Commonwealth v. Wiggins

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendants’ convictions of murder in the first degree and other offenses related to the home invasion but remanded for resentencing Swinkles Laporte’s convictions of home invasion and armed robbery while masked. The court held (1) there was no substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice arising from the failure of counsel to object to an in-court identification of Defendants - Laporte and Maxwell Wiggins - as the perpetrators; (2) the trial court did not err in denying Wiggins’ motions to sever and for a mistrial based on a previously suppressed out-of-court identification; (3) there was no reversible error in the trial court’s remaining challenged evidentiary rulings; (4) any error in the prosecutor’s closing argument did not influence the jury’s verdicts; but (5) Laporte’s nonmurder sentences are vacated and remanded for resentencing where Laporte’s murder sentence was revised because he was a juvenile at the time of the offense. View "Commonwealth v. Wiggins" on Justia Law