COMMONWEALTH v. RUIDIAZ (2020)

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 1:28

The defendant, Daniel Ruidaz, was convicted of one count of use of a motor vehicle without authority. On appeal, he claims that a restitution order was insufficiently related to the crime of which he was convicted. We affirm.

On the evening of September 5, 2017, the defendant had an argument with his girlfriend, pushed her against her car, forcibly took her car keys, and drove the car away. At 1 a.m. the following morning the police found the car; it had been set ablaze. After a bench trial, the defendant was acquitted of larceny, malicious destruction of a motor vehicle, and burning a motor vehicle, but was convicted of use of a motor vehicle without authority. At sentencing the judge ordered restitution in the amount of $1,100, the amount of the loss of the car not covered by insurance.

The defendant claims that his acquittal on charges of damaging or burning the car means that the loss of the car was not “causally connected to the offense [in a manner which] bears a significant relationship to the offense.” See Commonwealth v. McIntyre, 436 Mass 829, 835 (2002), quoting Glaubius v. State, 688 So. 2d 913, 915 (Fla. 1997); Commonwealth v. Buckley 90 Mass. App. Ct. 177, 180-181 (2016).² The defendant defines the causal relationship inquiry too narrowly. In McIntyre the “court's expressed preference” was for a “'less formulaic' approach to causation in restitution cases.” Buckley, supra at 183, quoting McIntyre, supra. “[W]e look to the underlying facts of the charged offense,” not the defendant's guilt or innocence of a particular offense. McIntyre, supra at 835 quoting State v. Landrum, 66 Wash. App 791, 799 (1992).

While the judge found the evidence insufficient to convict the defendant of actually torching the car, the fact remains that the defendant took the car without permission to do so and did not return it to its owner intact. “Here, the judge found on the uncontroverted facts that the defendant [used] the victim's vehicle [without authority] and that the defendant's conduct was therefore the factual cause of the economic loss suffered by the victim, in the sense that the defendant set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the loss of the victim's vehicle. The same finding also satisfies the requirement of reasonable foreseeability, because when the property of another is [taken without authority], it is certainly foreseeable that the victim may not recover it.” Buckley, 90 Mass. App. Ct. at 181. Mischief befell the car after the defendant had taken it without permission and did not return it. The damage occurred on the defendant's watch as a result of his unauthorized use, and bore a significant relationship to the offense charged.

Judgment affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

2.   Before the sentencing judge the defendant asserted that the only restitutionary remedy was taxicab fare.