Commonwealth v. Pfeiffer
Annotate this Case
The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendant's convictions of arson of a dwelling house, felony-murder in the second degree, and two counts of injuring a firefighter, holding that the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions and that, although the jury instruction on an "alternative theory" of arson was erroneous, the error did not warrant overturning the verdicts.
On appeal, among other things, Defendant challenged the arson conviction, which served as the predicate for the other charges, and argued that the trial judge erred, as a matter of law, in instructing the jury on the alternative theory of arson, namely, that Defendant could be found guilty of she accidentally or negligently set the fire and then willfully and maliciously failed to extinguish or report it. The Supreme Judicial Court held (1) the evidence was sufficient to establish that Defendant specifically intended to burn the apartment building; (2) it was error to provide the supplemental instruction on arson, but the error did not require a new trial; and (3) there was no merit to Defendant's remaining arguments on appeal.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.