Commonwealth v. Gregory Robinson.

NOTICE: Summary decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to M.A.C. Rule
23.0, as appearing in 97 Mass. App. Ct. 1017 (2020) (formerly known as rule 1:28,
as amended by 73 Mass. App. Ct. 1001 [2009]), are primarily directed to the parties
and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's
decisional rationale. Moreover, such decisions are not circulated to the entire
court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case.
A summary decision pursuant to rule 23.0 or rule 1:28 issued after February 25,
2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted
above, not as binding precedent. See Chace v. Curran, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 258, 260
n.4 (2008).

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

APPEALS COURT

25-P-893

COMMONWEALTH

vs.

GREGORY ROBINSON.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0

After a trial in the Superior Court, a jury found the

defendant, Gregory Robinson, guilty of five offenses related to

a shooting carried out by the driver of a white sedan.1 The

defendant filed a renewed motion for a required finding of not

guilty, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to identify

him as the shooter. See Mass. R. Crim. P. 25 (b) (2), as

1Assault and battery by means of a firearm, G. L. c. 265,
§ 15E; attempted assault and battery by means of a firearm,
G. L. c. 265, § 15F; unlawfully carrying a firearm, G. L.
c. 269, § 10 (a); unlawfully carrying a loaded firearm, G. L.
c. 269, § 10 (n); and unlawfully possessing ammunition, G. L.
c. 269, § 10 (h) (1). At trial, the parties stipulated that the
defendant lacked a license to possess or carry firearms or
ammunition and lacked a valid firearm identification (FID) card.
See Mass. R. Crim. P. 23 (a), 471 Mass. 1501 (2015).
amended, 420 Mass. 1502 (1995). The judge allowed the motion

and ordered required findings of not guilty on all charges.

Because we agree that the evidence was insufficient to establish

beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the shooter, we

affirm.

Background. The jury could have found the following facts.

Around 11:55 P.M. on March 4, 2024, cameras attached to a home

in New Bedford recorded a shooting wherein the driver of a white

sedan stopped the car, got out, and fired several shots at a

dark-colored sedan that subsequently drove past the white sedan.

The shooter was wearing a dark-colored hoodie or sweater. After

the dark-colored car drove off, the shooter got back in the

white sedan and also drove away. Shortly afterward, two men in

a dark-colored Toyota Camry with gunshot holes arrived at the

hospital; one of the men was uninjured and the other had three

gunshot wounds that were not life threatening. Police

interviewed the uninjured man and searched the Camry, but

neither victim testified at trial.

At trial, the Commonwealth introduced, in addition to the

video footage of the shooting, video footage from several

surveillance cameras: from a McDonald's approximately seventeen

blocks from the shooting; and from city traffic cameras in the

area between the McDonald's and the location of the shooting.

The surveillance video footage from McDonald's displays the

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defendant2 driving a white sedan through the drive-through. In

the surveillance video footage, he is wearing a short sleeved

white T-shirt. The white sedan, a Honda Civic, had a sunroof

and an off-center front license plate with a visible license

plate number.3 The defendant was in the McDonald's drive-through

from approximately 11:43 P.M. to 11:46 P.M.

The surveillance video footage from the city cameras

displays a white sedan a few blocks away from the McDonald's,

driving in the direction of the location of the shooting. At

one point, around 11:52 P.M., the driver of the white sedan is

visibly wearing a white shirt. Beginning around 11:53 P.M., a

dark-colored sedan is visible driving behind the white sedan.

The last surveillance video footage of the white sedan before

the shooting is from around 11:53 P.M., at a location

approximately ten blocks from the shooting. In the video

recordings from the traffic cameras, as well as in the video

footage from the shooting, the white sedan has a sunroof and an

off-center front license plate, but the license plate number is

not visible. No one is in the front passenger's side seat of

2 The defendant identified himself in still photographs
taken from the McDonald's surveillance video footage. The
defendant's mother and a woman who shares a child with the
defendant also identified the defendant from that video footage.

3 The white Civic was registered to the defendant's mother,
who testified at trial that the defendant drove the car.

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the white sedan, and no video footage provides a view of whether

anyone was in the back of the car.

When police arrested the defendant over two weeks later,

the front license plate of the Civic had been removed.

Following negative test results for gunshot residue in the

Civic, the parties stipulated that "no conclusions can be made

as to whether [the car] may have been in the vicinity of a

firearm when it was discharged or may have come into contact

with an item with Gunshot Primer Residue on it."

At the close of the Commonwealth's case, the defendant

moved for a required finding of not guilty. The judge denied

the motion but stated that he would "take another look at it if

they come back with a guilty verdict." The defendant did not

testify or present witnesses. After the jury returned guilty

verdicts for each offense, the defendant filed a renewed motion

for a required finding of not guilty, or in the alternative, for

a new trial. The judge concluded that the evidence was

insufficient to prove that the defendant was the shooter,

allowed the motion for a required finding of not guilty, and

ordered entry of a required finding of not guilty on all

charges. The judge also ruled on the motion for a new trial,

ordering a new trial "if an appellate court reverses [the]

ruling on the sufficiency of the evidence."

