Commonwealth v. Acevedo
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The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendant's conviction of deliberately premeditated murder in the first degree and unlawful possession of a firearm and declined to exercise its extraordinary authority pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 33E to grant his a new trial or to reduce his first-degree murder conviction to a lesser degree of guilt, holding that there was no error or reason to disturb the verdicts.
Together with his codefendant, Defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation. Defendant, who was also convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm, appealed, arguing, among other things, that the trial judge erroneously excluded evidence that supported a third-party culprit defense. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) the trial judge's exclusion of certain evidence did not deprive the defense "of the plausible alternative theory that rival drug dealers were responsible for the murder"; (2) there was no abuse of discretion in allowing introduction of testimony that the codefendant possessed a firearm eight months before the shooting; and (3) there was no reason to order a new trial or to reduce the degree of guilt as to the conviction of murder in the first degree.
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