Court overturns first-degree murder conviction of man who didn't pull the trigger in 2018 Mattapan killing

The Supreme Judicial Court today overturned the convictions of a man for a murder on Deering Road in Mattapan in which he drove the killer - who has never been found or publicly identified - to and from the scene.

Dewane Tse of Providence was convicted in 2022 for a triple shooting in 2018 that left Yashua Amado dead. Two days before the Aug. 18 shooting, Tse had rented a red SUV. Around 9:45 a.m. that morning, he then followed Amado down Blue Hill Avenue to Deering Road where another man got out and opened fire, after which that man got back in the vehicle and Tse drove away.

Suffolk County prosecutors convinced a Suffolk Superior Court jury that even if the actual gunman has never been located, Tse was guilty of first-degree murder and armed assault with intent to murder on a legal theory known as "joint venture," in which somebody who contributes to the planning or pre-shooting events leading up to a murder is as guilty as the person who actually pulls the trigger.

But in its ruling today, the state's highest court concluded prosecutors did not actually make the case beyond a reasonable doubt that Tse knew what his passenger was planning before he opened fire, or even that he knew the man had a gun.

Because we agree that there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew of or shared his alleged coventurer's intent, we reverse the defendant's convictions of murder in the first degree and armed assault with intent to murder.

At Tse's trial, witnesses said they got at least a partial look at the shooter as he approached the car in which Amado sat, which ruled out Tse, because the shooter was "not obese," while Tse was 5'8" and weighed more than 300 lbs., or as one BPD detective described him, looking like he was "carrying a ten-month baby high [in] his belly," according to the court's summary of the case.

In order to convict Tse for first-degree murder, the court said, prosecutors had to show that "the defendant knowingly participated in the commission of the crime charged, and that the defendant had or shared the required criminal intent."

Prosecutors told the jury that the way Tse maneuvered his rented SUV to follow Amado, in his car, to Deering Road, was proof that Tse "knew of and shared the unidentified shooter's lethal intent."

But, the court wrote, this argument rested on "a chain of speculative assertions," not hard facts.

"The Commonwealth did not present direct evidence of the defendant's lethal intent or evidence that, at any point, the defendant was a witness to, or participant in, the shooting," the court wrote. "[T]he Commonwealth did not offer other evidence as to interactions or communications between the shooter and the defendant from which an inference of knowledge or shared lethal intent could be drawn, including any evidence as to whether the defendant knew that his purported passenger was armed."

In its arguments before the state's highest court, prosecutors said the length of time Tse followed Amado's car - some 13 minutes - was more than enough for a "rational jury" to conclude that Tse was out for more than a ride around the neighborhood that day, especially as it included making a U-turn on Blue Hill Avenue and at one point slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting another car as Tse continued to try to follow Amado's car - based on surveillance video from a variety of sources in the area, including BPD surveillance cameras and a passing MBTA bus.

But the court did not buy that that was the sort of exacting proof one would need to send somebody away for the rest of his life without any chance at parole:

The necessary leap between the defendant's inferred intent to cause harm and the defendant's inferred intent to cause lethal harm cannot, without more, be supported by the evidence offered by the Commonwealth.

And so, the court wrote:

Accordingly, we conclude that the evidence against the defendant was legally insufficient to support his convictions of murder in the first degree and armed assault with intent to murder. We therefore reverse those judgments, set aside the verdicts, and remand the case to the Superior Court for entry of required findings of not guilty.