BOSTON, April 8, 2014—The state’s highest court today ruled that a jury may hear a murder defendant’s own words if prosecutors choose to introduce his statements to a cooperating witness who surreptitiously recorded their conversation, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Robert Cordy, the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a Suffolk Superior Court judge’s denial of a motion by defendant TIMOTHY “TOOLMAN” HEARNS (D.O.B. 3/13/90) to suppress the statements recorded by a confidante who was wearing a wire.
“Wiretap investigations allow us to present the defendant’s own words and voice to jurors,” Conley said. “While we were able to obtain that evidence because of the specific facts of this case and this recording, the state’s wiretap statute is woefully outdated. To make full use of 21st century technology, we have to bring Massachusetts law out of the 1960s.”
The high court found that there was sufficient evidence to label the H-Block gang, with which defendant Hearns is allegedly affiliated, as a “criminal enterprise” under the 1968 communication interception statute and ruled that prosecutors could present surreptitiously recorded statements obtained in accordance with that statue at trial.
The statute only allows for the surreptitious recording of oral communication during an investigation into specific offenses committed in connection with organized crime. Prosecutors argued that Hearns, an alleged H-Block member, traveled into the territory of a rival gang and opened fire on Martin and three other teens at a Columbus Avenue basketball court on May 8, 2010, for the purpose of furthering the H-Block’s criminal enterprise.
Martin, an honor student who was not affiliated with either gang, was mortally wounded and a 15-year-old boy was also injured.
The justices agreed with prosecutors, citing an abundance of evidence to suggest that H-Block was a “highly organized and disciplined group” supplying illicit drugs and weapons, qualifying them as a criminal organization under the statute. In particular, the justices highlighted the fact that Hearns and his co-defendant, RAMON “DOUBLE R” SILVELO-MILES (D.O.B. 11/30/89), were followed to the shooting scene by senior H-Block members; evidence that H-Block kept all of its firearms at a single location where they were retrieved prior to the shooting and returned upon its completion; and the gang’s organized distribution of illegal drugs and guns – directed by the same senior gang members who followed the defendant to the murder scene.
“In these circumstances, the Commonwealth, objectively, had a reasonable suspicion that the interception of conversations between a cooperating witness and an H-Block member, who had admitted involvement in the shooting would lead to evidence regarding the commission of the crime, its motivation, and its relationship to H-Block’s organized criminal activities,” Cordy wrote.
The justices overturned the lower court judge’s denial of a motion to suppress additional, post-Miranda statements made by Hearns to detectives after he stated his intention to stop speaking to them.
Assistant District Attorney Allison Callahan of the DA’s Appellate Division argued the case before the Supreme Judicial Court. Assistant District Attorney Mark Hallal, chief of the DA’s Senior Trial Unit, is prosecuting the case in Suffolk Superior Court with Callahan second-seating him. Kara Hayes, chief of the DA’s Victim Witness Assistance Program, is the assigned victim-witness advocate. Hearns was represented by attorney Daniel Beck.
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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
