Court reinstates lifetime sentence without parole for man who murdered a CVS worker in a battle over some tubes of toothpaste

The Supreme Judicial Court today reinstated the first-degree murder conviction for the man who sliced open Cristian Giambrone's neck outside the Longwood Medical Area CVS in 2004, which means he will spend the rest of his life in prison without a chance at parole.

In 2021, a Suffolk Superior Court judge had reduced Daniel Rogers's sentence from first-degree murder to second-degree murder, which also had a life sentence, but with the possibility of parole after 15 years, after the man's appeal lawyer argued that his trial lawyer was ineffective by not having a neuropsychologist testify that "his intent to commit armed robbery was impaired by panic brought on by actions of the store employees" - who had chased him out of the store and briefly got him against a wall after they spotted him running out with several tubes of toothpaste stuffed in his pockets.

Rogers and a pal went to the Longwood CVS on Feb. 16 to shoplift items they could then re-sell to convenience stores to support their heavy drug use, something they had made a regular habit.

When Giambrone, a Boston Latin Academy senior from Jamaica Plain working at the CVS to buy plane fare so his mother could visit her native Brazil, and two other store employees chased after Rogers, they cornered him along a wall. But then Rogers pulled out a knife and slashed Giambrone in the neck, severing one of his carotid arteries and making him bleed out in the middle of the medical area, despite the efforts of EMTs who happened to be right around the corner and doctors and nurses at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where they brought him.

Rogers also stabbed Giambrone's boss in the chest, but he survived. Rogers then fled towards Children's Hospital - where he ditched a knife covered in Giambrone's blood in a bush near the entrance and later entered Beth Israel Deaconess's Shapiro building - where he got rid of his distinctive red jacket, which was also covered in Gimabrone's blood, and left behind his own bloody hand print.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury convicted Rogers of first-degree murder and armed-assault charges for the attacks on Giambrone and his boss.

The SJC ruling today was on appeals of the 2021 sentence reduction by both the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, which wanted the life-without-parole sentence returned, and by Rogers's attorney, who wanted even that sentence thrown out so his client could get a new trial.

The state's highest court concluded that while Rogers had a right to appeal his conviction because his mental status was a "new and substantial" issue not raised at trial, the question of him going into panic mode and not really being mentally responsible for killing one worker and injuring another wouldn't have mattered because it did not change the question of his intent that day - he and his drug-using pals were not panicking when they set out to rob the store and his panic, if he really were pushed into that mode, only happened after the fact of the theft, when he was fighting with them outside the store.

As for the DA's argument, the court rejected the notion that judges cannot re-consider sentences from earlier cases, but agreed with prosecutors that the judge in this specific case committed "an abuse of discretion" by reducing the jury's verdict.

Key to that judge's ruling was that the type of first-degree murder Rogers was convicted of - "felony murder" now requires a showing of "actual malice" under a 2017 SJC ruling and that the judge didn't find prosecutors had proved that in Rogers's case, that "the defendant's sentence of life without the possibility of parole arose from an incident that began as mere shoplifting; and described the 'spontaneous and impulsive, not premediated,' nature of the defendant's conduct, such that the victim's death resulted from 'the confluence of very unfortunate and unpredictable events.'

But, the court continued, that ruling specifically stated it would only apply to future cases, not other case that had already been decided. And so:

[T]he motion judge's discussion of evidence that the defendant acted spontaneously, without premeditation, and in response to being confronted by store employees also is not an appropriate basis for reducing the defendant's conviction of murder in the first degree on a felony-murder theory. While the absence of premeditation is relevant to a conviction of murder in the first degree based on a theory of deliberate premeditation or extreme atrocity or cruelty, "it is not germane to felony-murder" under the common law applicable at the time of the defendant's offense, which does not require a showing of malice.

Similarly, the court rejected Rogers's argument that his personal circumstances - from his troubled youth up to his extensive drug use in his 40s - somehow absolved him of some or all of the blame for the teenager's death:

First, the defendant's status as, in his words, a "chronically homeless," "drug addicted" individual at the time of the stabbings is not sufficient alone to warrant reduction of the verdict. A defendant's "personal circumstances may be considered in conjunction with [any] evidence that points to a lesser degree of guilt, but personal circumstances alone do not justify reduction of a verdict" (emphases added). Rolon, 438 Mass. at 825.

And while Giambrone's boss may have slammed Rogers against the wall in an effort to get him to return with the toothpaste to the store, his trial lawyer tried arguing self defense for the subsequent murder and less fatal stabbing, the jury rejected the argument and the court was not going to set itself up as a second jury, the court said.

Case docket - includes briefs by prosecutors and Rogers's attorneys and amicus briefs.