Court: You can't be convicted of murder if your buddy tries to rob somebody but winds up getting fatally shot by the victim

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today a jury improperly convicted a Lynn man of second-degree murder for a robbery gone bad in Dorchester in which the man's pal wound up getting shot to death by the person he was trying to rob.

However, the state's highest court also upheld Robinson Tejeda's conviction for armed robbery for his role as driver in the botched holdup on Jan. 14, 2012, which carries with it a life sentence.

A jury convicted Tejeda on both counts under the "joint venture" theory, under which somebody can be found guilty of a felony if they helped plan it, even if they didn't directly participate in the commission of the crime. In Tejada's case, he said behind the wheel of a car while his two buddies went inside 23 Trull St. in Dorchester, intending to rob a pot dealer who lived there. But when they pulled out guns, the victim did likewise, sparking a gun battle that left would-be robber Christopher Pichardo, 18, dead.

The court cited testimony from a witness that Tejeda knew he was driving people to a robbery to uphold the armed robbery conviction. And had one of those people killed the intended victim, then his murder conviction would stand as well, because the murder arose out of his pals' actions. But the court said there was no evidence to show he could have known the reverse would happen - that the victim would have a gun as well and manage to use it and so the joint-venture theory doesn't apply.

The justices said this is not a new idea - they cited an 1863 case in which the court overturned the murder conviction of a Civil War draft rioter because nobody knew who actually fired the shot that left a man dead - there was a chance it had been fired by a soldier inside the armory the rioters were protesting against.

And from that, the justices rejected the argument by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office that overturning Tejeda's murder conviction would mean nobody would be held responsible for Pichardo's death.

[T]he Commonwealth contends that someone should be found guilty of murder for a violent death and, without the proximate cause theory of felony-murder, there is the risk that no one will be punished for the death of a bystander mistakenly shot by an armed robbery victim or by a police officer, because the victim and the police officer may have been justified in their use of force against the robbers. It is true that, in these circumstances, it is likely that no one will be found guilty of murder. But that does not mean that the joint venturers will escape punishment. Armed robbery is a life felony under Massachusetts law, see G. L. c. 265, § 17, and the death is likely to be treated as an aggravating factor by a judge imposing sentence on the armed robbery conviction. Moreover, a tragic death does not always justify a murder conviction; the law recognizes that a person is guilty of manslaughter, not murder, punishable by up to twenty years in prison rather than a life sentence, where the killing is committed intentionally under mitigating circumstances or unintentionally but recklessly.