Court rejects stranger-in-strange-land argument; upholds multiple life sentences in notorious Chinatown mass murder

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld the five life sentences given to Nam The Tham and Siny Van Tran for the execution-style murders of five men in a Tyler Street gambling parlor in 1991.

The two fled to China, but were eventually found and extradited back from Hong Kong. A jury found them guilty in a joint trial in 2001. A third shooter remains at large to this day.

The court ruled the two got a fair trial, any statements made in error would not have affected the outcome and that it was just too bad and their own fault they decided on a joint trial rather than trying to rat each other out in separate trials. They also rejected one of the men's arguments that he made incriminating statements because he came from a dictatorship where staying alive in custody requires telling authorities what they want to hear.

According to the court decision, the two entered the club around 2 a.m. on Jan. 12, 1991 and shot six men in the head. Five died immediately; one fell unconscious but came to a couple hours later:

He crawled out of the back door of the gambling house, and outside to a second locked grate where he shouted for help. Harold "Bud" Farnsworth, a security guard at New England Medical Center, was on a break outside when a young couple told him a man was lying on the ground across the street. Farnsworth ran across to the rear of the gambling house. Lee was leaning on the locked grate, moaning and bleeding from his head. Farnsworth flagged down a police vehicle and two police officers approached Lee, who could not speak, but made a shooting gesture with his index finger and thumb. Farnsworth and the police officers pried open the locked rear grate with a tire iron, entered the gambling house, and saw "dead people all over the place." The victims all had been shot in the head.

Tran's lawyers argued his convictions should be overturned, among other reasons, because he was a stranger in a strange land, whose ways frightened and confused him:

[A]s an immigrant, he had no experience with the criminal justice system. Because he was accustomed to a more repressive society, where police torture was commonplace, he was inclined to be submissive to authority. The second argument Tran makes is linguistic. He argues that he is Vietnamese, not Chinese, and he could not effectively communicate in Cantonese, especially with an inexperienced and flawed interpreter. The third argument Tran makes is atmospheric. He argues that his will was overborne after being confronted in a police-dominated setting (three-to-one), when already exhausted by a twenty-hour flight from Hong Kong and a night in a holding cell. Moreover, the interpreter repeatedly interrupted him, demanding that he "speak louder" and pressured him to "say" that he understood.

The justices did not buy that for a second:

[W]e concur with the motion judge who concluded that Tran's responses were not coerced, but rather "indicated a comprehension of the questions, were logical responses, and reflected an effort to exonerate himself." Tran's argument regarding linguistic barriers based on his Vietnamese heritage and [a Cantonese BPD officer's] imperfect translation is belied by his answers as memorialized in the recorded statement. His responses are cogent, lucid, and, as the motion judge concluded, logically calculated responses. Moreover, the setting of the interview was a "well appointed" office, where officers removed his handcuffs, and afforded him time to telephone his sister. He was given an opportunity to sleep following the international flight, and the recording evinces that the officers' tone and conduct were benign. Tran's will was not overborne, and there was no error in the motion judge's ruling that he voluntarily provided his statement to police.

• Complete ruling, COMMONWEALTH vs. SINY VAN TRAN (and thirteen companion cases)