Commonwealth v. Sullivan

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The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the judgment of the superior court convicting Defendant of felony murder, with the predicate felony of armed home invasion and declined to exercise its extraordinary authority to grant a new trial or to reduce the verdict to a lesser degree of guilt. The court held (1) the evidence was sufficient to support Defendant’s convictions; (2) there was no reversible error in the trial court’s evidentiary rulings concerning the introduction of testimony about DNA found on objects at the crime scene and testimony concerning the use of a DNA profile of the defendant stored in a national database; and (3) the motion judge did not reversibly err in denying Defendant’s motion for a new trial on the ground that the Commonwealth did not provide exculpatory evidence concerning a forensic scientist’s failure to pass required proficiency tests. View "Commonwealth v. Sullivan" on Justia Law