State v. Gonsalves

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of the crimes of, inter alia, assault in the first degree as an accessory, conspiracy to commit assault in the first degree and conspiracy to commit robbery in the first degree, the defendant appealed. The charges stemmed from an incident in which, after four individuals entered a house to commit a robbery, one of the perpetrators shot and seriously injured an occupant of the house, C. The defendant claimed, inter alia, that the evi- dence was insufficient to support his convictions of all three offenses. Held: This court reversed the defendant's conviction with respect to the charge of assault in the first degree as an accessory, as there was no evidence from which the jury could have inferred, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant intended to cause serious physical injury to C, or that he intentionally aided the perpetrator who did shoot C, which were required elements of the charge. This court reversed the defendant's conviction with respect to the charge of conspiracy to commit assault in the first degree, as there was no evidence to establish that the defendant had the intent to cause C serious physical injury or that he intended that a deadly weapon would be used to injure C, thus, the state necessarily failed to prove that the defendant planned or conspired to cause C serious physical injury with a deadly weapon. This court reversed the defendant's conviction with respect to the charge of conspiracy to commit robbery in the first degree, as there was no evidence that the defendant ever formed the specific intent that C would suffer a serious physical injury during the commission of the robbery and, consequently, there was also no evidence that the defendant agreed with any other perpetrator of the robbery to cause serious physical injury to any nonparticipant in the robbery, including C. Argued May 20, 2025—officially released April 14, 2026