The state’s highest court last week upheld the 2007 conviction of a Chelsea man who raped a teenager before beating her to death with a rock and setting her body on fire, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said today.

The Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday unanimously affirmed MELVIN MARTINEZ’s convictions for first-degree murder and aggravated rape. The convictions stem from the July 16, 2002, rape and murder of 18-year-old Monica Mejia.

At trial, Suffolk prosecutors proved that Martinez (D.O.B. 12/22/83) was one of two men who accompanied Mejia to a wooded area off of Lafayette Avenue in Chelsea shortly after midnight on July 16. Once there, Martinez and ADALBERTO INGLESE (D.O.B. 2/27/78) beat her with their fists and a large rock. During the course of that beating, they stripped her of her clothes and one man held her down while the other raped her. Inglese is currently serving a life term plus 10 to 15 years.

Evidence and testimony proved that the two men left the scene while Mejia lay unconscious, then returned sometime later with a blanket, which Martinez used to cover her body and then set on fire in a bid to destroy evidence.

The medical examiner testified that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head combined with thermal injuries.

Witnesses told State and Chelsea police detectives that Martinez – known to them as “Pinocchio” – was one of the last people seen with the victim. On July 23, 2002, State Police detectives had a description of Martinez, and approached a man fitting that description on Washington Avenue in Chelsea. After a brief conversation, Martinez identified himself to detectives as “Pinocchio.”

Martinez then voluntarily agreed to accompany detectives to the Chelsea Police station for questioning about Mejia’s death. The defendant, who is primarily Spanish-speaking, was provided with a Spanish-speaking State Police trooper, who read him his Miranda rights in Spanish and provided him with a Spanish language Miranda rights explanation and waiver form. Martinez signed the form and acknowledged that he understood his rights under the law.  In a subsequent six-hour interview with detectives, Martinez gave two statements to authorities. In the second statement, Martinez made incriminating statements that linked him to the crime.

On appeal, Martinez claimed that the admission at trial of his second statement to the police was an error on two grounds – first, that neither the waiver of his Miranda rights nor the second statement itself was voluntary, and should have been suppressed; and second, that the statement should have been suppressed because he gave the statement more than six hours after his arrest and without waiving his right to prompt arraignment.

“We have recognized that Miranda warnings, once given, are not effective in perpetuity,” Justice Margot Botsford wrote in the 12-page ruling. Citing Massachusetts case law, however, Botsford wrote that “there is no requirement that an accused be continually reminded of his rights once he has intelligently waived them.”

“[W]e held that the passage of nearly six hours between the giving of Miranda warnings and the defendant’s challenged statement did not necessitate fresh Miranda warnings,” Botsford wrote. “And as in this case, there was ample evidence that the defendant fully understood his Miranda rights and made a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of them.”

Martinez also claimed that the trial judge erred in permitting the prosecutor and witnesses to make repeated references to his nickname, “Pinocchio,” at trial.

“There was no error,” Botsford wrote. “The defendant argues here that because the story of the fairy tale character Pinocchio is well known, jurors would understand the nickname to signify that the defendant had a propensity to lie, with prejudice to him as a result, and the prosecutor had no need to refer, or ask witnesses about, the nickname. We disagree. In the circumstances of this case, the defendant’s nickname was relevant to identity. The defendant’s accomplice Inglese and three of the witnesses … testified that Pinocchio was the name by which they knew the defendant. Troopers … were told to look for a man called Pinocchio, and when they approached the defendant, he told them that was his name.”

Botsford wrote that the court agreed with the trial judge “that the risk was slim that jurors would infer from the defendant’s nickname that he was a person with a propensity to lie, rather than taking the name as perhaps a reference to the defendant’s appearance. In sum, we find no abuse of discretion or other error in the judge’s refusal to bar the use of the defendant’s nickname at trial.”

Assistant District Attorney Macy Lee of Conley’s Appeals Division argued the case before the SJC. Attorney Richard J. Shea argued on Martinez’s behalf. Former Suffolk prosecutor Dennis Collins prosecuted the case at trial.