MARCO NIEVES - 6 yo - (2009) Cranston RI

A 27-year-old Central Falls man is to be arraigned Monday afternoon
on charges of child abuse and felony assault after a 6-year-old boy was
found unresponsive in a Cranston apartment Sunday morning.

Michael Patino, of 39 Cottage St., is expected in District Court, Warwick, according to a statement issued by the Cranston police.

While Police Col. Marco Palombo Jr. wouldn't discuss Patino's
relationship with the family, several neighbors of the family said he
was the boyfriend of the child's mother. Roxann Beeman, who lives in
the same complex, said Patino had been living at the family's apartment
off and on for the last year and had moved in permanently this summer.

Cranston police and rescue crews were called to 575 Dyer Ave., Apartment B18, in Cranston, Sunday at 6:14 a.m. for the report of an unresponsive child, according to the police.

Rescue crews transported the boy to Hasbro Children's Hospital, in
Providence, where he was pronounced dead, according to the police.



Beeman saw rescuers go into the boy's apartment, and she watched as
the boy was taken away by ambulance about 20 to 30 minutes later. His
mother was driven away in a police cruiser, Beeman said. About 90
minutes later, the rescue workers returned and took the boy's younger
sister with them, while Patino was driven away in a police cruiser,
Beeman said.

The Cranston Police arrested Patino. The investigation is ongoing, pending the report of the Medical Examiner's Office.

Palombo would not answer questions about how the boy died.

The boy's death stunned several neighbors who knew the family. Jean
Ardente said the boy's mother was a "very good mother." The boy, she
said, "was a sweetheart."

Beeman said her daughter saw the mother playing with the children
and tickling the little boy a few days ago. After Beeman learned of the
boy's death on Sunday, her daughter told her, "Mom, you should have
heard him laughing. he was laughing so much."

Over the
summer, Marco Nieves took the training wheels off his bicycle –– a
small step for a 6-year-old boy who was moving on to kindergarten.Early
Sunday morning, Marco was found unresponsive in the family’s unit at
Riverbend Apartments. His mother, Trisha Oliver, summoned emergency
medical workers who rushed Marco to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, where
he died several hours later.Oliver’s boyfriend, Michael J.
Patino, charged with assaulting Marco and causing his death, is being
held at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston. The police said the 911 call came in at 6:14 a.m.Roxann
Beeman, who also lives in the Riverbend Apartments at 575 Dyer Ave.,
said she woke up Sunday morning to find rescuers going into the boy’s
second-floor apartment and watched as they carried her grandson’s best
friend out, limp in their arms, and whisked him away in an ambulance.Oliver, the mother, was taken away in a police cruiser, Beeman said.About
90 minutes later, rescue personnel returned and took the boy’s younger
sister with them –– after they removed her car seat from her mother’s
car, Beeman said.Then Patino, whom Beeman said had moved into Oliver’s apartment over the summer, was driven away in a police cruiser.Patino,
27, whose most recent address the police said is 39 Cottage St. in
Central Falls, was arraigned in District Court, Warwick, Monday
afternoon on two felony charges of first-degree child abuse and assault.He entered no plea, as felony charges are handled in Superior Court, where Patino is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 14.Judge
Anthony Capraro set bail on those charges at $250,000 with surety –– or
$25,000 cash –– and ordered Patino to have no contact with the boy’s
family and to surrender his passport. Patino, a Colombian citizen, is
also being held at the ACI under an immigration hold, ACI officials
said. Cranston Police Chief Marco Palombo Jr. would not
answer questions about how the boy died or whether the police had been
previously called to the family’s house, citing the ongoing criminal
investigation.Leticia Nieves, a paternal aunt, said the family
sought help from the police in January after hearing a voice mail
message in which Patino allegedly threatened to kill the boy. Palombo
said officers had learned of the reported death threats and were
investigating, but denied the aunt’s reports that the family had turned
over the phone with the message to the Cranston police.Marco
attended the nearby Kid’s Kingdom Preschool & Daycare in Cranston
from ages 2½ to about 4½, said Deborah Sullivan, the school’s director.Trisha
Oliver, Sullivan said, had worked there as a teacher’s assistant until
about 18 months ago, when she became pregnant with Marco’s half-sister.Oliver visited recently with her two children for the school’s end-of-summer celebration. They all seemed well, Sullivan said. “This
has hit everyone hard here,” Sullivan said, adding that one of her
current students had apparently attended Marco’s birthday party last
week.At Arlington Elementary School, where Marco attended the
half-day kindergarten program, the district made counselors available
for grieving students and staff members, Supt. Peter L. Nero said
Monday.Nero said school officials met early Monday morning to
make sure they knew about the boy’s death and knew how to address
questions from students. He also wanted staff members to know there was counseling available for the adults, as well as for the children.“You’re dealing with all levels of understanding of grief,” he said.At the Riverbend Apartments, the boy’s death stunned neighbors who knew the family. Jean Ardente said Trisha Oliver is a “very good mother” and Marco “was a sweetheart.”Beeman said her grandson was struggling with the loss of his best friend.She
recalled watching Marco over the summer as he learned to ride his
red-and-black bicycle without the training wheels and attending karate
lessons with her grandson.Now, she said, she’s explaining death to her grandson.“I say, ‘Marco’s with you,’ ” Beeman said she tells her grandson. “He watches you ride your bike. He watches you do karate.”Just days ago, Beeman said, her grown daughter had seen Trisha Oliver playing with the children, tickling Marco.After
learning of Marco’s death, Beeman said her daughter told her, “Mom, you
should have heard him laughing. He was laughing so much.”

