Commonwealth v. Wright
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree on the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed. After various proceedings, Defendant filed his fifth motion for a new trial, arguing that newly discovered evidence in the form of third-party culprit evidence warranted a new trial. The superior court denied the motion as well as Defendant’s motions for reconsideration. Defendant appealed the denial of his fifth motion for a new trial pursuant to the gatekeeper provision of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 33E. A single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court allowed the appeal to proceed. The Supreme Judicial Court then affirmed the order denying Defendant’s fifth motion for a new trial, holding that the new evidence did not cast real doubt on the justice of Defendant’s conviction because there was no a substantial risk that the jury would have reached a different conclusion had this evidence been admitted at trial.
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