Commonwealth v. Bastaldo
Annotate this CaseDefendant was convicted of mayhem and resisting arrest. Defendant appealed, arguing, among other things, that the judge abused her discretion in denying Defendant’s requested cross-racial and cross-ethnic eyewitness identification jury instruction where two of the three eyewitnesses were Caucasian and Defendant was a “dark-skinned Hispanic of Dominican decent.” This case was tried before the Supreme Judicial Court issued its opinion in Commonwealth v. Gomes, where the Court prospectively required that a jury instruction on cross-racial eyewitness identification be given in these circumstances. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) the judge did not abuse her discretion in declining to give Defendant’s requested cross-racial and cross-ethnic instruction; (2) in criminal trials that commence after the issuance of this opinion, a cross-racial instruction should always be included when giving the model eyewitness identification instruction unless the parties agree that there was no cross-racial identification; (3) the admission of the three in-court eyewitness identifications in this case did not create a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice; and (4) although the judge erred in instructing the jury regarding consciousness of guilt, the error was not prejudicial.
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