Tarabelsi - A Black Eye for Rumley and his CORI !!!!

Read the Jenna Tarabelsi APPEAL and its DENIAL March 19, 2019https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/03/19/18P0474.pdf

Medford High School has its own attorneys, so why is Solicitor Rumley sticking his unclean hands into a CORI check for candidates who want their own TV show when it is alleged that Jenna Tarabelsi had sex with additional young men along with the 15 year old she was convicted of raping.

Rumley's CORI check was about as effective as a used condom when it came to Jenna Tarabelsi and OTHER high school teacher offenders!



NOTICE: Summary decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to its rule 1:28, as amended by 73 Mass. App. Ct. 1001 (2009), are primarily directed to the parties and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's decisional rationale. Moreover, such decisions are not circulated to the entire court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case. 



A summary decision pursuant to rule 1:28 issued after February 25, 2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted above, not as binding precedent. See Chace v. Curran, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 258, 260 n.4 (2008).

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS APPEALS COURT 18-P-474

COMMONWEALTH vs. JENNA TARABELSI.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 1:28 The defendant, Jenna Tarabelsi, appeals from her conviction after a trial by jury on two counts of an indictment charging her with rape of a fifteen year old student.  (So much for the CORI check the school allegedly had Jenna Tarabelsi have submitted!)



She challenges the judge's decision to admit in evidence text messages between her and two students, including the victim, other evidentiary rulings by the judge, and the prosecutor's closing argument.


For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

Background.

The jury were warranted in finding that the defendant worked as a guidance counselor at Medford Vocational Technical School (the school) during 2013 to 2015.

In the fall of 2013, the victim was a fifteen year old student at the school.

The defendant was his guidance counselor.  (What? She wasn't "the varsity coach?"  Then, who was??? Mr. Rumley?)

He had a class in a room that was connected to the defendant's classroom, and he visited the defendant on a frequent basis. 


In December 2 2013, the victim was confiding in the defendant about issues he was having with his then-girlfriend.

He had the defendant's cell phone number, and both texted her and communicated with her via Snapchat.

AND SINCE MARK RUMLEY WANTS TO STICK HIS NOSE INTO VOCATIONAL / TECHNICAL BUSINESS, WHY WASN'T HE SCREAMING FROM THE ROOFTOPS WHEN THE ALLEGED RUMORS WERE FLYING?

The relationship between the victim and the defendant grew closer and became more personal until one evening in early January 2014, when they texted back and forth and made plans to meet.


The plan was that the defendant would pick up the victim at a convenience store several streets away from his home to avoid being seen by his parents or neighbors.

When he arrived at the store, the defendant was waiting for him in a black Jeep vehicle with a moose sticker on the rear window.

The victim entered the defendant's vehicle and they discussed "hook[ing] up." The defendant drove to an abandoned parking lot in Stoneham.

The victim and the defendant entered the rear seat of the vehicle. He took his pants off and the defendant performed oral sex on him, and, with her agreement, they engaged in vaginal intercourse. 



The defendant drove back to the vicinity of the victim's home and dropped him off several doors down from his house.

The defendant and the victim continued to see and text each other throughout the remainder of 2014, but did not again have sex.


Discussion. 1. Admission of text messages.

The victim recalled texting the defendant during the months of May and 3 August 2014, using his Apple iPhone.

The Commonwealth prepared printouts of some of these messages from May 19, 2014, and August 9, 2014, and arranged them on poster board.

The victim identified these communications and testified to their contents.

The poster board containing the printouts was received in evidence and marked exhibit 2.

The messages represent communications between someone using the victim's telephone number as well as his name and the e-mail address that the defendant acknowledged she used.

The text messages were obtained by the Commonwealth when, during the investigation of this case in May 2015, a Medford police officer assigned to the school took possession of the defendant's office desktop computer and her school-issued iPad.


A forensic computer expert was able to extract portions of two conversations dated May 19 and August 9, 2014, from a backup file of the defendant's iPad that was located on the hard drive of her school desktop computer.

These extracted conversations are the ones that were identified by the victim and that appear in exhibit 2.

The defendant confirmed that the e-mail address associated with the her iPad was the one that appears in the printouts marked as exhibit 2 and that she used her assigned iPad while outside of school.1

 1 An iMessage between the defendant and a second student occurring on January 28, 2014, was received in evidence and 4 Prior to the admission of the victim's testimony about this evidence, the judge conducted a sidebar conference with counsel to address the defendant's objection.

The defendant's principal objection was that she was deprived of the opportunity to examine the contents of the victim's cell phone because, although it was seized by the police in 2015, its contents were never forensically examined because by the time the police attempted to do so, the victim could not remember his password.

