Commonwealth v. Lys W. Vincent. ( 2023 )

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-804
COMMONWEALTH
vs.
LYS W. VINCENT.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0
After a Superior Court jury trial, the defendant appeals
from his convictions of burning a building, G. L. c. 266, § 2, and
breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, G. L.
c. 266, § 18. We affirm.
1. The search warrant. The defendant first asserts that
evidence recovered from his car should have been suppressed,
because the search warrant for the car was not supported by
probable cause. Reviewing de novo and looking only to the four
corners of the search warrant affidavit, we conclude that the
motion was correctly denied. See Commonwealth v. O'Day, 440
Mass. 296, 297-298 (2003).
The defendant argued in his motion that the warrant
affidavit contained unlawfully obtained information. The motion
judge agreed that portions of the affidavit were based on an
unconstitutional search and interrogation but concluded that,
even after the unlawful portions of the affidavit were excised,
it still established probable cause for the search. Without the
unlawfully obtained information, the affidavit established the
following.
On September 24, 2017, Methuen firefighters responding to a
fire at a multi-use building reported a strong odor of gasoline.
They contacted police, who found that the fire was limited to a
room being used as a church. Police observed several areas of
charring on the carpet, forming an irregular burn pattern, and
they found burned pages from what appeared to be a Bible on the
floor next to the charred areas. Police also detected a strong
odor of gasoline, and a specially trained police dog detected an
accelerant in several spots on the carpet and on one of the
pews. As a result, police believed that the fire was set
intentionally by applying an open flame to ignitable liquid
vapors.
The next day, police obtained video surveillance footage
from another tenant in the building showing that a man in an
older model, dark-colored Toyota Camry with the partial license
plate number "921" arrived at the building at 9:53 P.M. on the
night of the fire. From the video, it appeared that he went
inside the building with a black bag, returned to his car at
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10:10 P.M. without the bag, and promptly left. A 911 call
reporting the fire was placed between one and three minutes
later.
Using the partial plate number, police ran a search in the
registry of motor vehicles database. It returned a potential
match for a dark blue 1998 Camry registered to Lys Walker
Vincent. A list of church members provided to police by the
pastors also showed a member named Walker Vincent. Upon
arriving at Vincent's registered address, police observed a dark
blue 1998 Camry with the Massachusetts license plate 6FM921.
Based on these facts, police sought a warrant to search the car
for evidence that someone intentionally set the fire at the
church.
Probable cause exists to issue a search warrant when the
affidavit contains "sufficient information for an issuing
magistrate to determine that the items sought are related to the
criminal activity under investigation, and that the items
reasonably may be expected to be located in the place to be
searched at the time the search warrant issues." Commonwealth
v. Wilson, 427 Mass. 336, 342 (1998). On appeal, the defendant
does not challenge that there was probable cause to conclude a
crime was committed, but he contends that the car's presence at
the scene was not enough to establish a nexus between the car
and the crime. We need not decide whether mere presence was
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enough to establish probable cause, however, because here there
was more. The timing of the car's arrival and departure in
relation to the time of the fire, the fact that the car was
registered to a church member, and the footage of the driver
apparently carrying into the building a bag that could have
contained the accelerant, went well beyond mere presence and
established a sufficient nexus between the car and the crime.
Accordingly, there was probable cause to issue the search
warrant, and the evidence found in the car -- including gasoline
residue on the passenger-side carpet -- was properly admitted at
trial.
2. Sufficiency of the evidence. The defendant next argues
that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he committed
either charged crime. 1 We review to determine "whether, after
viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the
prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the
essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt."
Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677 (1979), quoting
Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 318-319 (1979). "The
1 The defendant moved for a required finding of not guilty at the
close of the Commonwealth's evidence but did not renew the
motion at the close of all the evidence. Regardless, "a verdict
based upon legally insufficient evidence is inherently serious
enough to create a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice,
so we review such claims without regard to the defendant's
procedural shortcomings." Commonwealth v. Williams, 63 Mass.
App. Ct. 615, 617 (2005).
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relevant question is whether the evidence would permit a jury to
find guilt, not whether the evidence requires such a finding."
Commonwealth v. Brown, 401 Mass. 745, 747 (1988). We bear in
mind that "arsonists are 'furtive criminals,' and thus can often
be brought to justice only by a 'web of circumstantial evidence'
that entwines the suspect in guilt beyond a reasonable doubt"
(citations omitted). Commonwealth v. Robinson, 34 Mass. App.
Ct. 610, 616-617 (1993).
To convict the defendant of burning a building under G. L.
c. 266, § 2, the Commonwealth was required to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that he willfully and maliciously set fire to a
church or other building described by that statute. Proof of
the defendant's motive was not required. See Commonwealth v.
Borodine, 371 Mass. 1, 8 (1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1049(1977). See also Commonwealth v. McLaughlin, 431 Mass. 506, 513
n.6 (2000). To convict the defendant of breaking and entering
with intent to commit a felony under G. L. c. 266, § 18, the
Commonwealth was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that he broke into and entered the church with the intent to
commit arson or another felony. 2 See Commonwealth v. Burton, 82
Mass. App. Ct. 912, 913 (2012).
