Commonwealth v. Wilson

486 Mass. 328

158 N.E.3d 43

COMMONWEALTH

v.Quoizel L. WILSON.

SJC-11985

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Barnstable..

Argued March 6, 2020.

Decided November 30, 2020.

Janet Hetherwick Pumphrey, Boston, for the defendant.

Elizabeth A. Sweeney, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Gants, C.J., Lenk, Lowy, Cypher, & Kafker, JJ.¹

CYPHER, J.

A jury convicted the defendant, Quoizel L. Wilson, of murder in the first degree on the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty, after he shot the victim, Trudie Hall, multiple times in the torso, killing her. The defendant also was convicted of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and improper disposition of a human body. The defendant raises two primary arguments: (1) his cell site location information (CSLI) should have been suppressed because originally it was obtained by police without a warrant and a subsequent search for the same information pursuant to a warrant was tainted by the initial warrantless search; and (2) his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to move to suppress the fruits of the initial warrantless CSLI search. We consolidated the defendant's direct appeal with the appeal from the denial of his motion for a new trial, and we now affirm. We also decline to grant extraordinary relief pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E.

Background. 1. Facts. We summarize the facts the jury could have found, reserving certain facts for later discussion. On July 27, 2010, Hall, a Nantucket resident, traveled to Hyannis, where she and her husband, Ram Rimal, checked into separate rooms at the Bayside Resort hotel. The two were scheduled to attend an appointment in Boston the following day. Rimal had rented a vehicle. He and Hall drove to a mall to see a movie together, and then bought take-out food for dinner. Afterward, they returned to the hotel; Rimal went to his room, and Hall took the rental vehicle, saying she had to print some things. That was the last time Rimal saw her.

The following morning Rimal unsuccessfully tried to reach Hall by cellular telephone (cell phone). Hall was not in her hotel room, but the bed appeared to have been slept in, and Hall had left a shopping bag containing clothes and money in the room. Rimal contacted Hall's mother, Vivienne Walker, and the two reported Hall's disappearance to police. Rimal later obtained call records for Hall's cell phone, and Walker tried calling the numbers Hall most recently had contacted. One of the telephone numbers belonged to the defendant. Walker later gave the list of telephone numbers to police.

Hall was five months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. She had been having an affair with the defendant, who also was married. Walker also had received a telephone call from an unknown woman who made "slander-ish" remarks about Hall's pregnancy. Walker told police she thought the caller was the wife of the father of Hall's baby.

On July 29, 2010, police located the rental vehicle in a commuter parking lot by Route 6. The interior of the vehicle was stained with a significant amount of human blood, later shown to belong to Hall, consistent with a fatal amount of blood loss if left untreated. Among other things, police recovered from the vehicle a copper jacket fragment from a spent projectile, two lead fragments, and one lead core portion of a spent projectile, apparent bone fragments, and a piece of human flesh. The copper jacket fragment was fired from a .38 caliber class weapon, which could include a nine millimeter handgun.

The defendant was the registered owner of a nine millimeter Beretta 92FS pistol; records showed that the pistol had not been reported missing. The defendant also previously had made statements in front of friends implying that he carried a gun with sixteen rounds, consistent with a nine millimeter Beretta 92FS pistol.

Hall had told a friend that she thought the defendant was the father of her unborn child and that he wanted her to get an abortion.² On July 29, 2010, someone sent a message from the victim's social media account, claiming she was in the hospital after an abortion. Police determined that Hall was not a patient at any area hospital.

At about 1 A.M. on July 30, 2010, police spoke with the defendant on the front steps of his house. His wife was in the house at the time. The defendant told police that he was a friend of Hall and admitted that he had seen her at the hotel on July 27, but he denied having any sexual relationship with her.