On appeal, the defendant makes two arguments.

First, she contends that the Commonwealth failed to authenticate the messages. Assuming that this issue was encompassed by the defendant's objection at trial, there was no error.

The victim's testimony was sufficient to permit the jury to conclude that the text messages were communications between him and the defendant. Commonwealth v. Purdy, 459 Mass. 442, 447 (2011). See Mass. G. Evid. §§ 901(b)(4) & (11) (2018).

The fact that the messages extracted from the hard drive of the defendant's computer were incomplete does not affect their admissibility. See Commonwealth v. Gilman, 89 Mass. App. Ct. 752, 760 n.9 marked exhibit 3.

The second student also was alleged to be the victim of a rape in a third count of the indictment against the defendant. 

That student testified at trial that he had sexual intercourse with the defendant in January or February, 2014.

The defendant was found not guilty on that charge.

On appeal, the defendant does not challenge the judge's ruling that admitted this evidence. 5 (2016).

The defendant's second argument -- that the admission of the text messages violated the best evidence rule -- is similarly unavailing.

Apart from the fact that a copy of a "computer data file or program file" is made admissible by G. L. c. 233, § 79K, the best evidence rule does not apply to e-mails or text messages "because there is no 'original' in the traditional sense." Commonwealth v. Salyer, 84 Mass. App. Ct. 346, 356 n.10 (2013).

2. Other evidentiary rulings. On direct examination, the defendant testified that she returned her iPad to school authorities for the summer and therefore could not have authored the August 2014 texts that were recovered from the device's backup files.

On cross-examination, she testified that she used the same personal Gmail account on the iPad that she used with her iPhone and had "full access" to her Gmail account during the summer of 2014.

On appeal, the defendant contends that the judge erred in admitting this evidence without additional foundation evidence establishing that she could have sent the messages in question from her iPhone without the iPad. The record indicates that the defendant's objection at trial was not timely and was not accompanied by a motion to strike.

Accordingly, the question is whether there was a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.


Commonwealth v. Leary, 92 Mass. App. Ct. 332, 336 (2017).

We agree with the 6 Commonwealth that additional foundation evidence was not necessary because based on the evidence presented the jury were entitled to infer that the defendant was capable of using her Apple iPhone in the summer of 2014 to send iMessages or text messages to students through her Gmail account to the same extent she could have done by using another device such as her school-issued iPad.

The defendant also objects to the judge's ruling that she contends prevented her from testifying to facts that she maintains could have allowed the jury to infer that someone besides her was the author of the May 19, 2014, text message. In the May 19 text message, there is a reference to a second person, other than the victim, who is identified by initials only.

The May 19 text message indicates that this other person was jealous when the defendant mistakenly referred to him using the victim's nickname. On cross-examination, the victim identified this other person by name and testified that he was a student at their school. This other student also testified at trial on behalf of the defendant that the defendant was his guidance counselor and that he did not know the victim.


However, this other student did not testify that he was the person whose initials appear in the May 19 text message.

At trial, defense counsel tried to elicit from the defendant the identity of a student who knew the victim, and who had a 7 relationship with the student whom the victim identified as the student whose initials appear in the May 19 text message. 


Although at sidebar, defense counsel attempted to explain how such testimony would permit the jury to infer that someone other than the defendant was the author of the May 19 text, we agree with the judge that the defendant's argument was based on speculation.

See Commonwealth v. Rivera, 52 Mass. App. Ct. 321, 323 (2001).


Furthermore, the foundation offered by the defendant for why a particular student whose statement in class that the defendant was having sex with students prompted the investigation that led to the charges against her was in fact the author of the May 19 text message was based on inadmissible hearsay. 



3. Closing argument.

We have carefully reviewed the closing arguments and agree with the Commonwealth that the prosecutor did not misstate the evidence, but rather confined his comments to the defendant's own testimony and the reasonable inferences that could be drawn from the evidence.

In brief, the defense was based on a view that the defendant was framed by a group of students who fabricated text messages implicating her in criminal activity. 

The prosecutor was entitled to rebut that view by suggesting that it would have required that a group of students worked together to hack into the defendant's computer.

Moreover, the judge instructed the jury before and after the 8 closing arguments that evidence comes only from the witnesses who testified and that closing arguments are not evidence.

See Commonwealth v. Imbert, 479 Mass. 575, 586-587 (2018).

Judgments affirmed. By the Court (Meade, Agnes & Englander, JJ.2),

Clerk Entered: March 19, 2019.