Bonner v. Alves

1

OMAR BONNER, Petitioner, v. NELSON ALVES, Respondent.

Civil Action No. 23-11822-FDS

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts

August 7, 2024

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

F Dennis Saylor IV Chief Judge, United States District Court

SAYLOR C.J.

This is an action by a state prisoner seeking a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner Omar Bonner is an inmate at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Norfolk. Respondent Nelson Alves is the superintendent of that facility. After two trials in 2016 and 2017, Bonner was convicted of first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, and resisting arrest. He was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment.

Bonner now seeks habeas relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He contends that insufficient evidence was presented at trial to support a guilty verdict as to the convictions for first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm, and that his continued incarceration violates his right to due process.

The Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) previously considered and rejected those claims. Because the Court finds no reason to disturb those conclusions, and for the reasons set forth below, the petition will be denied.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

The SJC recounted the facts of the case as follows:

a. Evening of the shooting. On the evening of December 13, 2013, the victim attended a music performance at a nightclub on Blue Hill Avenue. The victim drove his brother and his girlfriend, among others, to the event in a Ford Explorer, and he parked around the corner from the venue.

[Petitioner], Denton, Robertson, and Watson attended the same performance. [Petitioner] had borrowed his sister's silver Toyota RAV4 to drive to the event. Watson drove a red Lincoln MKX that had been rented by his girlfriend the evening before, and that had been given to Watson that day.

There was no dispute that the four codefendants knew each other, and multiple pieces of evidence were introduced to support their close ties. An event photograph depicted three of the men [petitioner], Denton, and Robertson standing near one another. [Petitioner] is depicted in the photographs wearing a bright red shirt, matching bright red pants, a red hat with a pom-pom on top, and a plaid scarf. Denton is seen wearing a black wool hat and a maroon V-neck sweater over a white shirt. Robertson appears to be wearing a hat and, in some photographs, to be concealing his face with a dark scarf.

The Commonwealth also introduced cellular telephone records showing [petitioner], Denton, Robertson, and Watson sending text messages to each other, as well as placing calls, in the month leading up to the shooting and within minutes of the shooting. Indeed, [petitioner]'s mother and sister both characterized Denton as a close family friend. In addition, crime scene investigators found fingerprints that were matched to all four men inside and outside the recently rented (and cleaned) MKX.

After the show, the victim went outside, presumably to retrieve his vehicle, but he did not return to the club to pick up his brother and his girlfriend.^[1]

The shooting was captured by surveillance cameras mounted to the exterior of a residence on a residential street that intersected Blue Hill Avenue near the nightclub. The video footage depicts two sport utility vehicles (SUVs), consistent with a Lincoln MKX and a Toyota RAV4, being driven down the street together, with the MKX in the lead. The street is a one-way residential street; traffic flows west to east from Morton Street to Blue Hill Avenue. The drivers and the occupants (if any) of the SUVs are not visible in the video footage.

Approximately three minutes later, the victim's vehicle is seen being driven down the street and parallel parking into a space in front of the residence.

As the victim is finishing parking, an individual alleged to be Robertson runs into view from the direction of Morton Street.^[2] The individual approaches the driver's side of the Explorer and fires multiple rounds through the front window on the driver's side. The SUV lurches forward, striking a pickup truck. Another vehicle, alleged to be the Lincoln MKX driven by Watson, immediately pulls up alongside the Explorer, the shooter gets in, and the vehicle speeds away. The victim somehow manages to move across the seat, open the front passenger's side door, fall to the curb, and move a few feet along the sidewalk on his stomach, toward the rear of the vehicle. The MKX continues to Blue Hill Avenue and turns right. According to the Boston police department's ShotSpotter system,^[3] the volley was fired at precisely 1:45:00 a.m. The next shooting, as detected by the ShotSpotter system, occurred forty seconds later, at 1:45:40 a.m. Video footage taken from the home security system depicts the following events.^[4]