2 The arson of which the defendant was convicted is a felony,
punishable by a State prison sentence. See G. L. c. 266, § 2.
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Here, there was evidence tying the defendant to the scene
at the time of the fire, including significantly more
surveillance video evidence than was described in the search
warrant affidavit. Witnesses positively identified the
defendant in a surveillance video from 8:38 P.M. that night
which showed him emerge empty-handed from a dark-colored Camry -
- which was registered to him -- wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and
flip-flops. The defendant reappeared in the footage just before
9 P.M., carrying some items with both hands, placing them in the
car's trunk, and driving away.
About an hour later, at 9:53 P.M., the footage showed
someone apparently wearing the same clothes arrive in what
appeared to be the same car. That person, who the jury could
reasonably infer was the defendant, got out of the car carrying
a black bag with something inside it and walked in the direction
of the building entrance. At 10:06 P.M., the defendant returned
to the car carrying an object that the jury reasonably could
have inferred was the black bag -- with little if anything
inside of it -- and put it in the front passenger area of his
car. The defendant then walked back again in the direction of
the building.
At 10:10 P.M., the defendant reappeared in the parking lot,
empty-handed, and drove away in his car. The fire alarm went
off at 10:12 P.M.
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From this evidence, the jury could reasonably infer not
only that the defendant was present when the fire started, but
that he hoped to escape before any firefighters or police
arrived. Contrary to the defendant's argument, the fact that
there were potentially innocent reasons for his presence at the
scene did not bar the jury from concluding that the suspicious
timing was evidence of his guilt. 3 See Commonwealth v.
Grandison, 433 Mass. 135, 141 (2001) ("The government need not
exclude every possible hypothesis embracing innocence to prove
its case"). Nor did the presence of other people at the scene
bar the jury from inferring that it was the defendant who
committed the crime. See Commonwealth v. Medeiros, 354 Mass.
193, 197 (1968), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 1058 (1969) ("That
another might have had the opportunity to do the act goes only
to the weight of the evidence").
The jury could also reasonably infer from the footage that,
on the defendant's first trip into the building, he removed some
items he wished to save; on his second trip, he left the
contents of the black bag inside the building but brought the
3 The jury could reasonably infer that the defendant was not, for
example, there in order to pick up other church members who were
returning from a church trip to Somerville. The defendant
parked in back of the church, while other church members had
parked in front of the church earlier that evening to gather for
the trip.
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bag back outside and put it in the car's front passenger area;
and on his third trip, he lit the fire. From the evidence that
gasoline residue was present on the car's passenger-side carpet,
the jury could infer that the black bag had contained gasoline. 4
The jury could also reasonably infer that the defendant
broke into and entered through the back door of the church, then
willfully and maliciously set a fire using the gasoline.
Photographs and police testimony showed that a window in the
back door leading to the church had been smashed from the
outside, and that force had been applied to a padlock and hasp
used to secure the door, allowing it to be opened. 5 Photographs
also showed irregular and unconnected fire damage to several
4 Although the defendant argues that the jury could not
reasonably infer anything significant from the presence of
gasoline in a gasoline-powered car, the weight to give this
evidence was for the jury to decide. Even if one might expect
there to be traces of gasoline in the car wholly apart from the
commission of any crime, it was still reasonable and possible to
infer that the defendant transported the gasoline in his car,
brought it into the church inside the black bag, used it to
start the fire, and then brought the bag back to his car. "An
inference, if not forbidden by some rule of law, need only be
reasonable and possible; it need not be necessary or
inescapable." Commonwealth v. Beckett, 373 Mass. 329, 341
(1977).
5 The defendant argues that the evidence of breaking and entering
was insufficient because there was evidence that a door in the
vestibule was broken sometime before 6 P.M., long before he was
seen in the security video. This argument misunderstands the
Commonwealth's case, which relied on the breaking of the back
door to the church, not the vestibule door to which the
defendant refers.
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pews, chairs, and areas of carpet within the sanctuary. A State
police investigator testified that in his expert opinion, "to a
reasonable degree of fire certainty," the fire was likely set
intentionally using "ignitable liquid vapors," and testing from
samples of the church's carpet confirmed that gasoline residue
was present. Further evidence that the perpetrator acted
willfully and maliciously included the burning of the altar, the
torn pages of a book present on the floor, and the broken window
and hasp on the back door.
Finally, the malicious nature of the crime could have
suggested to the jury that the perpetrator had a personal
connection to the church, and the jury could have inferred that
the defendant was such a person. He was an active member of the
church who had a close relationship with at least one of the
pastors for at least one year before the fire. Despite their
relationship, and despite the fact that virtually every other
member contacted the pastor after the fire, the defendant never
called to express concern.
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In sum, the evidence was sufficient to convict the
defendant of both crimes.
Judgments affirmed.
By the Court (Wolohojian,
Desmond & Sacks, JJ. 6),
Clerk
Entered: December 8, 2023.
6 The panelists are listed in order of seniority.
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