Commonwealth v. Exsel Muniz, March 2, 2010
456 Mass. 166
Motion to Suppress; Firearms; Ballistics Certificate.
The defendant appealed from his conviction of unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of a firearm without a firearms identification card and unlawful possession of ammunition. The defendant argued that under Melendez-Diaz, his constitutional right to confront and cross-examine witnesses against him were violated when the Commonwealth admitted ballistics certificates to prove the charges. The SJC found that admission of the ballistics certificate to prove the firearm charges did not constitute harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt but that the ammunition charge did. The court noted that the harmless beyond a reasonable doubt standard consists of a consideration of whether “on the totality of the record before us, weighing the properly admitted and the improperly admitted evidence together, we are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the tainted evidence did not have an effect on the jury and did not contribute to the jury’s verdicts.”
With respect to the firearm charges, the SJC agreed with the Commonwealth on the fact that expert testimony was not necessary to prove that the gun at issue met the statutory definition of a firearm, but found that no evidence other than the (constitutionally invalid) ballistics certificate had been admitted to prove that the firearm was operable. Despite the fact the judge did not instruct the jury it was required to consider the certificate as prima facie evidence and despite the fact the jury could have examined the gun, the court still found insufficient evidence to determine that the jury did not rely on the certificate to determine the gun’s operability and its meeting the statutory definition. The SJC accordingly reversed the firearms convictions.
Regarding the ammunition charge, the Commonwealth presented virtually the same evidence as the firearm charges, but the SJC found here that the ballistics certificate’s admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The court determined that the evidence of the cartridges themselves and the officer’s testimony that the cartridges were found in the gun magazine at the time they were seized, provided sufficient and overwhelming evidence that the cartridges met the statutory definition of ammunition. Thus the SJC affirmed the ammunition charge.
Motion to Suppress; Drugs; Drugs Certificate.
The defendant also appealed from his convictions of possession of a class B controlled substance (cocaine) and possession of a class D controlled substance (marijuana), making a similar Confrontation Clause argument with respect to drug certificates that the Commonwealth introduced against him for each charge. The Commonwealth conceded that it could not meet its burden of proving that the erroneous admission of the drug certificate was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt for the cocaine charge and thus the court reversed the conviction.
The SJC also reversed the marijuana conviction because the record indicated that marijuana was seized from the defendant at two separate times but the grand jury’s indictment only referred to a single instance of possession. The court stated that it was unable to determine which instance of possession the indictment referred and therefore that it was possible that the defendant was convicted of a crime for which he was not charged, thus necessitating reversal.
