Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court· 12/11/1978

Commonwealth v. Davis

Citations

384 N.E.2d 181
376 Mass. 777
1978 Mass. LEXIS 1165

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

adopting “prophylactic measure” of requiring judge to conduct colloquy where defendant waives right to conflict-free counsel by agreeing to joint representation, even though colloquy is not constitutionally required
permissible for police officer to testify as to use of small manila envelopes for bagging heroin
actual conflict of interest when counsel is “shackled or impaired by commitments to persons other than the defendant”
“A defendant is entitled to the untrammeled and unimpaired assistance of counsel free of any conflict of interest and unrestrained by commitments to others”
a potential conflict of interest arises whenever a single attorney represents more than one defendant in a criminal action
even where there is no genuine conflict, a conviction may be overturned where there is a “potential conflict coupled with a showing of material prejudice”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Hennessey, Quirico, Braucher, Wilkins, Abrams

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

59 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

41 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

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