Shea lost his bid for a new trial and is set to complete his life term for killing a 14-year-old girl who was the unintended victim of his gunfire.
Shawn M. Shea is seen during his arraignment on a murder charge in 2007.BOSTON - The state Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday upheld two convictions in separate murders in Springfield including that of an 18-year-old man for gunning down a 14-year-old girl in 2007.
In a decision written by Judge Ralph D. Gants, the court affirmed the first-degree murder conviction and life sentence of Shawn M. Shea, who was 18 when a jury found him guilty in 2008 of killing Dymond D. McGowan.
McGowan was shot in the stomach and killed as she stood on a porch outside 338 Wilbraham Rd. in Springfield on May 10, 2007. According to testimony, McGowan was a neighborhood girl and the unintended victim of a street gang rivalry. A witness for the prosecution said he drove the car past the address and Shea leaned out the window and fired a semiautomatic handgun into a crowd gathered there.
Gants said he reviewed the record of Shea's case and found no error that "produced a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice, nor any other reason to order a new trial or to reduce the defendant's murder convictions to a lesser degree of guilt."
In a separate decision written by Judge Robert J. Cordy, the high court upheld the first-degree murder conviction of Jose M. Rosario in the 1999 killing of Mario Cordova.
Cordova, of 44 Cambridge St., was shot in the head in front of 5 Lionel Benoit Rd. in Springfield as he held a door open for a bicyclist. He died five days later.
Rosario was a high-ranking member of the Latin King street gang that blamed Cordova, who was not a Latin King, for a drug theft during a party, according to the prosecution. Rosario is serving a life sentence without parole following his 2000 conviction by a jury.
Cordy said there was "ample evidence" to support the conviction. Cordy wrote that Rosario commanded another gang member to shoot Cordova.
"The jury heard testimony from eye witnesses as well as the defendant's subordinates who helped carry out the shooting," Cordy wrote.