Commonwealth v. Brescia
Annotate this CaseAt Defendant’s trial for murder and conspiracy, the prosecution’s theory was that Defendant had hired an assassin to kill the victim. Defendant testified on his own behalf, refuting the allegations. After the jury was charged, it was discovered that Defendant had suffered a stroke that had occurred on the night between the first and second days of his testimony. The jury never learned of Defendant’s stroke and returned guilty verdicts on both indictments. The trial judge ordered a new trial, determining that Defendant’s then-undetected stroke might have so affected the course of his testimony as to damage his credibility in the jury’s eyes, and given the importance of the jury’s assessments of credibility in this case, justice may not have been done. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding that, in the highly unusual circumstances presented here, there was no abuse his discretion in the judge’s decision that “justice may not have been done.”
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