A 6-year-old
Cranston boy who was found unresponsive early Sunday morning died of
blunt-force trauma to the abdomen, according to the state medical
examiner’s office.Marco Nieves suffered blunt-force trauma that perforated his small intestine.The
boy, the son of Trish Oliver, was found unresponsive at his family’s
unit at Riverbend Apartments, 575 Dyer Ave., Apartment B18.The police have released little information on his death.His
mother’s boyfriend — Michael J. Patino, 27 — is being held on $250,000
bail with surety on felony charges of first-degree child abuse and
assault. Patino, whom neighbors said had moved into the
family’s Cranston apartment over the summer and is described in court
papers as a “caretaker,” was ordered in court Monday to have no contact
with the boy’s family and to surrender his passport. The court record has been since sealed.A
Colombian native, Patino is also being held at the Adult Correctional
Institutions in Cranston under an immigration hold for an
“administrative violation” of immigration law, according to Michael
Gilhooly, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Patino is scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court on Dec. 14.Fighting
back tears, the boy’s father, Rafael Nieves of East Providence,
recounted Tuesday how Marco, whom he described as a happy little boy,
liked to play with his 5-year-old cousin Alex Parra, go to the movies
or simply sit on the couch with Nieves to watch TV.“He just liked being
with me. Everywhere I went, he went,” Nieves said. “He never wanted to
go home when it was time to go.”“He was an affectionate kid,”
said Nieves’ friend, Alex Correia, wiping away tears. “He would be
watching TV and would tell his father that he loved him.”

A Cranston man accused of abusing his girlfriend's 6-year-old son, who died Sunday, was arraigned Thursday morning for murder.

Michael J. Patino wore handcuffs as he appeared before Judge Jeanne
LaFazia, as family members of young Marco Nieves watched him quietly
from the gallery at District Court.

Patino, 27, stared at the floor as the judge ordered him held
without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions. He gave no plea,
which is customary for felony charges at the District Court level.

The judge sealed a search warrant and no-contact orders with Marco's mother, Trish Oliver, and a minor child.

Neighbors said that Patino had been staying with Oliver and her
children at her apartment at Riverbend off and on for the past year,
eventually moving in this summer. Patino was described in court papers
as a "caretaker."

Early Sunday morning, Marco was found unresponsive in his bed and
was later pronounced dead. An autopsy found that the little boy had died of blunt-force trauma that perforated his small intestine. Patino was arrested and charged with first-degree child abuse and assault on Monday.

Patino is sheduled for a bail hearing on Oct. 22 and arraignment in Superior Court on Dec. 14.

Marco's funeral is being held on Friday, with a Mass of Christian
burial at 10 a.m. in Our Lady of Grace Church, in Johnston. The boy
will be buried at Highland Memorial Park.

The Kid's Kingdom Preschool & Daycare in Cranston, where Marco
had attended and his mother had worked as a teacher's assistant, will
close on Friday in Marco's memory, so that staff and families may
attend his funeral, said school director Deborah Sullivan.

After the court proceeding, the boy's family and friends spoke to
Marco's mother, Tricia Oliver, by telephone; they said she was too
distraught to be in the courtroom.

``We're in disbelief,'' Marco's aunt Christina Oliver, told a reporter. ``Our family is in shock. It doesn't seem real.''

Patino initially appeared in court earlier this week on lesser
charges. Now that he is facing a charge of murder, ``it's definitely a
relief,'' said Amanda Oliver, a cousin of Marco's mother.