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Discussion. "In reviewing claims of insufficient evidence,

we view the evidence presented at trial, together with

reasonable inferences therefrom, in the light most favorable to

the Commonwealth to determine whether any rational jury could

have found the defendant guilty of the offense beyond a

reasonable doubt." Commonwealth v. Martinez, 487 Mass. 265, 275

(2021). See Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 676-677,

(1979). "[C]ircumstantial evidence is sufficient to establish

guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and inferences drawn from such

evidence need only be reasonable and possible; [they] need not

be necessary or inescapable" (quotations and citations omitted).

Commonwealth v. Gonzalez, 475 Mass. 396, 407 (2016). But "it is

not enough for the appellate court to find that there was some

record evidence, however slight, to support each essential

element of the offense; it must find that there was enough

evidence that could have satisfied a rational trier of fact of

each such element beyond a reasonable doubt." Latimore, supra

at 677-678. "Nor may a conviction rest upon the piling of

inference upon inference or conjecture and speculation."

Commonwealth v. Mandile, 403 Mass. 93, 94 (1988).

To identify the defendant as the shooter in this case, the

evidence must establish beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) the

white sedan at the shooting was the same car the defendant was

driving at the McDonald's and (2) the defendant was the driver

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of that car at the time of the shooting. At trial, the

Commonwealth presented several pieces of evidence -- namely, the

surveillance video footage -- that the white sedan driven by the

defendant was the same white sedan at the shooting. However,

despite the inference that the car was the same, the

Commonwealth presented inadequate evidence that the defendant

was the shooter.

At trial, the Commonwealth emphasized that the defendant

was driving less than ten minutes before the shooting and that

"the person that does the shooting gets out of the driver's seat

of that white car." All other evidence presented related to the

inference that the car was the same, rather than supporting the

additional inference that the driver was the same. The

Commonwealth also noted that the front license plate of the

Civic had been removed by the time of the defendant's arrest.

But even if the defendant's removal of the front license plate

serves as evidence of consciousness of guilt, such evidence is

not a sufficient basis to establish guilt beyond a reasonable

doubt. See Gonzalez, 475 Mass. at 408-409. Additionally, the

jury could not have identified the shooter as the defendant

based on any distinctive physical characteristics or even based

on the clothing that the shooter wore -- the driver of the white

sedan at the time of the shooting was wearing a dark sweatshirt,

whereas the defendant was wearing a white T-shirt at McDonald's.

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Cf. Commonwealth v. Davis, 487 Mass. 448, 463 (2021), S.C., 491

Mass. 1011 (2023) (combined evidence of location and similar

appearance was sufficient to identify defendant). The

Commonwealth's "piling of inference upon inference," Gonzalez,

supra at 412, quoting Mandile, 403 Mass. at 94, is insufficient

to sustain the defendant's conviction in this case. See

Commonwealth v. Swafford, 441 Mass. 329, 342-343 (2004).

The Commonwealth points to Baxter v. Commonwealth, 489

Mass. 504, 504, 509 (2022), which involved sufficient evidence

that a defendant, Dario Baxter, was the driver of a distinctive

car seen near a shooting. Id. at 507-509. That case is

distinguishable: because Baxter involved accomplice liability,

it was not necessary for the Commonwealth to prove that Baxter

was the shooter. See id. at 508. Further, evidence in that

case included witness identifications of the car, video footage

displaying a person resembling Baxter driving the car to the

location of the shooting with a person matching the description

of the shooter in the front passenger's side seat, and police

finding Baxter driving the car with a codefendant in the front

passenger's side seat later the same day as the shooting. Id.

at 507-509. The present case lacks the corroborating evidence

of identification present in Baxter. See id. at 508-509.

For the same reason, the Commonwealth's arguments about

inferences related to the car -- that the jury were competent to

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identify the car without expert testimony and that it is

reasonable to infer the dark-colored sedan following the white

sedan before the shooting was the victims' Camry -- are

unavailing. The identification of the car relates only to the

inference that the white sedan at McDonald's was the same as the

one at the shooting. As we have noted, that inference is

insufficient in the absence of other evidence to identify the

defendant as the shooter. See Gonzalez, 475 Mass. at 412-413.

As in Gonzalez, although "the jury could have concluded, on

this evidence, . . . that it was more likely than not that [the

defendant] was the driver, the evidence was insufficient to

allow a jury to draw this conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt."

Gonzalez, 475 Mass. at 397. The judge properly granted the

defendant's motion for a required finding of not guilty as to

each of the defendant's charges in this case.4 The order

allowing the defendant's renewed motion for a required finding

4 Given our conclusion, we need not address the propriety of
the judge's conditional allowance of a new trial in the event we
had found the evidence to be sufficient.

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of not guilty and ordering the entry of a finding of not guilty

as to all charges is affirmed.

So ordered.

By the Court (Massing,
Ditkoff & Hand, JJ.5),

Clerk

Entered: June 11, 2026.

5 The panelists are listed in order of seniority.

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