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State v. Ortiz6/10/2003
A truck driver making an early morning delivery was the first to spot the body. Badly beaten, bruised, and bloodied, it lay in a lifeless heap by the loading-dock area of the Pawtucket Family Market Place. After considering the evidence garnered during a police investigation, a grand jury indicted the defendant, Pedro Ortiz (Ortiz or the defendant), for the second-degree murder of Jose Correa (Correa or the victim). A trial jury then found Ortiz guilty of this crime, and the trial justice sentenced him to serve a term of thirty years.
The defendant raises three issues on appeal. First, the trial justice erred, he suggests, in denying his motion to suppress his custodial statements to the Pawtucket police on the grounds that the police obtained them only after they had arrested him without probable cause to do so. Second, the trial justice committed prejudicial error, he asserts, when he permitted an expert witness from the medical examiner's office (medical examiner) to testify that Correa's bloodalcohol content showed that he was impaired at the time of his death. Third, the trial justice erred, he contends, in refusing to instruct the jury on involuntary manslaughter.
For the reasons summarized in this paragraph and explained below, we reject these arguments and affirm the conviction. Because the police had probable cause to detain and arrest defendant, the trial justice properly denied his motion to suppress. Also, the trial justice did not err in admitting the medical examiner's testimony that the victim's blood-alcohol level, which was over three times the legal minimum sufficient to convict a person for driving while intoxicated, indicated that the victim was impaired by alcohol at the time of his death. Lastly, the evidence adduced at trial did not warrant a jury instruction on involuntary manslaughter because, if Ortiz's beating of the victim did not constitute self-defense, then he mauled the victim so viciously and so extensively with a board containing protruding nails that the victim's death could not possibly have been unintentional.
Facts and Travel
Early on the morning of September 21, 1999, at approximately 7 a.m., truck driver Dennis Desautels (Desautels) was making a regular delivery to the Family Market Place on Barton Street in Pawtucket when he discovered the bloody, badly beaten, and apparently lifeless body of an unidentified man lying on the ground near the loading dock. Desautels got out of the truck to examine the body and to confirm that the victim was indeed dead. As a precautionary measure, however, he also requested certain people in a nearby bakery to call 9-1-1 for emergency assistance. The police responded to the scene within five minutes of this call.
Robert Thurber (Thurber), a lieutenant with the Pawtucket Fire Department Rescue Squad, initially determined that the victim appeared to be dead because the body lacked a pulse or any signs of respiration. Thurber observed blood surrounding the head of the victim and noted that the body was missing a left shoe.
Officer Shawn Driscoll (Officer Driscoll), a police officer for the Pawtucket Police Department, also arrived at the loading-dock area. Officer Driscoll observed that the victim had suffered severe facial and head injuries and that most of the blood surrounding the head had dried, but that some areas still were wet. Officer Driscoll patrolled the loading-dock area as part of his usual rounds, but he had not noticed a body lying on the ground at about 3 a.m. when he drove near the loading dock. Officer Driscoll's first thought was that defendant, whom he knew to be a homeless man and a frequent visitor to this part of the city, was himself the victim.
Detective
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