The Supreme Judicial Court last Wednesday (Nov. 20) overturned the convictions of a man for a murder on Deering Road in Mattapan in which he drove the killer – who has never been found or publicly identified – to and from the scene.

Dewane Tse of Providence was convicted in 2022 for a triple-shooting in 2018 that left Yashua Amado dead. Around 9:45 a.m. on Aug. 18, Tse, driving an SUV he had rented, followed Amado down Blue Hill Avenue to Deering Road, where another man got out, opened fire, and got back into the vehicle, which Tse drove away.

Suffolk County prosecutors convinced a Suffolk Superior Court jury that even though the actual gunman had not been located, Tse was guilty of first-degree murder and armed assault with intent to murder on a legal theory known as “joint venture,” in which somebody who contributes to the planning or pre-shooting events leading up to a murder is as guilty as the person who actually pulls the trigger.

But in its ruling, the state’s highest court concluded that prosecutors did not actually make the case beyond a reasonable doubt that Tse knew what his passenger was planning before he opened fire, or even that he knew the man had a gun.

“Because we agree that there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew of or shared his alleged coventurer’s intent, we reverse the defendant’s convictions of murder in the first degree and armed assault with intent to murder,” the ruling reads.

At Tse’s trial, witnesses said they got at least a partial look at the shooter as he approached the car in which Amado sat, which ruled out Tse, because the shooter was “not obese,” while Tse was 5-foot-8 and weighed more than 300 lbs., or as one BPD detective described him: Looking like he was “carrying a ten-month baby high [in] his belly,” according to the court’s summary of the case.

In order to convict Tse for first-degree murder, the court said, prosecutors had to show that “the defendant knowingly participated in the commission of the crime charged, and that the defendant had or shared the required criminal intent.” 

Prosecutors told the jury that the way Tse maneuvered his rented SUV to follow Amado in his car to Deering Road, was proof that Tse “knew of and shared the unidentified shooter’s lethal intent.”

But, the court wrote, this argument rested on “a chain of speculative assertions,” not hard facts, noting: “The Commonwealth did not present direct evidence of the defendant’s lethal intent or evidence that, at any point, the defendant was a witness to, or participant in, the shooting.

In their arguments before the high court, prosecutors said the length of time Tse followed Amado’s car – some 13 minutes – was more than enough for a “rational jury” to conclude that Tse was out for more than a ride around the neighborhood that day, especially as it included making a U-turn on Blue Hill Avenue and at one point slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting another, assertions based on surveillance video.

But the court did not buy that presentation.