Family members described Marco as a young boy who loved life, the beach, his Power Rangers and chicken fingers.

Man indicted in beating death of 6-year old Cranston boy
4:31 PM Fri, Apr 02, 2010 | Permalink
Talia Buford Email

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The man accused of beating a 6-year-old Cranston boy to death in October was indicted Friday on murder charges by the Providence County Grand Jury.

Michael Patino, 28, of 30 Cottage St. in Cranston will be arraigned on murder charges in Providence County Superior Court on April 21.

Six year old Marco Nieves was found unconscious in his family's Cranston apartment Oct. 3. He died later that day at Hasbro Children's Hospital from blunt-force trauma to the abdomen, which perforated his small intestine.

The Providence Grand Jury also handed up a separate indictment of two 21-year-old Woonsocket men in connection with robberies in Woonsocket.

Gilberto Dominquez, of 24 Second Ave. #3, and Michael Harrington of 18 Winthrop St. #3 were indicted for conspiracy and first degree robbery. The police allege that Harrington and Dominquez committed the crime on Feb. 2. They will be arraigned in Providence County Superior Court on April 21.

http://newsblog.projo.com/2010/04/man-indicted-in-death-of-6-yea.html

Suspect indicted in child's murder
Grand jury charges Michael Patino

Updated: Friday, 02 Apr 2010, 6:28 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 02 Apr 2010, 6:25 PM EDT



CRANSTON, R.I. (WPRI) - A man accused of beating a 6 year old to death is indicted on murder charges.

Investigators say Michael Patino brutally assaulted his girlfriend's son, Marco Nieves, in Cranston back in October.

Nieves was found unresponsive in the morning and died the same day at Hasbro Children's Hospital.

Patino is being held at the A.C.I. His arraignment is scheduled for April 21.

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/cranston-suspect-indicted-in-childs-murder

139786 Michael Patino

Commit Date . .Case No. . . . .Bail Type . . . . . . Amt. . Disposition . . . . . . .Description . .Disp. Date
10/08/2009 . . P1101155A . . HELD W/O BAIL . . $0 . . CHARGE PENDING . . MURDER I . . 3/30/2011

http://www.doc.ri.gov/inmate_search/search_details.php?inmateid=139736

10/08/2009 P1101155A HELD W/O BAIL $0 CHARGE PENDING MURDER I 7/06/2011
http://www.doc.ri.gov/inmate_search/search_details.php?inmateid=139736

Police seizure of text messages violated 4th Amendment, judge rules
But legality of warrantless cell phone seizures is still unsettled nationwide.

by Jon Brodkin - Sept 5 2012, 1:00pm CST

At 6:08am, on October 4, 2009, Trisha Oliver frantically called 911 from her apartment in Cranston, Rhode Island when her six-year-old son, Marco Nieves, stopped breathing. The Fire Department took Marco to Hasbro Children's Hospital, where he was found to be in full cardiac arrest. He died 11 hours later.

By 6:20am, Sgt. Michael Kite of the Cranston Police Department had arrived at the apartment, where he found Oliver, her boyfriend Michael Patino, and their 14-month-old daughter, Jazlyn Oliver. Kite observed a couple of stripped beds and linens on the floor, a trash can with vomit inside it, dark brown vomit in a toilet, and, crucially, a cell phone on the kitchen counter. Kite picked up the cell phone, and it was at that point—in the just-released opinion of a Rhode Island state court—that police proceeded to mangle a murder case and violate Patino's Fourth Amendment rights by viewing text messages without a warrant.

Kite viewed a text message on the phone, which was owned by Trisha Oliver, reading "Wat if I got 2 take him 2 da hospital wat do I say and dos marks on his neck omg." The message was sent from Oliver to Patino, although the sending of the message apparently failed. There were other messages on the phone "with profane language and references to punching Marco—three times—the hardest of which was in the stomach," according to court records. Patino was arrested and charged with murder.

Kite claims he picked up the phone because it was "beeping," and that he thought it might help get in touch with the boy's birth father. But yesterday, Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice Judith Savage threw out nearly all of the evidence police collected from that point on, including the contents of cell phones, phone records and communications provided by Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint Nextel, landline phone records, and even Patino's "confession for the death of Marco Nieves." Savage said almost all the evidence obtained by police was "tainted by the illegal search made by Sgt. Kite or the other illegal searches and seizures of cell phones and their contents."

Patino is fighting the case both on Constitutional grounds and on the facts. He says the injuries to the boy were an accidental result of horsing around.

