Commonwealth v. Cowels
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial in 1994, Defendants were convicted of murder in the first degree. At trial, the Commonwealth presented evidence of two bloody towels that testimony suggested Defendants had used to clean themselves after stabbing the victim. In 2008, Defendants filed separate motions for a new trial based on DNA testing performed after their convictions on a previously tested towel by an independent laboratory. The testing revealed that the blood on the towel did not belong to either Defendant or the victim but to an unidentified male. The motion judge denied the motions. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated and set aside the judgments of conviction, holding that there was a substantial risk that, had the newly available testing excluding the victim and the defendants as possible sources of the blood on the towel been available at the time of the trial, the outcome of the trial would have been different. Remanded for a new trial.
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