newly 
discovered evidence must bear indicia of reliability, see 
Cowels, 470 Mass. at 621.  Given her differing prior accounts, 
and the inconsistencies with the testimony of another bystander 
witness, Grzyb's new affidavit does not do so. 
c.  Ineffective assistance of counsel.  The defendant also 
argues that, even if we conclude that Grzyb's affidavit does not 
necessitate a new trial, we should decide that a new trial is 
20 
 
required because the defendant's trial counsel was 
constitutionally ineffective in failing to locate Grzyb at the 
time of his trial, thus resulting in a substantial likelihood of 
a miscarriage of justice at trial.  
In considering ineffective assistance of counsel claims in 
cases of murder in the first degree on plenary review, we do not 
apply the familiar Saferian standard of review,5 but instead 
apply "the more favorable standard of G. L. c. 278, § 33E, and 
review [the] claim to determine whether there was a substantial 
likelihood of a miscarriage of justice."  Commonwealth v. Perez, 
484 Mass. 69, 74 (2020), quoting Commonwealth v. Ayala, 481 
Mass. 46, 62 (2018).  Accordingly, we determine "whether defense 
counsel erred during the course of the trial," and "if so, 
whether that error was likely to have influenced the jury's 
conclusion" (citation omitted).  Perez, supra.  Where a 
defendant has received plenary review under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, 
however, subsequent claims of ineffective assistance of counsel 
that could have been raised in the defendant's direct appeal are 
reviewed under the standard of a substantial risk of a 
miscarriage of justice.  Commonwealth v. Drew, 447 Mass. 635, 
638-639 (2006), cert. denied, 550 U.S. 943 (2007). 
 
 
5 See Commonwealth v. Saferian, 366 Mass. 89, 96 (1974). 
21 
 
In circumstances where tactical or strategic decisions are 
at issue, such as whether to pursue or call witnesses who might 
have provided potentially exculpatory testimony, see Perez, 484 
Mass. at 74, "we conduct our review with some deference to avoid 
characterizing as unreasonable a defense that was merely 
unsuccessful," Commonwealth v. Valentin, 470 Mass. 186, 190 
(2014), quoting Commonwealth v. White, 409 Mass. 266, 272 
(1991).  Thus, such decisions amount to ineffective assistance 
of counsel only if they were "'manifestly unreasonable' when 
made."  Commonwealth v. Lane, 462 Mass. 591, 596 (2012), quoting 
Commonwealth v. Zagrodny, 443 Mass. 93, 102 (2004).  
Here, we cannot say that defense counsel's strategic 
decision not to pursue Grzyb, and not to present her testimony 
to the jury, was manifestly unreasonable.  As trial counsel 
averred in his affidavit, at the time of trial, he was aware of 
Grzyb's statements to police, and hired a private investigator 
in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to locate her.  Counsel 
then did not take additional steps to do so in light of his 
belief that Grzyb's statements "were not credible and made 
little sense."  Rather than focusing on Grzyb's testimony, 
counsel believed that the defendant's "strongest theory of 
defense was to highlight reasonable doubt as to [his 
culpability] and to attack the motives and credibility of 
[Surprenant]."  This strategy is not manifestly unreasonable, 
22 
 
given the contradictory nature of Grzyb's statements, as well as 
the discrepancies between her statements to police and those of 
another disinterested witness, as discussed supra. 
d.  Cumulative effect.  The defendant also argues that he 
was prejudiced by the cumulative effect of these errors, and 
that, taken together, the "errors establish a substantial risk 
of miscarriage of justice."  This argument is unavailing, given 
the relative weaknesses in the newly available evidence we have 
detailed.  Any cumulative error thus was "no more prejudicial 
than any individual errors, which had minimal impact, if any."  
Commonwealth v. Duran, 435 Mass. 97, 107 (2001). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Order denying motion for a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  new trial affirmed.