A privacy question that remains unsettled

Savage's decision in State of Rhode Island v. Michael Patino is a bold and interesting one, because the status of text messages in criminal investigations remains unsettled in the US. Savage wrote "this Court finds that it is objectively reasonable for people to expect the contents of their electronic text messages to remain private, especially vis-à-vis law enforcement." Patino had a right to privacy for his text message conversations, whether police took them from his phone or Oliver's, and a right to privacy in the apartment because he frequently stayed there, making it one of his residences.

"Based on the tsunami of illegal evidence collected by the Cranston Police Department, this Court grants Defendant‘s suppression motions and excludes the State‘s core evidence from being used at trial, including the text messages, all cell phones and their contents, all cell phone records, and critical portions of the Defendant‘s videotaped statement and his written statement given to the police," Savage wrote. "In addition, this Court finds that the Defendant made a preliminary showing that numerous sworn statements made by police officers in a dozen warrant affidavits were either deliberately false or made in reckless disregard of the truth so as to entitle him to a Franks hearing subject to further argument on additional preliminary issues."

The cell phone searches were "illegal as warrantless or in excess of the warrants obtained," and "As such, all of these searches and seizures, therefore, were unreasonable in violation of the Fourth Amendment," the judge wrote.

Savage reasoned that cell phone contents are deserving of Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures because people generally keep them on their person at all times. "Text messages are often raw, unvarnished, and immediate; revealing the most intimate of thoughts and emotions to those who are expected to guard them from publication," she wrote, further stating that the court "does not find that the remote possibility that an unintended party will receive a text message due to his or her possession of another person‘s cell phone is sufficient to destroy an objective expectation of privacy in such a message."

But Savage's decision is unlikely to be the final word on this topic. Savage herself noted that the US Supreme Court has declined to provide guidance to lower courts. "Even the United States Supreme Court has struggled with the legal challenges raised by emerging technology, most especially in the realm of cellular phones and their contents," she wrote. "Indeed, in City of Ontario [California] v. Quon [a case decided in 2010], the parties asked the high court to decide whether text messages should be afforded Fourth Amendment privacy protection. But the Supreme Court declined, choosing instead to decide the case on narrower grounds and allow this question to percolate in the lower courts."

An Associated Press story on the Patino case noted that "Georgia's Supreme Court this year ruled a similar search was legal, but the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled such searches improper." The Patino trial was scheduled to begin Monday, but Savage canceled jury selection, the AP reported. Patino's lawyer, David Cooper, said he'll request bail for Patino, who has been imprisoned for almost three years. Savage's decision was also reported by the Providence Journal, which posted the entire 190-page ruling online (PDF).

Most Rhode Island departments do seek warrants before gathering text messages as evidence, Cooper reportedly said. "Why Cranston opted not to do it is beyond me," Cooper said outside the courtroom.

Cranston police ended up obtaining more than a dozen warrants to seize evidence, including cell phones owned by both Oliver and Patino. But the affidavit used to obtain the first search warrant contained no information about text messages or cell phones, even though Sgt. Michael Gates claimed police seized phones from the apartment based on the authority of that first warrant. This was inaccurate both because the warrant did not grant that authority, and because police actually seized Patino's phone "off [his] person at the station."

Just how private cellular communications are depends very much on each court and police department, it seems. A ruling in the state of Washington in July found in favor of police officers who seized an iPhone from a suspected drug dealer and sent text messages on the device in order to locate and arrest one of his customers.

Separately, a trove of documents obtained by the ACLU in April seems to illustrate a "surveillance free-for-all" in which each police department is free to apply its own legal standard to surveillance conducted with assistance of cell phone companies.

The state of Rhode Island is expected to appeal Savage's decision.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/police-seizure-of-text-messages-violated-4th-amendment-judge-rules/

Judge slams Cranston police, tosses evidence in murder of 6-year-old / Poll

September 4, 2012 6:25 pm
By Tracy Breton

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Superior Court Judge Judith Savage on Tuesday blocked prosecutors from using most of their evidence against Michael Patino, who's charged with murdering his girlfriend's six-year-old son, Marco Nieves.

"Based on the tsunami of illegal evidence collected by the Cranston Police Department," Savage said, "this court grants defendant's suppression motions and excludes the state's core evidence from being used at trial, including the text messages, all cell phones and their contents, all cell phone records, and critical portions of the defendant's videotaped statement and his written statement given to the police."

Savage said Patino "made a preliminary showing that numerous sworn statements made by police officers in a dozen warrants were either deliberately false or made in reckless disregard of the truth."

http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2012/09/judge-slams-cra.html