After the MKX speeds off, the victim lies wounded on the sidewalk near the passenger's side of the Explorer, with his feet moving. At 1:53:57 a.m., an individual alleged to be Denton runs down the sidewalk from the direction of Blue Hill Avenue (and the nightclub) toward the victim. The individual hurriedly crosses the street at a diagonal, glancing over his shoulder toward the intersection with Blue Hill Avenue. At 1:54:03 to 1:54:04 a.m., the individual, brandishing a handgun, approaches the victim from the driver's side rear of the Explorer. At 1:54:05 a.m., the individual stands above the victim. At that moment, another individual, alleged to be [petitioner], walks down the street and into the camera's view from the direction of Blue Hill Avenue. A second later, the man standing over the victim takes a few steps backward, squares his body into a shooting stance, and levels the gun at the victim, but the gun does not fire. At that point, the individual alleged to be [petitioner] is standing on the opposite sidewalk, looking at the shooter and moving in the shooter's direction.

Between 1:54:07 and 1:54:10 a.m., the shooter appears to “rack” the slide of the gun. He once again aims it at the victim as the other individual walks across the street to join him. At 1:54:11 to 1:54:12 a.m., the shooter fires four rounds at the victim in rapid succession. As the gunfire erupts, the individual alleged to be [petitioner] is in the middle of the street moving toward the shooter. The second shooter continues to point the gun at the victim for two more seconds, but no further shots are fired. By that time, the other individual, assertedly [petitioner], is standing next to the shooter at the rear of the Explorer. From 1:54:14 to 1:54:15 a.m., the shooter steps away from the victim; the other man exchanges places with him and kicks the victim in the head. During the next three seconds, the two men, with the shooter in the lead, cross the street and run toward Blue Hill Avenue. Police arrive at 1:55:34 a.m.

A resident of the house with the security camera was awoken at around 1:45 a.m. by four or five gunshots. He then heard what he thought was the sound of something bumping into his parked pickup truck. He looked out the second-floor window and saw the victim roll out of the passenger's side of the Explorer and collapse to the ground. The witness then observed “two guys coming down the street” from the direction of Blue Hill Avenue. One of the men, by inference Denton, “did a motion with a handgun . . . like a reset,” and pointed the gun at the victim on the ground. The witness heard more gunfire. He also saw the second individual, by inference [petitioner], kick the victim. [Petitioner] exclaimed, in a voice loud enough for the witness to hear, “dirty mother fucker.” On crossexamination, the witness explained that he believed [petitioner] had kicked an unresponsive, and presumably lifeless, body. He saw the shooter and the other man turn around and run down the street toward Blue Hill Avenue.

b. Police investigation and forensic evidence. Another neighbor called 911 to report the shooting. By that time, police had received ShotSpotter alerts of two separate shootings in the vicinity. Police responded to the scene and found the victim lying face up on the sidewalk next to the bullet-ridden Explorer. Police found ten nine-millimeter shell casings on the ground near the Explorer and four discharged projectiles inside the vehicle. These had been fired from the same weapon used to shoot the victim. The nine-millimeter weapon itself was never found. Police also recovered four .380 shell casings and three live rounds of .380-caliber ammunition from the street.^[5] The shell casings and projectiles were fired from a .380 pistol that was recovered a short time after the shooting....

The autopsy revealed that the victim had been shot nine times by a nine-millimeter handgun, and twice in the head by a .380 caliber handgun. He died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head, torso, and lower extremities. The medical examiner opined that either .380-caliber gunshot wound to the head could have caused immediate death.

At 1:45 a.m. on December 14, 2013, Boston police Detective Brian Smigielski was inside the area B-3 police station when he heard gunshots fired from two different weapons.^[6] Smigielski drove toward the scene in an unmarked vehicle. En route, he observed a RAV4 turn recklessly from Baird Street onto Morton Street.^[7] Smigielski followed the RAV4 through several residential streets, while it reached speeds of up to sixty miles per hour and went through a red light. The unmarked vehicle was not equipped with blue lights or a siren, and Smigielski did not attempt to stop the RAV4. The RAV4 eventually slowed down to the speed limit and traveled into the Hyde Park section of Boston. It then turned into the driveway of a house that later was learned to...