The state’s highest court today upheld a Roxbury man’s conviction for the slaying of 18-year-old Waymond G. Pearson on Cambridge Street nine years ago, rejecting an argument that four stab wounds and eight additional lacerations didn’t constitute extreme atrocity or cruelty, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the first-degree murder conviction of VICTOR YOUNG (D.O.B. 6/16/80) in connection with Pearson’s Sept. 14, 2003, stabbing death during an early-morning brawl on Cambridge Street. Young was convicted of that offense based on the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty after a week-long trial in 2006. He was also found guilty of armed assault with intent to murder for stabbing another victim who survived.

The trial proved that Young drove from Cape Cod to Boston that morning with three other individuals to confront another man over a personal dispute. During that trip, Young armed himself with a double-edged combat knife and kept it on his lap while driving.

Upon arriving at that other man’s residence shortly after 2:00 a.m., Young exited the vehicle and became involved in a confrontation with two of his friends. Young stabbed one of them in the neck, chest, and back. Young then stabbed Pearson three times in the back as Pearson fought with one of Young’s associates, then stabbed him once more in the chest, killing him.

A friend of Pearson, who held the young man as he lay dying, testified that his last words were, “Why, Dawg? Why?”

Boston Police arrested Young in the Orchard Park housing development the next day after multiple witnesses identified him as the assailant. Police also recovered the murder weapon on a highway where Young had discarded it during his flight from the scene.

As part of an appeal that is automatic for all first-degree murder convictions, Young claimed, among other things, that the evidence at trial was insufficient for the jury’s finding that he killed Pearson with extreme atrocity or cruelty. Young’s argument was based on the SJC’s 1983 decision in Commonwealth v. Cunneen that allows jurors to consider the number of blows a killer inflicts when considering that theory of first-degree murder.

“The Commonwealth presented evidence that the defendant stabbed Pearson four times, and inflicted eight superficial ‘drag’ cuts – a total of twelve wounds,” Justice Francis X. Spina wrote for the unanimous court. “But we have reviewed cases involving even a single blow … and found no error in the jury’s verdict of murder with extreme atrocity or cruelty.”

Young also argued that the trial prosecutor’s closing argument was improper for appealing to jurors’ emotions and introducing personal opinions. The court rejected both arguments.

Regarding the prosecutor’s statement that Young “proceeded to slice Waymond Pearson up like an animal,” the court cited a 2002 decision noting the “distinction between a dramatic description in an argument and an argument designed to appeal to the jury’s emotions.”

“[T]he prosecutor was attempting to convey to the jury that this was more than an ordinary murder – it was ‘extreme as compared with ordinary means of producing death,’” Spina wrote. “We conclude that this was a permissible rhetorical tool, relevant to the crime of murder in the first degree committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty, and was not designed to evoke an emotional response from the jury.”

Young also argued that the trial prosecutor gave his personal opinion during his closing argument by saying, ‘I don’t care how [the defendant] was holding the knife. I don’t care if the point was down, if the point was up; all I know [is] that the point of this knife plunged into Waymond Pearson’s body four times and then cut him an additional eight times.”

The court rejected this argument as well.

“The prosecutor in this case did not interject his personal opinion of the defendant’s guilt by briefly using the first-person pronoun,” Spina wrote. “At trial, the defendant testified in his own defense that when he got out of the automobile with the knife, he was holding the knife with the blade pointed down. He used a pen to demonstrate this for the jury. The defendant presumably presented this evidence so that the jury would believe he did not leave the car intending to kill. In the challenged statement, the prosecutor was attempting to diminish the significance of this testimony …. Use of such a rhetorical device does not constitute an impermissible statement of personal belief; rather, it constitutes a permissible argument from the evidence presented.”

Assistant District Attorney Paul Linn, deputy chief of Conley’s Appeals Division, defended the conviction before the SJC. Assistant District Attorney David Fredette of the DA’s Homicide Unit prosecuted it at trial. Young was represented on appeal by attorney Jeanne Kempthorne.