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Commonwealth v. Plunkett

Citations

  • 422 Mass. 634
  • 664 N.E.2d 833
  • 1996 Mass. LEXIS 111

How courts have described this case

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

  • holding that a new trial was required when the jury were instructed on both premeditated murder and felony-murder but the evidence could support only felony-murder
  • holding that, if there is insufficient evidence to support one theory in an alternative theory murder conviction, then the defendant is entitled to a new trial
  • rejecting the government’s attempt to abandon the established rule in light of Griffin and noting that “[i]f the judge tells a jury that they may find the defendant guilty on a theory that is factually unsupported (in effect committing an error of law
  • evidence would have sufficed to show malice based on plain and strong likelihood of death where defendant bound and gagged victim, resulting in victim’s death
  • “there must be evidentiary support for each theory of guilt on which the judge tells the jury they may find the defendant guilty”
  • rejecting Griffin on state law grounds

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Wilkins

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

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

Cites

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

Other cases with this name

Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).

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