Commonwealth v. Scott
Annotate this CaseTwenty-three years after a young woman was found dead in a vacant lot, DNA was extracted from samples taken from the victim’s body and clothing. A match was found with Defendant’s DNA. After a jury trial, Defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) the evidence was sufficient to support the verdict; (2) the trial judge’s exclusion of evidence proffered by Defendant as third-party culprit evidence and Bowden evidence was not in error; (3) comments made by the prosecutor during closing argument were misguided, but there was no substantial likelihood that a miscarriage of justice occurred; and (4) the trial judge did not err in his instructions to the reconstituted jury after an original deliberating juror had been discharged.
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