Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court· 4/3/1970

Commonwealth v. Smith

Citations

258 N.E.2d 13
357 Mass. 168
1970 Mass. LEXIS 799

How courts have described this case

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

“The law should not, and does not, give the opinions of experts on either side of the issue the benefit of conclusiveness, even if there are no contrary opinions introduced at trial”
Judicial experience with psychiatric testimony suggests that it would be inappropriate to treat an expert’s view as conclusive
“These statutes indicate a clear legislative intent that the jury are still an indispensable part of the required tribunal for the trial of a capital case”
“Judicial experience with psychiatric testimony makes it abundantly clear that it would be unrealistic to treat an opinion . . . by an expert on either side of [an] issue as conclusive”
Superior Court has no jurisdiction to try capital cases without jury

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Wilkins, Spalding, Kirk, Spiegel, Quirico

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

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

Cites

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

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