BOSTON, June 13, 2016—The state’s highest court today affirmed the first-degree murder conviction of the Mattapan man who strangled Rosanna Camilo inside her home, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling means that ELDRICK BROOM (D.O.B. 4/7/84) will not receive a new trial after a jury in 2013 found him guilty of aggravated rape and first-degree murder under both the theories of extreme atrocity and cruelty and felony murder.  Broom is currently serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In his appeal, Broom argued that prosecutors should not have been allowed to access cell phone location information from his cell phone provider because they obtained it through a court order under the law as it existed at the time, instead of through a search warrant as the law now requires.  However, in a decision authored by Justice Margot Botsford, the court found that the new rule it created in that case did not apply to Broom’s case because it was retroactive only to cases in which an appeal is pending and the issue was raised at trial: Broom did not challenge the admissibility of the records and “it cannot be said that the defendant was unfairly prejudiced by admission of the CSLI evidence,” Botsford wrote.

Broom further argued that evidence from his cell phone, including a text message revealing relationship problems with his girlfriend that supported the prosecution theory of the case, should have been suppressed. The court agreed that the search was overly broad but ruled that it presented no likelihood of a miscarriage of justice in light of the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

“The DNA evidence linking the defendant, and only the defendant, to the victim in an act of sexual penetration was essentially overwhelming, and indeed not questioned by the defendant. His explanation at trial for the presence of his semen in and on the victim’s body and clothes was that on the night before the victim was killed, he and the victim had had a consensual sexual encounter, and, presumably, someone else had entered the victim’s apartment during the day on November 21 and had killed her. But the testimony of the victim’s sixteen year old daughter that the family was alone on the night of November 20, and the evidence of the defendant’s CSLI, which placed him six miles away from the victim’s apartment and very near his place of employment close to the time he said the consensual encounter with the victim had occurred, offered a powerful refutation of the defendant’s claim that he had had a consensual sexual encounter with the victim,” the justices found.  “Moreover, there was significant, properly admitted, evidence other than this text message, including testimony supplied directly by the defendant, that his relationship with his fiancée was strained in November, 2011, and that he was open to and engaging in sexual intercourse with others, including the victim. Finally, the position and condition of the victim’s body when she was found splayed on the floor of her apartment, the location of her clothes pulled up on her and underneath her, and the socks and UBS cord around her neck strongly supported a conclusion that the victim had been raped and strangled as part of a single, violent assault. In sum, on this trial record, we are confident that the November 24, 2011, text message could not have reasonably affected the jury’s determination that the defendant was guilty of raping and murdering the victim. The error in permitting the prosecutor to use this text message was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The justices further ruled that a judge’s handling of a juror’s note regarding the defense attorney’s trial strategy does not require that the conviction be reversed.

Prosecutors presented evidence and testimony during Broom’s 2013 trial to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he lived in the same Mattapan apartment complex where Camilo, her teenage daughter, and her infant son while in Boston seeking medical care for her son.  The evidence proved that on Nov. 21, 2011, Broom entered the victim’s apartment, raped, and strangled the victim.  Camilo’s daughter returned home from school to find her mother dead.

The evidence proved that Broom had gained access to Camilo’s apartment, where he raped and strangled her.

Assistant District Attorney Cailin Campbell of the DA’s Appellate Unit argued the case on appeal.  Katherine Moran, Conley’s director of victim witness services, was the assigned victim-witness advocate.  Broom was represented by Elizabeth Caddick.

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