Commonwealth v. Tavares
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree based on deliberate premeditation. Defendant was convicted on a theory of joint venture with the shooter, who took the gun from Defendant’s hand and began shooting. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated Defendant’s conviction on the murder charges and remanded for a new trial on those indictments, holding that the judge erred in misstating the law of joint venture in her response to a jury question, and the error created a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice because the response to the jury’s question obscured or eliminated the possibility that Defendant could be convicted of any lesser offense.
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