Court Opinion

ID: 9931056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-08 15:05:50.340527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:19:12.210205
License: Public Domain

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.
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.

                                 2
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.

                                  3
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.

                                  4
    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

                                  5
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

                                  6
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

                                   7
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.

                                  8