Commonwealth v. Navarro

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted on thirty indictments, ten each charging armed robbery while masked, home invasion, and kidnapping. The Appeals Court affirmed. Defendant appealed, arguing that the trial judge erred in failing to instruct the jury regarding eyewitness identification in accordance with Commonwealth v. Rodriguez. Defendant, however, neither requested the instruction nor objected to its admission. In the alternative, Defendant claimed that counsel’s failure to request a Rodriguez instruction was constitutionally ineffective. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) in the absence of a request, Defendant may not attribute the omission of a Rodriguez eyewitness identification instruction to judicial error and, consequently, Defendant was not entitled to review on that ground; and (2) counsel’s failure to request a Rodriguez instruction in this case was error, but the error was not prejudicial. View "Commonwealth v. Navarro" on Justia Law