Top court reinstates Boston man's illegal gun conviction

August 11, 2008 12:50 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By John R. Ellement, Globe staff

The state’s high court, in a split decision, today reinstated the illegal gun possession conviction of a Boston man that had been wiped out by a lower court.

In a five-to-two ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court said the Suffolk Superior Court jury was right when they convicted Chevasse White for his role in a 2001 “gun battle” outside a Jamaica Plain laundry and car wash. One witness identified White as the person she saw stuff a gun into his waist while standing 25 feet away from her, the court said.

The majority said the trial judge committed a significant technical error, but also concluded the conviction should stand.

“The evidence, and the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, were sufficient to convict the defendant. An eyewitness observed a man, later identified as the defendant, holding a gun; the same man was seen coming from the hallway of the car wash, without the gun; a gun was discovered shortly thereafter in the area from which the defendant had recently emerged,’’ Justice Judith A. Cowin wrote for the majority.

But dissenters Chief Justice Margaret Marshall and Justice Margot Botsford said the jury was wrong and that they would have tossed the conviction as did the state Appeals Court in 2006. Boston Police recovered a handgun stashed in a car wash, but testing failed to match it to ballistic evidence recovered at the scčne, the court said.

“In some key respects, the evidentiary record does not support with adequate facts the inferences that would be necessary to draw in order to find the defendant guilty,’’ Botsford wrote.

The ruling has no practical effect on the 36-year-old White, who has already completed his one-year sentence imposed in 2005, records show. The incident took place in 2001, but for reasons that are not clear from court records, the Suffolk Superior Court trial did not take place until 2005.

Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office, welcomed the ruling, saying the evidence “made a compelling case.’’