BOSTON, Oct. 23, 2012—The state’s highest court recently upheld two Suffolk County murder convictions for the unrelated slayings of Roy Elliott, a 42-year-old homeless man stabbed to death near Faneuil Hall, and Nabil Essaid, a teenager shot dead outside a downtown movie theater, District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Supreme Judicial Court on Oct. 15 affirmed the first-degree murder conviction of JOSEPH P. LENNON (D.O.B. 9/8/58) for Elliott’s 2006 stabbing death at Curley Memorial Plaza and on Oct. 22 affirmed the first-degree murder conviction of DARRYL SCOTT (D.O.B. 4/13/81) for Essaid’s 2003 shooting death near the Loews Boston Common.

“These were different cases with different victims and very different facts, but we approached them with the same goal in mind,” Conley said. “Those convictions remain intact today because we did our work in court fairly, ethically, and according to the evidence and the law.”

A Suffolk Superior Court jury found Lennon guilty in 2007 of starting a physical fight with Elliott by pulling the victim off of a park bench and pushing him onto the grass. Lennon then plunged a large knife into Elliott’s back, killing him. He fled the scene, changed his clothes, and then returned to the park, where his girlfriend was. Witnesses recognized him and pointed him out to Boston Police, who placed him under arrest.

On appeal, Lennon claimed that the trial judge should have allowed an instruction to the jury that, because Lennon might have been intoxicated at the time of the homicide, he may have lacked the requisite intent necessary for a first-degree murder conviction. The high court disagreed.

“Witnesses who observed the defendant … all described him as having no difficulty walking, running, speaking, or understanding,” Justice Francis X. Spina wrote. “He might have been under the influence of alcohol to some degree about two hours before the stabbing, but there is no evidence that his condition at the time of the stabbing approached the level of ‘debilitating intoxication[.]’

Lennon also argued that the jury should have had the option of convicting him of voluntary manslaughter based on provocation or sudden combat. Again, the high court rejected his position.

“”Here, there was no evidence that the victim did or said anything to the defendant before the defendant attacked him, much less something that would have provoked a reasonable person to lose self-control,” Spina wrote. “The evidence only supports an attack by the defendant that was unprovoked …. If the victim did anything, he attempted to resist being rolled onto his stomach just before the defendant stabbed him in the back.”

Another jury found Scott guilty in 2006 of shooting the 18-year-old Essaid dead during a verbal altercation between their respective groups. In the course of that confrontation, Scott pulled a .40 caliber Glock handgun, racked the slide, and fired multiple times, missing two of Essaid’s friends but hitting Essaid in the stomach and killing him before fleeing on foot. Scott was later apprehended about two months later by Boston Police who watched him take part in a drug transaction that led to a foot chase in which Scott fired the same handgun at the pursuing officers. When he was caught, Scott said, “My life is over” and put the gun to his own head before relinquishing it in a standoff with hostage negotiators.

Scott claimed on appeal that the trial prosecutor improperly used a peremptory challenge during jury selection to exclude an African-American woman from the jury.

“The record, however, is to the contrary,” Justice Fernande Duffly wrote in the 11-page decision. “By not requiring the prosecutor to provide a reason for the challenge after his initial statement that there was no pattern of discrimination, the judge plainly accepted the prosecutor’s assertion, unchallenged by the defendant, that a number of African-American women … had been seated without challenge the previous day, and that there was no pattern of discrimination[.]”

Scott also claimed that the prosecutor’s closing argument was improper.

“The prosecutor argued in closing that the defendant’s statement, ‘my life is over,’ when holding the gun to his head was ‘as good as a confession of guilt …. His life was over because he knew he had been caught, he knew he had been cornered,’” Duffley wrote. “The defendant maintains that this argument was impermissible and not a fair inference from the evidence. We disagree Although the evidence would have supported a conclusion that the defendant was referring to statements that he had heard on the police radio alleging that the suspect had shot at a police officer, the jury could reasonably infer from the evidence that the defendant made the statements because he knew that the Glock in his hand was the one used in the shooting of Essaid, and that the police would inevitably discover the connection.”

“In both cases, trial prosecutors hewed to the evidence while abiding by their ethical obligations,” Conley said. “Our appellate lawyers argued rightly that their work in court, and the work of jurors who deliberated fairly and impartially, should stand. We’re pleased that the high court reached the same conclusions we did, and we hope that finality offers some satisfaction to Mr. Elliott’s and Mr. Essaid’s loved ones.”

Assistant District Attorney Gretchen Lundgren prosecuted Lennon at trial. Assistant District Attorney Vincent DeMore, formerly of the DA’s Appellate Division and now assigned to the DPH lab crisis task force, argued the case before the SJC. Assistant District Attorney Edmond Zabin prosecuted Scott at trial. Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Celio argued the case on appeal.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.