Commonwealth v. Thayer

How courts have described this case

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

• finding no error in trial judge's overnight change of heart on whether to give a supplemental instruction requested by the Commonwealth
• proposition that possibility of jury disbelief of portion of Commonwealth’s evidence, may, in proper circumstances, provide basis for instruction on lesser included offense
• defendant cannot claim to be prejudiced by a lesser included instruction since he relied on defense that no abuse occurred
• instruction on statutory rape justified “if the jury disbelieved the minor victims’ testimony about threats” and assaults but “might still believe that the defendants had intercourse with the victims or abused them”
• if on any hypothesis of the evidence, the jury could have found the lesser offense, giving an instruction to the jury on this crime is not error

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).