COMMONWEALTH v. CARLOS BARROS (2026)

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 23.0

After a jury trial in the Superior Court, the defendant, Carlos Barros, was convicted of carrying a firearm without a license in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (a); carrying a loaded firearm in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (n); and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 12E. On appeal, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions. We affirm.

Background. The jury could have found the following facts. On October 19, 2018, at around 3 A.M., a woman drove to her home in Dorchester with a female friend. Neither the woman nor anyone who lived with her owned a firearm.

As she was standing outside of her car, the woman saw the defendant sitting on the front steps of her home; she recognized him because he was her mother's ex-boyfriend. She did not see anyone else in the street. Shortly thereafter, the woman heard a vehicle approaching rapidly, prompting her and her friend to duck behind a nearby parked car. While crouching behind the car, the woman heard several gunshots. She did not see who fired the shots.

Police arrived within minutes. Upon their arrival, a neighbor provided them with a video recording of the incident captured on his doorbell camera. The doorbell camera video recording depicted a man in a gray, hooded sweatshirt firing five gunshots at a passing car. Police also recovered four spent shell casings from the street.

After obtaining permission to enter the woman's home, the police found the defendant hiding in a locked bedroom, beneath the bed. The defendant was wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt. Police arrested him and searched the bedroom closets, where they found a firearm inside a sock. A firearm examiner opined that the shell casings recovered in the street were fired from the firearm found in the closet. A police department criminalist opined that two fingerprints on the firearm's magazine were those of the defendant. After the defendant's arrest, an officer at the police station swabbed his hands to test for gunshot residue, and those tests were positive.

The case was tried before a jury. The defendant moved for required findings of not guilty at the close of the Commonwealth's case, which the judge denied. The defendant renewed his motion at the close of all the evidence, which the judge again denied. The jury then returned guilty verdicts, and the defendant appealed.¹

Discussion. When reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, “[w]e consider the evidence introduced at trial in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, and determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt” (citation omitted). Commonwealth v. Sabin, 104 Mass. App. Ct. 303, 305 (2024). “The inferences that support a conviction need only be reasonable and possible; [they] need not be necessary or inescapable” (quotation and citation omitted). Id.

The crux of this appeal is whether the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's conclusion that the defendant was the shooter depicted in the doorbell camera video recording. It is uncontested that the identity of the shooter is not discernible from the video recording alone. However, the jury did not consider the video recording in isolation. The Commonwealth established at least seven facts at trial that together would have permitted a rational jury to identify the defendant as the shooter in the video recording beyond a reasonable doubt.

First, the two women and the defendant were the only people in the street moments before the shooting. Second, the defendant, like the shooter, was wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt shortly after the shooting. Third, the police who responded to the scene found the defendant hiding under a bed in the home. Fourth, the firearm used in the shooting was found inside a sock in the same room as the defendant. Fifth, none of the residents of the home owned a firearm. Sixth, the defendant's fingerprints were on the magazine of the firearm used in the shooting. Seventh, the swabs taken from the defendant's hands tested positive for gunshot residue.

The foregoing facts clearly link the defendant to the time and place of the shooting, the firearm used to perpetrate it, and the clothing of the perpetrator. Consequently, it was reasonable for the jury to infer the defendant's identity as the shooter in the video. This evidence, as well as the video recording of the shooting, was sufficient to establish each element of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.

The defendant argues that the jury could only have reached its verdicts by impermissibly “piling ․ inference upon inference” or engaging in “conjecture and speculation.” Commonwealth v. Mandile, 403 Mass. 93, 94 (1988). In support of his position, the defendant offers alternative interpretations of several discrete items of evidence that, he asserts, undermine the strength of the case as a whole. For example, he points out the Commonwealth's inability to “put a timestamp” on the fingerprints from the magazine, implying that the fingerprints may have originated from the defendant's previous, unrelated handling of the magazine. The defendant further speculates that another male who resided in the home could have been the shooter and that “a light gray sweatshirt is a very common item of clothing.”

That a reasonable juror might have viewed some of the evidence differently is immaterial. See Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 678-679 (1979), quoting Commonwealth v. Nelson, 370 Mass. 192, 203 (1976) (“The fact that the evidence did not require the jury to draw the inference [of guilt] does not preclude the conclusion [that the motions for directed verdicts were properly denied]. It is sufficient that the evidence permitted the inference which the jury obviously drew ․”). Our task is not to weigh alternative theories presented at trial, but to determine whether the jury's ultimate findings were rational. See Sabin, 104 Mass. App. Ct. at 305. Here, there was sufficient evidence to permit a rational inference that the defendant was the shooter beyond a reasonable doubt.

Judgments affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   The defendant's trial counsel failed to timely appeal his convictions. The defendant's postconviction counsel moved to file a late notice of appeal of the convictions with the Appeals Court, which a single justice of this court granted.