On August 2, 2010, police obtained cell phone subscriber information and call logs for Hall, the defendant, and another number belonging to the defendant's wife. The records showed numerous calls and text messages between Hall and the defendant on July 27, until about 10 P.M. Between 10:09 and 10:18 P.M. , Hall made eleven calls, each lasting only seconds, to a telephone number belonging to Mawande Senene. The activity on Hall's telephone ceased at 10:49 P.M. Police interviewed Senene on August 2, and he stated he had noticed the calls, but did not pick up because he did not recognize the number. He said he had a voicemail from a "Rudy," "Trudie," or "Judy," asking him to call her back, but he did not. Instead, he called the defendant because he recognized the number as a Nantucket exchange, and he knew the defendant used to live there.

On August 3, 2010, police obtained additional cell phone records that included CSLI³ for the same three numbers belonging to Hall, the defendant, and the defendant's wife.⁴ The defendant's CSLI placed him at the victim's hotel, at the commuter lot where the rental vehicle was found, and in the location where the victim's body would later be discovered, at relevant times on the night of the murder. The CSLI also showed that Hall's cell phone and the defendant's cell phone traveled together throughout the evening of July 27.

The defendant was interviewed by police for the second time on August 3, 2010, at his own request. During the interview, which was recorded, the defendant admitted that he had been having an affair with Hall, but insisted he had been at home the night of the murder. After being confronted with the fact that police had information (based on the CSLI) showing that he was not at home, the defendant stated that he had been driving on the Service Road that night to sell cocaine to a friend named J.D. Lang.

Police interviewed Lang on August 4, 2010. Lang at first stated that he had met up with the defendant the night of the murder, but later admitted that he had been lying and that the defendant had called him and asked him to give that false story if someone called asking about him. Police also interviewed Senene again on August 4, 2010. Senene then told police that on July 29, the defendant had requested that Senene meet him at his house, and when Senene arrived, the defendant had asked him to lie and say he was with the defendant the night of July 27. Senene refused.

Police interviewed the defendant again on August 5, 2010, the same day that they executed a search warrant for the defendant's home. During the interview, the defendant repeated his claims that he had met with Hall at the hotel the afternoon of July 27, and denied meeting with her later in the evening. He repeated his assertion that he had met with Lang later that evening to sell him drugs. Even after being confronted with information (derived from the CSLI) that contradicted his claims, the defendant insisted on his version of events.

Hall's remains were discovered nearly two years after the murder by a man walking his dog in a wooded area near a water tower off Hayway Road in Falmouth.⁵ Hall's skeleton showed damage consistent with gunshot trauma. The trauma indicated that the bullets traveled from the back or side of Hall's body toward the front.

Seven jacketed spent projectiles and one jacket from a spent projectile were recovered from the scene at Hayway Road, all of which were .38 caliber ammunition bearing markings consistent with having been shot from a Beretta model 92. The medical examiner determined that the cause of death was gunshot wounds to the torso.

In 2014, police acquired a search warrant to obtain the same CSLI information that they previously had obtained in 2010 pursuant to a § 2703 order.

2. Procedural background. Prior to trial, the defendant moved to suppress all of the cell phone records obtained by the Commonwealth. The trial judge denied the motion, determining that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the Commonwealth's access to records other than his own; that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his subscriber and call records; and that although the defendant did have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his own CSLI, there was no constitutional violation because "[t]he facts known to [police] as of August 3rd, and conveyed [orally] to [the judge who authorized the order], established probable cause for the issuance of an order compelling the disclosure of CSLI data."

The defendant moved for reconsideration, which was denied. A single justice of this court denied the defendant's application for leave to prosecute an interlocutory appeal. The defendant renewed his objection to the admission of the cell phone records during trial. In May of 2015, after a jury trial, the defendant was convicted on all counts. He timely appealed.

On August 2, 2018, the defendant filed a motion for a new trial and for an evidentiary hearing, arguing that under the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Carpenter v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 201 L.Ed.2d 507 (2018), and this court's prior decision in Commonwealth v. Augustine, 467 Mass. 230, 4 N.E.3d 846 (2014) ( Augustine I ), S.C., 470 Mass. 837, 26 N.E.3d 709 and 472 Mass. 448, 35 N.E.3d 688 (2015), it was error not to suppress his CSLI. The defendant further argued that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to move to...