SJC hears appeals in highway shooting over jury instructions, sufficiency and extreme‑atrocity finding

The Supreme Judicial Court heard argument on consolidated appeals from three convictions in a November 2019 highway shooting that left Gabriel Irizarry fatally wounded and his companion, Sandra, injured.

"May it please the court, Dana Curhan for Isaiah Fraticelli," Attorney Dana Curhan said, telling the justices the record shows three guns and four occupants and that there is no direct evidence linking Fraticelli, who sat in the front passenger seat, to any of the weapons. "There's no evidence that Mr. Fraticelli... had a gun," she said, noting DNA tied two recovered firearms to other occupants and that a third weapon was never recovered.

Curhan urged the court to reject an extreme‑atrocity/cruelty finding for Fraticelli and to consider Section 33E proportionality relief in light of Mattis‑era youth‑sentencing decisions. Curhan said the difference matters for parole eligibility: an extreme‑atrocity finding, she argued, extends parole ineligibility well beyond the term a deliberate‑premeditation conviction alone would impose.

Justice questions repeatedly probed the defenses' factual framing. "Can we make a reasonable inference that the driver wasn't a shooter?" Justice Gaziano asked early in Curhan's argument; justices and counsel debated whether evidence that the car remained under control during the shooting, the vehicle positions, and video and audio timing made it plausible that the driver could not simultaneously have been firing without swerving or otherwise losing control.

Suzanne Renaud, arguing for driver Keith Cotto, centered her briefing on jury‑instruction error. Renaud said the trial judge's instructions conflated "intent to kill" with "knowingly participate," creating confusing, repeated language that potentially lowered the Commonwealth's burden. She argued that omission of a manslaughter instruction and the muddled intent language together create a substantial‑likelihood claim meriting reversal for Keith Cotto, who was tried as a joint venturer.

Joseph Kenneally, representing Luis Cotto, echoed related points: the record, he said, leaves gaps about who fired which weapon and whether intent was formed in advance or in an instantaneous eruption of violence on the highway. He urged the court to consider 33E relief where the evidence does not clearly show the kind of planning or prolonged suffering Castillo's extreme‑atrocity factor targets.

Special Assistant District Attorney Joseph Coliflores, for the Commonwealth, summarized the factual account for the court: after Gabriel and Sandra Irizarry left a casino, their truck was followed onto the highway by a Honda Accord driven by Keith Cotto with three passengers; occupants of the Accord fired into the truck, "those pebbles were bullets," Coliflores said, and Gabriel sustained multiple wounds, including fatal head trauma. The Commonwealth emphasized video, audio, and forensic evidence: multiple shots marked on the F‑150, dash‑cam/audio timing, and DNA linking two recovered guns to occupants of the Accord.

Coliflores conceded some instruction language "did confuse and I would say, yes, it is an error," but argued the instructions as a whole — together with the verdicts and the totality of the evidence — make reversal unnecessary because the jury nevertheless found lethal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

Throughout argument the justices focused on three recurring issues: (1) whether the jury instructions improperly blurred elements of intent and participation such that the burden of proof was reduced; (2) whether the record supports a finding of deliberate premeditation and/or the narrower class of "extreme atrocity and cruelty" under Castillo; and (3) whether Section 33E proportionality review and the Mattis decision's youth‑sentencing import should meaningfully alter parole exposure for the defendants.

The court asked detailed, sometimes skeptical questions of both sides but did not make on‑the‑record rulings during argument. The justices took the case under advisement at the close of oral argument.