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SJC hears appeals in highway shooting over jury instructions, sufficiency and extreme‑atrocity finding
Summary
At oral argument, defense attorneys for Isaiah Fraticelli, Keith Cotto and Luis Cotto challenged first‑degree murder convictions in a 2019 highway shooting, focusing on jury‑instruction language, whether the evidence supports deliberate premeditation or extreme atrocity/cruelty, and Section 33E/Mattis implications for parole exposure.
The Supreme Judicial Court heard argument on consolidated appeals from three convictions in a November 2019 highway shooting that left Gabriel Irizarry fatally wounded and his companion, Sandra, injured.
"May it please the court, Dana Curhan for Isaiah Fraticelli," Attorney Dana Curhan said, telling the justices the record shows three guns and four occupants and that there is no direct evidence linking Fraticelli, who sat in the front passenger seat, to any of the weapons. "There's no evidence that Mr. Fraticelli... had a gun," she said, noting DNA tied two recovered firearms to other occupants and that a third weapon was never recovered.
Curhan urged the court to reject an extreme‑atrocity/cruelty finding for Fraticelli and to consider Section 33E proportionality relief in light of Mattis‑era youth‑sentencing decisions. Curhan said the difference matters for parole eligibility: an extreme‑atrocity finding, she argued, extends parole ineligibility well beyond the term a…
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