BOSTON, Dec. 26, 2014—The state’s highest court today affirmed a murder conviction against the man who beat 18-year-old Elsie “Yolanda” Hernandes to death 30 years ago almost to the day, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
The Supreme Judicial Court rejected an appeal by SULTAN OMAR CHEZULU (D.O.B. 10/2/48), ruling that his 2010 trial was fair. Chezulu, who changed his name from ROBERT LOUIS SCOTT in 1997, was found guilty of Hernandes’ Dec. 28, 1984, murder under all three theories of first-degree murder – deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and felony murder. Chezulu’s homicide conviction is at least the 12th in Suffolk County to be affirmed by the SJC this year.
“Yolanda’s murder was unspeakable,” Conley said. “And though it went unsolved for longer than she lived on this earth, I hope her loved ones can take some satisfaction in knowing that her killer’s conviction will stand.”
A reporter is silhouetted against a photo of Elsie “Yolanda” Hernandes, raped and murdered by Sultan Omar Chezulu in Roxbury 30 years ago this week. The Supreme Judicial Court of Masssachusetts today rejected Chezulu’s appeal and affirmed his conviction for first-degree murder.
In a 31-page decision authored by Justice Barbara Lenk, the high court rejected Chezulu’s claim that the evidence at trial was insufficient to convict him.
Summarizing the extensive trial testimony, Lenk wrote that “the evidence was not limited to the fact that sperm cells matching the defendant’s DNA were found in the victim’s body and on her clothing. The pattern of sperm on the victim’s skirt, and the absence of sperm on the victim’s underwear, indicated that the sperm had been deposited around the time of the victim’s death and at the location where her body was discovered. The people closest to the victim, namely her sister and her friend and former neighbor, testified that they had never heard of the defendant and that the victim had never been with older men or with men who did not speak Spanish. The victim’s sister also testified to the victim’s whereabouts on the day of her death and on the preceding nights. All of these pieces of evidence tended to negate the possibility that the defendant had had sex with the victim on some prior occasion unrelated to her death. Finally, the defendant stated to a police officer, after he was arrested, that he had ‘to face the music now.’”
Lenk continued that a reasonable jury “could find this evidence sufficiently forceful to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had killed the victim deliberately, upon a reflective decision to do so; that the killing involved the infliction of injuries brutal both in number and in severity; and that it was carried out in the course of the felony of aggravated rape. The evidence was therefore sufficient to support the verdict of guilty on all three theories of murder in the first degree.”
Chezulu also claimed on appeal that the prosecutor’s closing argument was improper because it characterized the victim as “not making risky choices” and “not engaging in risky behavior” when the defendant had tried but failed to introduce what the high court called “remote” and “speculative” rumors, from sources that were “patently unreliable,” that the victim was involved in criminal behavior.
The SJC instead found that the prosecutor’s “argument focused on the evidence that the defendant’s sperm was found in the victim’s body and on her clothing; that the pattern of the sperm indicated, according to the Commonwealth’s expert, that it had been deposited approximately when and where the victim had died; and that, according to the individuals closest to the victim, she had never been with older men or with men who did not speak Spanish. The prosecutor also devoted much of his argument to countering the defendant’s efforts to minimize the prosecution’s case, and to recounting the brutality of the murder. In addition, the jury heard some evidence that tended to support the prosecutor’s characterization of the victim’s past. The victim’s sister testified that the victim did not go out often, at least with her; and a friend of the victim testified that the victim ‘seemed to take care of herself. She used to dress like any young girl, you know, and she used to be clean. She used to keep to herself, I think.’”
The prosecutor’s argument “did not undermine the fundamental fairness of the trial,” Lenk wrote.
Evidence at trial proved that Chezulu attacked Hernandes as she walked to a friend’s home after work on the evening of Dec. 28, 1984. He pulled her into what was then a vacant lot near the corner of Washington and Ball streets, beat her with his fists and a rock, raped her, and strangled her to death using a sock. Her remains were found the next day by passersby.
Despite the best efforts of investigators in the days and weeks that followed, her assailant went unidentified until 2006, when the Hernandes family reached out to Boston Police homicide detectives in hopes that DNA evidence – unavailable at the time of the murder – might shed light on the case.
Armed with 21st century science, Boston Police criminalists were able to develop a genetic profile from biological evidence at the scene. That profile was uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which led to a match against Chezulu, whose record includes convictions for kidnapping, rape, sodomy, armed robbery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon dating back to 1969.
Assistant District Attorney Paul Linn argued the case before the SJC. Former Assistant District Attorney Josh Wall prosecuted the case at trial. Katherine Moran was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate.
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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
