NORTHAMPTON — The lawyer representing a former University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate student convicted of manslaughter in the death of a fellow student filed more than 50 pages in support of his client’s appeal on Monday.
Following a jury’s guilty verdicts and sentencing of New Hampshire resident Jesse Carrillo, 28, defense attorney J.W. Carney Jr. filed appeals as well as a motion for a stay of sentence.
Carrillo was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and distributing heroin in the death of fellow UMass student Eric Sinacori, 20, of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Sinacori was found dead by his father in his apartment at Puffton Village in Amherst on Oct. 4, 2013. He was a third-year kinesiology major at UMass.
Carney filed the appeal citing the judge’s refusal to give the jury an option of joint personal use of heroin by both men, and questions about whether there was sufficient evidence to support a conviction of manslaughter. Because of the appeal, the judge granted a two-week stay of the sentence.
Carney wrote in a motion supporting a stay of sentence that “the failure to instruct the jury on joint venture likely drove the conviction on the involuntary manslaughter charge,” and that, “The defendant clearly admitted that he was guilty of possession of heroin. Faced with only an instruction on distribution, the jury had no choice but view the defendant as a drug dealer.”
“Had the jury been given the option of viewing the defendant as anything other than a drug dealer, this would have played a role in making a determination of recklessness,” Carney wrote.
The memo, filed in Hampshire Superior Court, seeks only to have a stay of sentence on the distribution charge.
Carrillo was sentenced by Judge John Agostini to 2½ years in the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction. One year of the incarceration sentence must be served while the remaining year and a half will be stayed on the drug distribution charge if Carrillo complies with the terms of his probation.
He would be eligible for parole after serving six months. Carney argued that if the motion for the stay was denied and he was successful on his appeal, Carrillo will have “already served the entirety of the incarceration portion of his sentence.”
On the manslaughter conviction, Carrillo was sentenced to probation.
Responding to Carney’s original motion for a stay of sentence, the Northwestern district attorney’s office refuted the defense’s claims.
Citing case law, Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan wrote the commonwealth’s theory of the case that Carrillo’s delivery of heroin to Sinacori, who then injected himself, overdosed and died, presented such a “high likelihood of death as to constitute wanton or reckless conduct, is good law.”
Sullivan also countered that distribution of heroin does not require that the defendant engage in “the commercial enterprise of selling the drug.”
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.