PROVIDENCE – A Central Falls man convicted of second-degree murder will get a new trial after a Rhode Island Supreme Court ruling earlier this week.
The high court on Monday vacated the conviction of Jairo Esdel, 25, in the Halloween night shooting death of Joel Rosario in 2020 at the intersection of Lonsdale and Mineral Spring avenues in Pawtucket. The court ordered a new trial before Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause.
The ruling found that Krause was wrong when he refused to allow jurors in the case to hear testimony from key witnesses, and when he refused to let jurors view a video of the alleged victim brandishing a firearm just hours before the deadly encounter.
“Obviously, we’re pleased with the Supreme Court decision,” Joseph J. Voccola, Esdel’s lawyer, said Tuesday. “Obviously, he’s looking forward to a new trial.”
“I have the utmost respect for Judge Krause. We just disagreed on issues of law,” said Voccola, who represented Esdel with David Morra.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in February, with Aaron Weisman arguing for the defense and Sean Malloy for the state.
More: Central Falls man, 23, sentenced to life in prison for Halloween road-rage murder
Esdel testifies that he felt his life was in peril
A jury convicted Esdel in November 2021 of second-degree murder; discharging a firearm while committing a crime of violence that ended in death; and other firearms charges.
Krause sentenced him to consecutive life sentences for second-degree murder and the discharging a firearm count.
But the Supreme Court found that Krause should have instructed the jury to consider a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, which is defined as an intentional homicide committed in the heat of the moment without malice aforethought.
Esdel’s testimony at trial that he felt trapped, threatened and that his life was in peril as he was boxed in at a traffic light – even after the light turned green – formed the basis of the court’s ruling.
At trial, Esdel testified that several individuals, some armed, surrounded his Jeep while he was inside, according to the ruling. Rosario, wearing a white ski mask and carrying a bottle that Esdel said he smashed on the Jeep’s hood, was among that group and gestured that he was carrying a firearm.
Esdel told the court that someone yelled that he was alone and people started grabbing his door handles. Rosario, Esdel testified, shouted, “I’m going to kill you. Come out of the car. Stop the car,” according to court transcripts quoted in the ruling.
Esdel fired a single shot through his passenger window, according to the ruling, striking Rosario, who was taken by friends to Miriam Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Citing court precedent, the Supreme Court found in its ruling that, because Esdel testified he was in fear for his life, the situation escalated quickly, and because there was a prior hostile history between Esdel and Rosario, who was known to carry a firearm, a jury could have credibly found that Esdel fired his weapon “in the heat of passion on sudden provocation,” Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg wrote in the court’s ruling.
Therefore, she wrote, the jury should have been given instruction on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
“We are hard-pressed to perceive why an instruction on voluntary manslaughter was not warranted in this case,” the court said in finding that Krause abused his discretion by not including the manslaughter charge.
‘Take Jairo for dead’
The high court ruled, too, that Krause abused his discretion when he refused to let Esdel’s grandfather, Jaime Galva, testify about Rosario’s previous threats to “take Jairo for dead” weeks before the shooting.
“Simply put, [the] defendant’s grandfather, to whom the threat to kill was made, should have been permitted to testify as a defense witness about a specific act perpetrated by the decedent and conveyed to his grandson,” the court said.
The court noted that Esdel is accused of murder and raised the defense of self-defense.
“The fact that the decedent repeated a threat to kill defendant to his grandfather three times just two weeks before this incident was clearly relevant to the defense of self-defense,” the ruling states. “The trial justice’s assessment that this evidence was marginally relevant is incorrect. This is highly relevant proof in a self-defense case and not subject to exclusion as overly prejudicial where the defendant has asserted self-defense.”
In addition, the court found, the jurors should have been allowed to hear from witnesses about a 2018 incident in which Rosario pistol-whipped Esdel.
Jurors also should have been allowed to see video
Last, the court concluded that jurors should have been able to view a video of Rosario allegedly brandishing a firearm while rapping, which was posted to WhatsApp hours before the encounter.
Krause refused to allow it, arguing it had not been authenticated.
“Having carefully reviewed the record before us, we are of the opinion that, if properly authenticated as to having been published by the decedent within a reasonable time before the shooting, the video should be admissible on remand because it potentially can serve as circumstantial evidence that the decedent was armed on the night of the incident,” the unanimous ruling read. “The defendant shall be afforded a full opportunity to present evidence, including expert witness testimony, if necessary, to establish the authenticity of the video.”
Voccola said they would be seeking for Esdel, who previously had a clean criminal record, to be released on bail pending his new trial.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Rhode Island man sentenced to life gets new trial after Supreme Court ruling