COURTS

In second trial, jury acquits Providence man of 2010 drive-by shooting death in Pawtucket

Katie Mulvaney
kmulvane@providencejournal.com
Victor J. Arciliares sits in court in January 2013 during his original trial for the murder of Alfredo Barros.

Kathy Borchers/ The Providence Journal file

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Superior Court jury this week acquitted a city man in a 2010 drive-by shooting death in Pawtucket.

A jury on Tuesday found Victor J. Arciliares, 27, not guilty of shooting to death Alfredo "Pauly" Barros and shooting Ruben Gomes around 3 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2010, at George and Marin streets.

It was Arciliares' second trial in the case, after the state Supreme Court last year overturned his 2013 conviction. The high court found that Arciliares' lawyer at the first trial, Judith Crowell, should have been allowed to cross-examine Detective Richard LaForest about his jailhouse conversations with Arciliares. Crowell asserted that the detective could have told Arciliares' sensitive details about the shooting and that Arciliares might have then passed those details along to his cellmate.

The testimony of that prisoner, Raymond Baccaire, was crucial to Arciliares' conviction. A convicted felon and repeat cooperating witness, Baccaire acknowledged receiving lenient treatment for bail violations after agreeing to assist prosecutors in the case. Investigators never found the gun used in the crime, nor the black BMW that witnesses reported seeing at the time 20-year-old Barros was killed.

Crowell said Wednesday that the weakness of Baccaire's testimony and his growing criminal record made the difference in Arciliares' second trial. "Baccaire was awful," she said.

Arciliares remains held without bail, in the meantime, as he awaits a second trial in the 2009 shooting death of his girlfriend, Dayvelliz Cotto. Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause in March granted Arciliares a new trial based on a 2012 state Supreme Court ruling in a similar case, according to Crowell.

In that case, the high court ordered a new trial for Juan L. Diaz, who was convicted of second-degree murder and discharging a firearm while committing a crime of violence that ended in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Mayra Cruz. The court found that Krause had erred by not giving Diaz’s jury instruction on involuntary manslaughter that included criminal negligence, thereby creating a distinct and separate charge from second-degree murder for jurors to consider.

Krause granted Arciliares a new trial on those same grounds. Arciliares had testified at his first trial that he shot Cotto, the mother of his daughter, by accident as the two looked at a silver pistol brought to their apartment by a man he knew from prison, who he couldn’t name. The gun, he said, had just gone off.

The state is asking the state Supreme Court to review Krause's ruling.

—kmulvane@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @kmulvane