Background
One evening, Messiah Leggett and his friend Kenny Jnley, along with two of Jnley’s friends, rented hotel rooms in Boston to drink, smoke marijuana, and socialize. They were later joined by four young women, including eighteen-year-old Nalijah Andrade, a high school senior. Throughout the night, the group passed around a nine-millimeter Polymer80 semiautomatic pistol—a “ghost gun” with no serial number, modeled after a Glock. A “selfie” video recorded around 9:30 p.m. captured Jnley dancing with the weapon, removing the magazine to display a live round, and then reinserting it. Leggett was visibly in the frame throughout that sequence.
Later in the evening, Leggett and Andrade were alone together in a corner of one of the rooms, “play fighting” with their hands. Witnesses described the mood as normal with no sounds of struggle. A gunshot rang out. Witnesses found Andrade on the floor while Leggett stood over her repeating, “What did I do? What did I do? Oh, my God. What did I do?” When investigators asked who had the gun when Andrade was shot, Leggett said, “Me, but like, well, she did first but then me.” He also admitted moving the gun to the bathroom after the shooting. A firearms expert confirmed that the pistol had a trigger safety requiring a deliberate pull and could not discharge accidentally. Andrade died from a gunshot wound to the head.
A jury convicted Leggett of involuntary manslaughter under G.L. c. 265, § 13, and unlicensed possession of a firearm under G.L. c. 269, § 10(a). On appeal, he challenged the sufficiency of the evidence on both counts, the admission of a prior-day “selfie” video showing him near Jnley’s firearm, the exclusion of other videos showing only Jnley with a gun, the detective’s Bowden-rebuttal testimony concerning the victim’s wound, and statements in the prosecutor’s closing argument.
The Court’s Holding
The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed in a Rule 23.0 summary decision by Justices Desmond, Hershfang, and Brennan. On the involuntary manslaughter count, the panel applied Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671 (1979), asking whether any rational trier of fact could find “wanton or reckless” conduct beyond a reasonable doubt. Involuntary manslaughter requires only that the defendant intended to engage in conduct creating a high degree of likelihood of substantial harm—not that he intended the specific harm. The evidence was sufficient: Leggett admitted possessing the gun immediately before the shooting; the video demonstrated he knew or should have known it was loaded; the firearms expert ruled out accidental discharge; and Leggett’s immediate “What did I do?” exclamation was available for the jury’s consideration. The court also rejected Leggett’s accident theory, noting that even if the jury could have believed Andrade fired the gun herself, it was the jury’s province to resolve those competing inferences, and it did not do so in Leggett’s favor. Critically, the court stated: whether Leggett deliberately held the gun to Andrade’s head or was grappling to wrest it from her, “a man may be reckless within the meaning of the law although he himself thought he was careful.” Commonwealth v. Welansky, 316 Mass. 383, 399 (1944).
On the firearm count, the court again found the evidence sufficient: Leggett told police he “had” the gun when Andrade was shot; Andrade’s own statement implied Leggett (not she) was holding it; and he moved the weapon after the shooting. The panel rejected the remaining evidentiary claims. Exhibit 73—the prior-day video showing Leggett near Jnley’s gun—was properly admitted for the limited purpose of proving Leggett’s “access to and knowledge of firearms,” accompanied by contemporaneous and final jury instructions. Exclusion of other videos showing only Jnley with a firearm was not error because ownership of the weapon was legally irrelevant to the possession charge at issue. The detective’s Bowden-rebuttal testimony about the wound’s “stellate pattern”—offered to explain why he did not pursue additional forensic tests—was permissible given the defense’s broad attack on the investigation, and any error was harmless in light of the trial judge’s repeated limiting instructions. And while the prosecutor misattributed the stellate-wound observation to the medical examiner rather than the detective in closing, the jury was instructed that attorney argument is not evidence, and independent evidence of close-contact firing rendered the misstatement harmless.
Key Takeaways
- Involuntary manslaughter under Massachusetts law requires only that the defendant intended wanton or reckless conduct creating a high probability of substantial harm—not that he intended to hurt or kill the victim. “Play fighting” with a loaded firearm near another person’s head clears this bar even when the defendant claims a protective motive.
- When a defendant raises a broad Bowden defense attacking the adequacy of the police investigation, the Commonwealth may elicit officer testimony explaining why particular forensic tests were omitted—even where that testimony risks veering into expert opinion—as long as the trial court provides contemporaneous limiting instructions.
- Prior-incident video footage showing a defendant in proximity to a firearm the day before a shooting is admissible for the limited purpose of establishing the defendant’s access to and knowledge of firearms, with a limiting instruction narrowing the jury’s use of the evidence.
- Prosecutorial misstatements in closing argument are subject to a prejudice standard. Where the jury is instructed that attorney statements are not evidence and where the misstatement concerns a fact established by other properly admitted evidence, the error will not support reversal.
Why It Matters
Commonwealth v. Leggett illustrates the reach of Massachusetts’s involuntary manslaughter doctrine in ghost-gun cases. The opinion makes plain that defendants who handle loaded firearms recklessly—even if their subjective purpose was benign—face criminal exposure under the wanton-and-reckless standard. For Massachusetts criminal defense practitioners, the case is a caution that presenting an alternative accident theory will not defeat a conviction when the Commonwealth has placed the firearm in the defendant’s hands at the critical moment and a firearms expert has ruled out accidental discharge. The decision also offers a useful statement on the interplay between a Bowden defense and investigator-opinion testimony: the breadth of the defense’s attack on the investigation sets the outer limit of the Commonwealth’s permitted rebuttal, and prompt limiting instructions can preserve a verdict even where that rebuttal comes close to improper expert testimony.
More broadly, the case joins a growing body of Massachusetts authority addressing criminal liability arising from the proliferation of Polymer80 and other unserialized firearms. The ghost-gun context matters not only because such weapons are increasingly common in urban prosecutions but also because their untraceable nature tends to limit available forensic evidence—pushing cases like this one to turn on witness credibility, incriminating statements, and video evidence of the sort at issue here.