High court hears appeal alleging defense failed to obtain mental‑health records in murder trial

Attorney Sultan, representing the defendant in Commonwealth v. Nagora, told the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday that the court had properly remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing and that the new evidence “crystallized the issues” raised by the defendant’s new‑trial motion. Sultan said trial counsel failed to obtain multiple sets of records — including Social Security disability files, military records, hospital records and 18 months of Suffolk County Jail records — that would have corroborated the defendant’s testimony about longstanding mental illness.

Sultan argued those missing records meant defense counsel negligently “put his client on the stand” and “hung his client out to dry” by eliciting psychiatric history without documentary support, leaving the defendant vulnerable to a damaging cross‑examination that undermined credibility. “He exposed his client to withering cross examination needlessly,” Sultan told the court.

Sultan said two retained experts — Dr. Eric Brown and another psychiatrist — never reviewed the full set of records. After Brown testified at the remand hearing that he had not seen the Suffolk County Jail files, the motion judge revised an earlier finding and concluded Brown had never reviewed those records. Sultan said the omitted materials included records documenting psychiatric hospitalizations, diagnoses and psychotropic medication over decades.

Shoshanna Stern, arguing for the Commonwealth, replied that the record contained other powerful evidence and that defense counsel faced a difficult strategic choice. “There are two days of text messages showing the defendant carefully premeditating the death of Daniel Smith in the way that it happened,” Stern told the court, adding that video, times and other documentary evidence supported the Commonwealth’s theory of a planned killing.

Stern and other justices discussed whether counsel’s decision not to obtain or introduce all possible records could be a strategic choice rather than ineffective assistance. The Commonwealth noted that some records, if introduced, contained material that might contradict or undermine the defendant’s version of events and that the experts the defense did present concluded they could not support a lack‑of‑criminal‑responsibility defense based on the materials they had.

The justices and counsel debated precedent and the standards for adequate investigation in cases where mental‑health evidence is central. Defense counsel pointed to Alvarez as a closely analogous decision in which failure to obtain records that the prosecution could use on cross‑examination supported relief; the court discussed case law emphasizing that counsel need not pursue every possible lead but must conduct an adequate investigation tailored to the case’s facts and circumstances.

Background in the case includes the shooting death of Daniel Smith on Nov. 8, 2016, in Easton; the parties agree the defendant shot Smith once. The trial judge ordered an evaluation under Chapter 123, Section 15A and initially found that the defense expert had reviewed certain records; following the remand hearing the judge revised that finding as to the Suffolk County records. The appellate court previously remanded for a further evidentiary hearing, and the Supreme Judicial Court heard a second oral argument after that hearing.

No final ruling was announced at argument. Counsel on both sides invoked competing inferences about what records were available to trial counsel and whether the absence of records was the product of negligence or a calculated strategic choice. The justices pressed both sides on whether an attorney who injects a psychiatric history into a defense must obtain readily available records to substantiate it.

The argument focused on the adequacy of trial counsel’s investigation, the contents and provenance of several sets of records (including 2010 Hackensack hospitalization records and decades of Social Security disability documentation), and whether, in light of the new evidentiary record, the defendant suffered prejudice sufficient to warrant a new trial.